Turning over in their minds the broader aspects of maritime strategy, JACWA recalled a useful division of the maritime task which the British naval and air force staffs had once jointly set down in a War Manual. It contained lessons learned in the UK from the Second World War, not all of which had been applied. Maritime warfare, they had written (the word ‘maritime’ had been introduced in order to include the naval tasks of the RAF), comprises two separate but complementary functions:
1 The management of sea use: the organization and movement of shipping; the loading and unloading of cargoes; the control and defence of ports; and the manning, training and maintenance of naval forces.
This is predominantly a naval responsibility.
2 Combat with hostile naval and air forces: offensive and defensive operations of all kinds in support of the maritime aim, including direct support of land forces.
This is predominantly a joint naval and air responsibility.
As to strategy, what were the forces involved? The naval and air general-purpose forces immediately available to NATO and the USSR, for operations in the North Atlantic and Western Approaches (to which the contribution of non-Soviet forces would be negligible), would normally be of the following order:
Both sides would have a number of logistic support ships; amphibious ships and craft; mine counter-measure ships and auxiliaries. The Soviet Northern Fleet would also include upwards of twenty-five fast missile craft.
There were, of course, in addition, the large Soviet and Warsaw Pact naval and naval air forces in the Baltic, which the naval and air forces of the Federal German Republic and Denmark would have to oppose. In the Mediterranean there were the United States Sixth Fleet and a large part of the French Navy. The Italian, Greek and Turkish naval forces were also earmarked for NATO and would, provided their governments remained staunch, fight the Soviet Navy effectively.
The attitudes of the various governments in North Africa, as well as their capability to support Soviet naval operations, would be of critical importance. The relinquishment by the British, in the 1970s, of a naval presence in the Mediterranean, to be replaced partly by the US Navy, partly by Allied Forces South (AFSOUTH), had proved to be a weakening step.
Considering strategy, therefore, first of all during the hoped for warning period, JACWA foresaw five main tasks:
1 To put the Western Approaches command on a war footing.
2 To step up reconnaissance of Soviet and Warsaw Pact naval and naval air activities.
3 To inaugurate measures to control and protect shipping.
4 In conjunction with CINCNORTH, SACEUR’s major NATO commander in Oslo, to protect the oil and natural gas installations in the North Sea.
5 To ensure the safe and timely movement of all sea traffic between the UK and the Continent in support of SACEUR.
So far, little in the way of strategic thinking was needed. Once hostilities began, however, the options for decision would open up, as, under the impact of enemy action, the demands upon inadequate forces began to come into critical competition.
In the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars JACWA’s predecessors (with the warm approval of the British Admiralty) had proceeded at once to sea with their fleets ‘to sweep the enemy from the seas’. Many thousands of miles of largely unproductive steaming had worn out both machinery and men. Valuable ships had been torpedoed, or sunk by air attack, without inflicting even equivalent losses on the enemy. JACWA, as a team, had a most compelling reason for rejecting this precedent. With so few forces at their disposal, and no reserves from which to make good losses, the only offensive operations which could be justified were those which promised to reduce, at once, the level of the threat to NATO’s aims.
It was evident that the most potent enemy forces were the sixty nuclear-powered general purpose submarines (SSN) of the Soviet Northern Fleet, together with the 250 Backfire maritime strike aircraft also based in the Murmansk area. JACWA’s first two offensive operations, therefore, were as much SACLANT’s as JACWA’s. But the system of integrating functional commands ensured clarity of purpose, of command, and of control. The British Flag Officer Submarines was, in the NATO structure, both Commander Submarines, Eastern Atlantic, and Commander Submarines, Western Approaches. His RAF equivalent, the Air Officer Commanding 18 Group, was Commander Maritime Air, Eastern Atlantic, and Commander Maritime Air, Western Approaches. The deployment of NATO submarines on anti-submarine patrol was therefore to be carried out without delay. And the launch of a powerful maritime air strike against aircraft on the ground and air installations in the Murmansk area was planned to take place at the very earliest moment possible after the outbreak of hostilities.
The British naval contribution to NATO had been augmented, during the period 1979-85, following a sudden, eleventh-hour awakening of public opinion to Britain’s extreme vulnerability to attack upon her seaborne trade and supplies — a vulnerability now felt almost as much by the other NATO countries in north-western Europe. The most important elements in the emergency naval programme were:
1 Three escort carriers. These were container ship hulls fitted with ‘ski-jump’ flight decks and containerized aircraft control and operations modules. Carrying a mix of V/STOL fighter-strike-reconnaissance aircraft, and ASW helicopters, these 28-knot ships, built to merchant ship specifications, were good value for money.
2 Four additional improved Sheffield-class fleet frigates.
3 Twelve corvettes of a new type, for fast patrol ship duties.
4 Six additional mine counter-measure ships.
5 Five small patrol (diesel-electric) submarines.
This naval construction programme was feasible, despite Great Britain’s poor economic performance in the 1970s, because her shipbuilding industry, other than in designated warship building yards, was very short of orders and the extra jobs were warmly welcomed. It seemed a preferable alternative to building merchant ships, at a loss, for Soviet satellite countries, to be employed in cut-throat competition against the merchant fleets of the United Kingdom. The shape and size of the Royal Navy in the mid-1980s was appropriate, therefore, to the two main functions of the UK maritime task, namely, sea-use management and combat with hostile forces. This pattern had become accepted, also, in the other NATO navies, so that the mix of forces achieved overall had gradually moved towards the optimum.
The strategy of SACLANT, as it had evolved under a series of most able incumbents of the post, by 1985 comprised three main elements: first, to maintain in readiness the US Navy’s strategic nuclear forces, and ensure that no Soviet operational development could upset the strategic nuclear balance; second, to act, with his conventional forces, as vigorously as possible to reduce the threat from Soviet conventional forces to NATO’s seaborne supplies and reinforcements; third, to give direct assistance, as appropriate and feasible, to both SACEUR and JACWA in their operations.
SACLANT’s assessment of the combat capability of various types of naval and air force had led him to base his concept of operations on the judgement that the supersonic homing, guided or programmed missile, whether launched from land, surface warship, submarine or aircraft, was the main danger to naval forces and shipping at sea. But it was a danger to which some effective counters were already in operational service. The hoary ‘axioms of action’ — above all surprise, concentration and economy of force — had to be borne in mind. Owing to the inability of submarines to operate submerged in large groups, in the way, for example, the U-boat ‘wolf-packs’ were able to operate on the surface in the Second World War, it would today be difficult for a submarine attack to saturate the anti-missile defences of a well-ordered escort or support group. Maritime strike aircraft, on the other hand, could carry out a heavily concentrated attack, which might temporarily overwhelm the defences.