by James Jinks
THE COLD WAR AT SEA
While the Royal Navy was occupied with constructing its first SSNs and SSBNs, the Submarine Service was conducting its own deep Cold War, reacting to the growing Soviet naval and strategic threat, mounting offensive and defensive anti-submarine and anti-ship operations; forward surveillance; Special Forces operations; training surface and air forces; weapons development; and showing the flag around the world. Since the mid-1950s, Soviet submarine development had moved forward in three simultaneous trial and construction programmes. First, the development of ballistic-missile submarines, similar to US Navy and Royal Navy Polaris submarines, to contribute to strategic deterrence; second, the development of cruise-missile-firing submarines, which gave the Soviets an offensive capability against surface task forces, principally NATO Strike Fleets; and third, attack submarines, both diesel and nuclear, for traditional submarine tasks and anti-submarine warfare.
Intelligence received in 1959 confirmed the JIC estimate that the expansion of the Soviet Navy was complete. Obsolete vessels had been scrapped and replaced with new classes of ship and submarines fitted with advanced weapon systems, which considerably improved both the offensive and defensive capability of the Soviet Union. Although the Soviets possessed a powerful Navy, its surface fleet was limited to operations within the range of shore-based fighter cover, due to its lack of aircraft carriers. But in 1960 the Soviet Navy began to alter its strategy away from the traditional notion of a purely defensive navy towards one that was capable of taking the battle to the enemy. Plans were developed for a large-scale interdiction campaign against sea lines of communication in which Soviet submarines would transit through the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap to attack NATO (primarily US) Carrier Battle Groups and convoys in the North Atlantic tasked with resupplying Europe. In February 1960, the JIC produced an assessment of ‘The Employment of the Soviet Navy and Soviet Air Forces in the Maritime Role at the Outbreak of Global War – 1960–64’, which outlined the five main tasks of the Soviet Navy as the JIC saw them:
(a) The defence of the USSR against attack by aircraft and surface ship/submarine launched missiles.
(b) The defence of Soviet coastline, ports and shipping.
(c) Missile launching strike submarine operations against the North American continent.
(d) Attacks on Allied sea communications, particularly those between North America and Europe, including mine laying operations.
(e) Flank support of land operations and amphibious assaults.5
The JIC assessed that at the start of a global war the Soviets would employ both submarines and shore-based naval aircraft to strike at NATO Carrier Battle Groups, the small number of US Polaris strategic missile submarines in service by the early 1960s, and the all important sea lines of communication, without which Europe would not have been able to survive. The JIC concluded that ‘the main weight of the attack on shipping will develop in the North Atlantic and western approaches’, particularly in the Eastern Atlantic, because of the still limited operating radius of the majority of Soviet submarines.
This new strategy was reflected in the deployment of Soviet forces, especially submarines, which ventured increasingly further afield in the 1960s. This process began in 1958, when for the first time Soviet submarines operated in the Atlantic, supported by a tanker, the Vilyuisk. In late 1959, Vilyuisk and another vessel, the Mikhail Kalinin, and two submarines made a five-month voyage from Murmansk via the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, to Soviet Fleet bases in the Far East. One British Naval Intelligence assessment concluded that this ‘dramatically illustrates the natural development and progress in Soviet Naval ocean navigation, research and operations that can be expected from a growing Navy “spreading its wings” to gain experience, particularly with regard to the strategic operation and control of submarine forces’.6
By the beginning of the 1960s, the Soviet submarine fleet comprised a total of 427 submarines. The JIC estimated that on 1 January 1960 ‘the Northern Fleet included 5 [nuclear] missile-firing and 109 long-range conventional submarines’. There was also evidence of up to three Soviet nuclear-powered submarines, a figure which the JIC expected to increase to twenty-two, with eight armed with nuclear missiles by 1965.7 The deployment of US Navy Polaris submarines, armed with ballistic missiles aimed at the Soviet mainland, had also caused the Soviet Union to rethink the composition of its Navy. As a 1961 JIC assessment of Soviet defence policy in the period up to 1970 pointed out:
The arguments which convinced the Soviet leaders after the last war of their need for a powerful navy have been given new point by the development of the Polaris submarine. Thus, we believe that the Soviet Union still needs a navy, but of somewhat different form and with a much greater emphasis on anti-submarine warfare, including the use of helicopters, aircraft and anti-submarine submarines … Submarines will remain the most important arm of the service. As well as maintaining its very powerful anti-shipping capability, made more effective by the introduction of nuclear-powered attack submarines, the Soviet navy has acquired for the first time, by the development of its own ballistic missile-firing submarines, a strategic attack capability which will play an increasing part in the Soviet deterrent.8
To meet these new threats, not only did Harold Macmillan’s Conservative Government approve construction of the Royal Navy’s first nuclear attack submarines and nuclear ballistic-missile-carrying submarines, it was also responsible for taking crucial decisions about the size and shape of the Navy’s conventional submarine fleet. In line with the conclusion reached at the reconvened October 1956 submarine conference, the ‘Porpoise’ design, of which eight were built between 1956 and 1961 – HMS Porpoise, HMS Rorqual, HMS Narwhal, HMS Grampus, HMS Finwhale, HMS Cachalot, HMS Sealion and HMS Walrus – was used as the basis for an improved class of conventional submarine known as the ‘Oberon’ class.
