Cold War Submarines

[RETAC21]

I have finished a round of tematic reading that included Cold War Submarines and We Come Unseen, and I am waiting for Rising Tide, but I was wondering about the ASW situation in a NATO-WP situation. As I understand it:

 

1.- The 50s, the development of the Whiskey and its mass production where a significant threat to NATO as NATO escorts could not cope with the fast conventional boat until the late 50s.

 

2.- The 60s The nuclear boat was a problem too, being even faster and rendering previous escorts obsolete, but the appearance of US and then UK SSNs turned the tables around and tailings increased over the years.

 

3.- The 70s It seems that by then everything was under control for NATO. SOSUS deployed and working, loads of SSK to close the GIUK gap, SSNs for operations in the Soviet doorstep, SSBNs galore to provide a credible deterrent... and the Soviets cooperating by building noisy subs.

 

4.- The 80s Apparently the tables turned somewhat with the Victor III and subsequent boats, but how much...?

 

Did I got that right?

[KingSargent]

I have finished a round of tematic reading that included Cold War Submarines and We Come Unseen, and I am waiting for Rising Tide, but I was wondering about the ASW situation in a NATO-WP situation. As I understand it:

 

1.- The 50s, the development of the Whiskey and its mass production where a significant threat to NATO as NATO escorts could not cope with the fast conventional boat until the late 50s.

I think that IF the USN had time to deploy the mothballed CVs as ASW platforms - and build enough ASW planes - the 'escort problem' would have been solved. In a 'come as you are' war we would have been hurting IF the Soviet submariners were any good. They would have had to have improved drastically since 1945.

 

2.- The 60s The nuclear boat was a problem too, being even faster and rendering previous escorts obsolete, but the appearance of US and then UK SSNs turned the tables around and tailings increased over the years.

The number of Reserve ships capable of good ASW was shrinking too. NATO would have had no problem with Soviet boats they could find, but............

 

I don't know enough about the later years to place my neck on the chopping block.

[Animal Mother]

In the 1980s, there was a major stink over the Toshiba scandal (and was it Konsberg of Norway?) who supplied propeller machining equipment to the Soviet union.

 

It was indeed Kongsberg

[Jim Martin]

A friend of mine in the USNR was a signalman attached to a Commodore's staff--no the USN doesn't have the rank of Commodore, but apparently there was at least at one time a *billet* with the title "Commodore"--he and his staff were tasked with planning convoy operations. He told me that the number of escorts for convoys was so critical, that there was a very real possibility that you'd wind up with convoys with one escort in the middle of the convoy, screened by the transport vessels it was supposed to be protecting!!!

[RETAC21]

A friend of mine in the USNR was a signalman attached to a Commodore's staff--no the USN doesn't have the rank of Commodore, but apparently there was at least at one time a *billet* with the title "Commodore"--he and his staff were tasked with planning convoy operations. He told me that the number of escorts for convoys was so critical, that there was a very real possibility that you'd wind up with convoys with one escort in the middle of the convoy, screened by the transport vessels it was supposed to be protecting!!!

 

 

Well, it happened during Ops in the Gulf that the tankers being protected were used to clear the way of mines...

[pit]

It was indeed Kongsberg

 

Toshiba sold the 9 axis milling machine while Kongsberg Vaapenfabrik sold the computers and software asociated to it.

 

The multi-axis milling machine for making screws was delivered to Admiralty Yards at Leningrad where Pr 671RTM(K) (Victor III mod) were being built. Severodinsk, Gorkiy and Komsomolsk who build the more advanced (and quiet) 945 and 971 Proects didn't get those machines. And they were way quiter than the improved Victor III.

[Koesj]

There's a ginormously interesting file concerning post-war sub development floating around the net somewhere. I've already started a thread once asking for its whereabouts... I wish someone saved it

[philgollin]

A big problem up until the early 70s is trying to get some sensible idea of how good the homing torpedoes (air-dropped, ship-launched and submarine launched) were.

 

You will get lots of claims from people over detection ranges, but when you try to find out how the detected submarine would have been killed the details disappear in a cloud of either bravaro or quite mumblings.

 

The few people I've managed to actually talk to who I believe are telling the truth tend to indicate the weapons were extremely unreliable and a lot of shots were expected for few results.

[Chris Werb]

However, when John Nott the British defence secretary in the early 80s asked the US defence secretary at the time what would happen, he seemed to suggest that it would be a quick dispatch of individual ships NOT in convoy.

