The Third World War - The Untold Story (40 page)

On board, besides her captain and political commissar and some thirty officers and 500 men, was Soviet academician Yuri Skridlov, who had been a member of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, meeting in Washington, in Caracas, in Geneva and again in Washington. A man of honesty and high intelligence and a worldwide authority on international law, Professor Skridlov, who combined a strong personality with a deep, if concealed, detestation of Marxist-Leninist humbug, became much liked and respected by all on board the
Krasnya Krim,
including the political commissar.

Skridlov introduced a practice of taping items of world news and of regional interest, translating them into Russian and then broadcasting them on the ship’s communication system each evening, with a commentary. Without being openly critical of the CPSU or of the Soviet Union, he nevertheless succeeded in presenting a fair picture of the free world and a faithful account of what was happening in it. The ship’s company of the
Krasnya Krim,
cooped up for weeks on end, at sea most of the time either steaming slowly or anchored well away from land, was developing a totally new awareness. There was critical discussion of matters which had long been kept out of sight. There was an increasingly vocal expression of discontent with the system under which they lived, compared with the systems operating outside the USSR which they, of course, were either prevented from seeing or were only allowed to see under strict surveillance. The vast majority were young, unmarried conscripts. When the ship left Luanda on 23 July bound for the Black Sea, and home, spirits began to rise. After a short call at Guinea, to fuel, it moved on. It was to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar on 4 August, and the Dardanelles on the 8th.

On 25 July Professor Skridlov’s News Talk suddenly took on a sharper edge. The captain had received a Top Secret signal, whose contents he felt entitled to divulge to the Professor, warning him of strained relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The
Krasnya Krim
was to increase speed so as to pass the Dardanelles on 3 August. This would mean going through the Straits of Gibraltar on the night of 30 July. The Soviet Commander-in-Chief Navy also ordered the ship to prepare “unobtrusively” for war and gave her a sitrep on the naval forces of NATO that might be encountered, as well as the positions of Soviet warships and submarines. It appeared that the US Sixth Fleet might well bar the way to the Dardanelles.

The events of the next few days on board the Soviet cruiser are by no means clear. What emerges is that Soviet sailors were prepared to take dramatic steps to show their hostility to a tyrannous regime. At 2107 on 30 July the
Krasnya Krim,
after duly requesting permission from the Flag Officer, Gibraltar, entered British territorial waters and anchored in the Bay. It appeared that the fuel embarked at Guinea was severely contaminated, and it would not be possible for the cruiser to proceed on her way until the entire fuel system had been cleaned. At least, that was what the Soviet High Command was told. It was not what the cruiser’s captain told the Flag Officer, Gibraltar, when he called on him next morning, in company with the political commissar - and the Professor.

They were convinced that world conflict was now unavoidable and that out of it a new Russia would emerge. The ship’s company had been openly and fully consulted and gave their whole-hearted support to what was now proposed. They wished the ship and all in her to be granted asylum, fighting neither against their own former comrades nor against NATO, until the conflict was over and they could see more clearly what part to play in the shaping of a brighter future.

The request was immediately granted, in the first of what was to become a series of defections.

On 10 August a nuclear missile cruiser, sole survivor of the Fifth
Eskadra,
or Mediterranean Squadron, of the Soviet Navy also raised the British flag and sailed into harbour at Gibraltar, where she gave the shore battery a twenty-one-gun salute and dropped anchor. The ship’s commander, Captain 1st Rank P. Semenov, appeared before the British Governor in his dress uniform and declared that the missile cruiser was placing itself at the disposal of the British authorities, the entire crew requesting political asylum.

“Including the political commissars and the KGB officers?” enquired the Governor.

“No,” replied the Captain. “We’ve strung them up from the masts. Come and see for yourself.” The invitation was declined, the request for asylum granted.