Very similar to the ‘Porpoise’ class, the ‘Oberon’ class was fitted with improved detection equipment, was quieter and possessed greater diving depth because of the use of improved steel. They were also the first class of submarine to use plastic and glass fibre laminate to construct the casing. Between 1960 and 1967, thirteen of the class – HMS Oberon, HMS Orpheus, HMS Odin, HMS Olympus, HMS Osiris, HMS Onslaught, HMS Otter, HMS Oracle, HMS Ocelot, HMS Otus, HMS Opossum, HMS Onyx and HMS Opportune – were constructed for the Royal Navy in various shipyards, including Vickers, Chatham and Scotts. In May 1961, the Government also decided to stop providing submarines to the Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy for anti-submarine training.9 The Royal Australian Navy eventually purchased six British-built ‘Oberon’ class submarines – HMAS Oxley, HMAS Otway, HMAS Ovens, HMAS Onslow, HMAS Orion and HMAS Otama – while the Royal Canadian Navy purchased three: HMCS Onondaga, HMCS Okanagan and the already completed HMS Onyx, which was transferred to the RCN and renamed HMCS Ojibwa. A replacement for HMS Onyx was later built for the Royal Navy and given the same name.
In 1961, the Navy put forward proposals that envisioned maintaining thirty-one submarines in operational service, which required a total fleet of forty-three to allow for modernization and refits. During a meeting of the Cabinet’s Defence Committee in May 1961, ministers agreed that the ‘main global war requirements for submarines were to deter the Soviet fleet from operating freely against allied fleets and to hunt and destroy Soviet missile-carrying submarines’. But they also recognized that the ‘requirement for limited war was perhaps more important’ as foreign navies such as those of Egypt, China and Indonesia were being supplied with Soviet submarines ‘which could cause serious interference with limited war operations if they were not neutralised’.10 Although ministers agreed that nuclear-powered submarines were ‘far more effective than the conventional submarine’ and that ‘strong arguments could be adduced for converting to this type as rapidly as possible and building no more [conventional] submarines’, they acknowledged that conventional submarines were still ‘a very eff
icient instrument of war which could not be considered out of date’. Cost was also important. Whereas a nuclear-powered submarine cost around £18m, a conventional submarine only cost £3m. In summing up the discussion, Macmillan concluded that ‘strong arguments had been advanced to show that there would in any event be some further requirement for conventional submarines’.11 However, the Macmillan Government eventually decided to cease construction of conventional submarines after the twelfth ‘Oberon’ class was completed and ‘turn over to an all nuclear building programme as fast as our finances allow’.12
The Royal Navy’s new ‘Porpoise’ and ‘Oberon’ class submarines spent much of their working lives conducting reconnaissance patrols and collecting intelligence about Soviet forces. In 1962, the Soviet Navy undertook the first in a series of annual summer naval exercises in the Norwegian Sea. These exercises allowed the Royal Navy to form some sort of judgement on the current state of Soviet equipment and tactics as well as a unique opportunity to assess the capabilities of Soviet ships, submarines and aircraft under operational conditions in what would have been a vital operating area in any future conflict. Surveillance of earlier small-scale Soviet exercises had been largely carried out by aircraft, but by 1962 the Flag Officer Scotland and Northern Ireland, Vice Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet, complained to the Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Sir Varyl Begg, that:
we have missed a very great deal by not having sent our own submarines on surveillance in this exercise. If we had done so, we might have learnt a great deal about how the Russian groups of submarines communicate and operate; about co-operation between the conventional and nuclear submarines, and how they fit in the operation of their aircraft and Krupnys [Soviet guided-missile destroyers] in the same area. I think we might also have found out whether this operation was directed against Polaris submarines as well as against the Strike Fleet.13