That same day the Soviet nuclear submarine
Robespierre
sailed into harbour at Boston, Massachusetts, under the US flag. As the submarine had no masts, there was nowhere to hang the KGB and Party representatives. They had therefore been dropped overboard before entering harbour. The Soviet submarine was disarmed and immobilized, with the crew very comfortably interned.”*

* J. Heller, Submarines at War (Sidgwick and Jackson, London 1987), p. 184.

We must now look more thoroughly at the war at sea. A convenient, if somewhat informal, point of entry into this important topic is the text of a lecture given at the National Defence College in Washington by Rear Admiral Randolph Maybury of the United States Navy in the summer of 1986. He was introduced by the Commandant.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. As you know, we are continuing today with our study of the military operations which took place between 4 and 20 August 1985. Our course has been structured to provide both an “all-arms” conspectus, region by region, and amplifying accounts of the fighting at sea, on land and in the air. Since last winter, when Admiral Lacey addressed us on the naval operations in the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea - particularly the famous
Cavalry
reinforcement convoy operation - additional data which have come to hand, and much hard work, have made it possible to present a record of the naval (which includes, of course, naval and maritime air) operations which were taking place concurrently in other areas and theatres. Admiral Maybury, here, has not long since completed this work, and we are most fortunate to have him with us to talk about it. As Deputy Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief US Navy Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) in London, from 1984 through 1985, he was well placed to see what went on. No doubt he took a hand in things also! At any rate, we’re glad to see you, Admiral - and now will you kindly step up and tell us about it.’

‘Thank you. It’s good to be back at the National War College. When I was a student here, in 1983, the question was “What would happen, if. . .? Now, the concern is “What did happen, and why . . .?” The human race came close to destroying itself. History, as mere hindsight, may be of interest, but it is of little value unless its lessons are learned.

‘I have come to believe that where we went wrong - and by “we” I mean the United States and her NATO allies - was in our failure to incorporate the Moscow dimension into our own perception of the dangers to civilization which were implicit in Soviet attitudes, beliefs and actions. We could read, for example, in the writings of Lenin:

Great questions in the life of a people are decided only by force . . . once the bayonet really stands as the first order of political business, then constitutional illusions and scholastic exercises in Parliament become nothing but a cover for bourgeois betrayal of the revolution. The truly revolutionary class must then advance the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat.*

* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 9 p. 3, quoted in Ian Greig, They Mean What They Say (Foreign Affairs Research Institute, London 1981), p. 14.

Or the words of one of his disciples in the 1970s:

Our era is the era of the transition from Capitalism to Socialism and Communism, the era of the struggle of the two opposed world systems. The outstanding feature of its current stage is that the forces of Socialism determine the course of historical development, and Imperialism has lost its dominant position in the world arena. The USSR now represents a mighty power in economic and military respects. The scientific-technological revolution currently taking place substantially influences the development of military affairs. In these conditions the military-technological policy of the CPSU is directed towards creating and maintaining military superiority of the Socialist countries over the forces of war and aggression.*

*M. Gladkov and B. Ivanov, ‘The Economy and Military Technological Policy’, Communist of the Armed Forces, No. 9, May 1972, quoted in Ian Greig, op, cit., p. 57.

‘Reams of such stuff was made available to us, in translation. But still we tended, for practical purposes, to look at the Soviet Union’s problems in the light of our own open, free-ranging understanding, according to which Murphy’s Law rates equally, for truth, with the second law of thermodynamics. A Britisher who came here to talk to us one day tried to make the point this way. It seems that there had been a party at the Soviet Embassy, here in Washington, and that the vodka had flowed freely. Towards the end of the evening the Soviet Ambassador challenged the British Ambassador to a race. The British Ambassador came first. This was duly reported in
The Times
as “There was a race between the British and the Soviet Ambassadors in Washington yesterday, which the British Ambassador won.”
Pravda
put it differently: “In a race between ambassadors in Washington last week, the Soviet Ambassador came in second - the British Ambassador was second from last.” ‘

Admiral Maybury then proceeded to present his account of naval operations in four sections: the pre-war naval balance; the naval force deployments on 4 August 1985; the naval operations during the next sixteen days; and the immediate post-hostilities activity.