Hezlet believed that compared to surface ships and aircraft, submarines were far more suited to conducting surveillance on Soviet exercises as they were ‘better for monitoring ship or submarine/air communications as the Russians should not know they were there and order a radio restriction policy as they would probably do if a frigate was used’. Begg agreed. He was concerned that in the days leading up to the exercise ‘the Soviets achieved such a large deployment of their submarines without our getting wind of it’.14 Begg, and many others, always ‘thought that we should get a clear indication if a submarine movement on the scale of that apparently involved here in fact took place’.15 The movement of Soviet submarines was one of a large number of possible indicators about Soviet intentions, especially in the run-up to war. The Navy had to be able to detect it.
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
In October 1962, when the Soviet Union deployed medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, the United States established a sub-air barrier consisting of ten diesel electric submarines, covering the 600 miles of ocean between Newfoundland and an area 300 miles northwest of the Azores, to try to detect Soviet submarines deploying to the Caribbean to support Soviet naval operations. Although the Soviets deployed five diesel electric submarines to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, they were actually only detected when they encountered American quarantine forces blockading Cuba.16
Royal Navy submarines from the 6th Submarine Squadron, based in Halifax, Canada, also played a role, largely unacknowledged, in the Cuban Missile Crisis. From 1954 through to 1965, the Royal Navy’s 6th Submarine Squadron was tasked with assisting the Royal Canadian Navy with anti-submarine training. Submarines assigned to the squadron were manned by a large number of Royal Canadian naval personnel, receiving training prior to the arrival of the ‘Oberon’ class submarines from 1965 onwards. Ratings were drawn from each Navy. The Navigating Officer was typically from the Royal Canadian Navy while the Commanding Officer was always a Royal Navy officer. When the Cuban Missile Crisis began, the US Chief of Naval Operations, George Anderson, formally asked the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy to assist the US Navy track Soviet ships and submarines that had sailed from their Northern Fleet bases and were proceeding by the quickest route to Cuba.17 Although the Royal Navy submarines assigned to the 6th Submarine Squadron were under Canadian operational control, the Canadian Maritime Commander Atlantic, Rear Admiral Ken Dyer, agreed with the Flag Officer Submarines, Admiral Hugh Mackenzie, that two Royal Navy submarines from the squadron, HMS Astute and HMS Alderney, should be stored for war as a contingency, and if the crisis escalated automatically revert back to FOSM and thus Royal Navy operational control.
On the morning of 23 October, HMS Astute, under the command of Lieutenant Commander J. Ringrose-Voase, sailed from Halifax after a night of provisioning stores and ammunition and took up a forward surveillance patrol to the northeast of the Grand Banks to cover the Strait of Belle Isle (the water separating Newfoundland from Labrador) to provide early warning of Soviet submarines entering North American waters en route to Cuba.18 HMS Alderney, under the Command of Lieutenant Commander E. Cudworth, was also recalled to port to prepare for war under a cloak of secrecy. ‘Because we were at sea and missed President John F. Kennedy’s speech to the world on the evening of 22 October, few of us knew exactly what was happening or where we were going,’ explained Peter Haydon, HMS Alderney’s Canadian Navigating Officer.19 Alderney then sailed to a patrol area to the northeast of the Grand Banks. Both submarines, like their US counterparts, failed to detect any Soviet submarines. ‘We were in extraordinarily difficult sonar conditions where the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current meet,’ said Richard Sharpe, Alderney’s Torpedo Officer. ‘You get the cold Labrador Current coming in under the Gulf Stream. I mean if you go from one to the other you are undetectable. We wouldn’t really, I don’t think, have detected anything anyway with the sonars that we had, which were pretty basic.’20 Both Astute and Alderney remained in barrier positions northeast of Newfoundland conducting surveillance patrols until the end of the crisis on 28 October 1962.