The following is a digest of what he said.

No doubt the debate will be recalled which continued for at least two decades before the war about the capabilities of the Soviet Navy. It was part of Western, and above all American, concern about the growth of Soviet military power in general. Were Soviet intentions to be deduced from their capabilities? What were their limitations? It is not easy, even now, to find valid assessments in the records. The intelligence community tended to play safe and take no risk of underestimating the threat. Retired officers tended to ‘sound off’, warning the public of the grim consequences of the failure of politicians to make proper appropriations for this or that new weapon system. Various ‘think-tanks’ were given contracts to produce defence studies. Where the concerns putting out these contracts were profit-making, there was a suspicion that the outcomes favoured the point of view of the organization giving the contract. As one sceptic put it: ‘How can you produce an objective study without knowing the objective?’ Obviously, too, the arms manufacturers had an interest in seeing that the Soviet threat, as perceived by the US Administration, and by Congress, matched the particular combat capability that they were in business to sell. Congress itself was not immune from this syndrome. As Admiral Miller, whose own estimate of Soviet naval capabilities stood up better than most, wrote: ‘Often the version of the Soviet threat accepted by individual members is determined to some degree by the impact that version will have on the region and the constituencies they represent. If there is no defence-related industry in their particular area of interest, the charge is made that the version of the threat they consider valid is the one that requires the least financial expenditures for defense.’*

* G. E. Miller, Vice-Admiral US Navy (retired), former Commander US Second and Sixth Fleets, ‘An Evaluation of the Soviet Navy’, quoted in Grayson Kirk and Nils H. Wessell (eds), The Soviet Threat: Myths and Realities (Praeger, New York 1978), p. 47.

The academics who analysed military intelligence data tended to let their particular philosophies influence their deductions; journalists, over-eager to publish what would attract attention, often cared little about the balance of their version; even the active service force commander was apt to be influenced in his judgment of the threat by his own, maybe unique, experience. As to US Administrations, if the President came into office on a platform that promised to reduce the defence budget, it is reasonable to assume that the version of the Soviet naval threat his Administration accepted would be something less than that of a president elected on a platform proposing an increase in the defence budget.

Finally, how much credence could be placed, people wondered, on the books and articles on naval matters that emerged from the Soviet Union itself? Was Admiral Gorshkov’s writing gospel? Was he writing for the NATO intelligence community, to inspire his own navy, to get the generals on his side, or to extract ever greater resources from the Politburo? We now know that Gorshkov believed what he wrote; that it was soundly based upon Marxist-Leninist theory; that the generals neither liked nor believed it; that the Politburo both liked and believed it; and that NATO did not want to believe it. What follows is based upon Admiral Miller’s own assessment of the Soviet Navy, after his period as Commander of the US Sixth Fleet, in the Mediterranean, not many years before the Third World War. As events proved, he was not far out.

As Soviet war deployments will be dealt with separately, indicating the numbers of the principal types of warship available at the start of hostilities, what follows here is confined solely to the aspect of quality. Consider, first, the Soviet surface fleet, other than aircraft carriers. The heavy cruiser, cruiser, destroyer, frigate, and smaller combatant types all included a majority of up-to-date vessels. They were impressive in appearance, quite manoeuvrable and seaworthy; and they were relatively fast and well-armed, primarily with defensive weapon systems. These latter characteristics required compromises in other areas. The number of weapon reloads, for example, was rather small; living conditions for the crews tended to be restricted; space for stores, spare parts, and supplies was limited; and ship construction standards were somewhat lower than was acceptable to most Western navies. The Soviet ships, it was thought, would sink rapidly if hit. In addition, very heavy dependence upon electronics counted against the capacity of the armament to survive attack. Without adequate resistance to electronic counter-measure (ECM), the Soviet ships might find their armaments virtually useless, even if the ships themselves should remain afloat.