SURVEILLANCE
In the aftermath of the crisis, the possibility of severe political repercussions dictated caution, particularly when high-level discussions about the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty were taking place. In early 1963, the Navy had plans for a far more ambitious surveillance operation against what now seemed to be an annual Soviet Fleet exercise, involving submarines, frigates and destroyers. However, the new Minister of Defence, Peter Thorneycroft, wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Carrington, and questioned ‘whether results that we obtain from these various operations are worth the political and other risks involved’.21 Thorneycroft was so concerned that he considered ‘reporting these misgivings to the Prime Minister’, but before doing so he asked Carrington if he was ‘fully satisfied that the results are worth the risk and that the “productivity” of these operations is fully analysed within your Department?’22 Nearly a month later one of the Royal Navy’s ‘Porpoise’ class submarines, HMS Sealion, was forced to surface after being detected by Soviet surface vessels. The Prime Minister was provided with regular updates as Sealion was escorted out of the Soviet exercise area by Soviet surface forces, and a press statement was drafted with a cover story which stated that ‘at the relevant time HMS Sealion was semi-submerged making trials of reception of wireless signals’.23
Despite Thorneycroft’s concerns, this incident appears to have had little impact on other operations. When the Soviets deployed for yet another annual Fleet exercise in the summer of 1963, the Royal Navy initiated Operation ‘Bargold’, sending three submarines – HMS Onslaught, HMS Olympus and HMS Rorqual – into waters codenamed Piccadilly and Leicester Square, to detect the initial sailing of Soviet forces. However, ‘after a week of unproductive surveillance, it became clear that the Soviets had not, in fact, started to deploy for their exercise’. ‘The patrol was uneventful,’ wrote the CO of HMS Onslaught. ‘No Soviet forces were encountered and no intelligence gained.’24 The Director of Naval Intelligence was, once again, ‘most concerned at the
lack of knowledge and measures for detecting large scale movements of submarines from Northern Fleet bases to the Atlantic’.25 Although submarines were ideally suited for this task their ability to obtain such information had ‘not been proved because insufficient numbers of British submarines have been deployed in past operations’.26 Hezlet was so convinced of ‘The importance of obtaining warning of Soviet submarine deployment and the great training value obtained’ that he urged the Secretary of the Admiralty to ‘ “divert” far more submarines from their routine functions for this purpose’ because ‘The intelligence gained will be out of all proportion to the effort expended and much excellent training obtained as a by-product.’27
When the Soviets finally deployed for their annual Fleet exercise in early August 1963, about a month later than initially expected, the Royal Navy obtained a great deal of intelligence, particularly about how the Soviets intended to use the new ‘Krupny’ class destroyers with their surface-to-surface missiles against a NATO Strike Fleet. The Director of Naval Intelligence concluded that ‘Bargold’ ‘was a valuable operation from the naval intelligence point of view whereby confirmation was obtained of many aspects of Soviet Naval tactics and fresh evidence produced of intended tactics and practice in the area concerned’.28 Overall, it was clear that the Soviets were attempting to push their defences outwards into the Atlantic in order to keep NATO Strike Fleets at greater ranges.
In June 1964, the Ministry of Defence sought political approval for Operation ‘Clash’, a ‘special maritime surveillance operation’ against the Soviet Northern Fleet exercise in the North Atlantic. Similar to Operation ‘Bargold’, Operation ‘Clash’ placed rather less emphasis on aerial surveillance during the exercise itself and more on preliminary watch by submarines and aircraft. The first phase of the operation saw submarines and aircraft attempting to detect the initial deployment of Soviet forces, especially submarines, before the exercise began. A considerable number of UK forces were earmarked for the operation, including a frigate, four conventionally powered submarines, two of which were available on patrol at any one time, as well as five squadrons of maritime Shackleton aircraft, operating from Scotland and Norway. The United States, Canada and Norway also committed forces.