 

I'm waiting for JOE BRENNAN to make a definitive post, but at the time, I think this was called the 'defended lane' strategy. We'd keep track of the Soviet subs via SOSUS and prioritise those heading for the lanes for destruction - primarily by fixed-wing, land-based ASW aircraft. Obviously, after the Toshiba debacle, this strategy would have been a lot less credible - I have heard several commentators mention a return to the 'flaming datum' method of sub detection.

[RETAC21]

A big problem up until the early 70s is trying to get some sensible idea of how good the homing torpedoes (air-dropped, ship-launched and submarine launched) were.

 

You will get lots of claims from people over detection ranges, but when you try to find out how the detected submarine would have been killed the details disappear in a cloud of either bravaro or quite mumblings.

 

The few people I've managed to actually talk to who I believe are telling the truth tend to indicate the weapons were extremely unreliable and a lot of shots were expected for few results.

 

Good point, certainly the Tigerfish took a long time to get right, and the Mk-48 spent something like 15 years in development.

[Brian Kennedy]

Why, after learning at incredibly painful cost that convoys were the way to go in WWI -- and then relearning that lesson even more painfully in WWII -- would the US and Britain abandon it postwar? I mean, detection ranges etc. didn't go up _that_ much...

[Chris Werb]

Why, after learning at incredibly painful cost that convoys were the way to go in WWI -- and then relearning that lesson even more painfully in WWII -- would the US and Britain abandon it postwar? I mean, detection ranges etc. didn't go up _that_ much...

 

You mean we could track U-boats all the way the the Carribean by their acoustic signature? I must have missed that one!

[chico20854]

What also must be asked, is what was the US going to do in the event of a major war with the merchantmen? Clancy seems obsessed with believing it would be the North Atlantic convoy systems all over again. However, when John Nott the British defence secretary in the early 80s asked the US defence secretary at the time what would happen, he seemed to suggest that it would be a quick dispatch of individual ships NOT in convoy. That had a major impact on proposed cutbacks to the RN in the run up to the Falklands war, the RN previously preparing to fight a 3 month non nuclear commerce war, against the BAOR who was preparing to fight a 6 day nuclear one.

 

I've just been reading through a couple of books on the US/NATO maritime strategy in the '80s. As far as merchants, there had been several exercises where they tried the "defended sea lane" concept, which seemed to work well but there were nowhere near enough escorts to make it work across the Atlantic. The USN shipbuilding plan included seven military convoy escort groups, each with a Spruance-class DD as flagship and 9 frigates. I haven't found any more info on those convoy groups - where they were supposed to sail, escorting which ships, etc.

 

I also have a copy of a 1990 NATO study on merchant ship availability ("Merchant Shipping for NATO: An Assessment of the Supply and Demand for Merchant Shipping in Crisis and War"), which (in summary) states that projected 1995 peacetime civilian shipping requirements were for almost 12,000 cargo ships. During a period of tension before the outbreak of war, that requirement drops to 8,000 and stabilizes at around 5,500 after the outbreak of war, as rationing kicks in and economies convert to wartime production. The military shipping requirement is about 800 ships during tension, 610 during early war and 400 during an extended war. (The military shipping requirement drops as US forces complete deployment of equipment).

 

The study concludes that NATO will have enough shipping available to meet its requirements in almost every ship type and that it will have significant excess in most types (which will be able to make up the backlog of cargo from the shortages, just not as efficiently).

 

This feeds into the conclusions of a 1979 study ("Securing the Seas: the Soviet Naval Challenge and Western Alliance Options" by Paul Nitze, Leonard Sullivan and the Atlantic Council Working Group on Securing the Seas) which concludes that the Soviet Navy, given its priorities and limitations, could not deploy enough forces to interdict NATO shipping - they didn't have enough aircraft, submarines and torpedos to sink the thousands of ships going to Europe. The greatest threat would be at the outbreak of war, when Soviet forces are dispersed around shipping lanes and NATO navies haven't been able to start atritting Soviet anti-commerce forces. Even at this point, the greatest vulnerability is loss of cargos rather than the ships.

 

So one approach is for NATO to form hunter-killer teams and respond to flaming datums. Essential military cago could be dispersed among the masses of civil/economic cargos, and the chances of any ship having a military cargo is about 10 percent. Convoying military cargo while leaving economic cargos unescorted might allow the most valuable targets to be convieniently grouped together.

 

Just my $0.02!

[Corinthian]

Most interesting... any chance I could secure an online copy of both papers?

 

I've just been reading through a couple of books on the US/NATO maritime strategy in the '80s. As far as merchants, there had been several exercises where they tried the "defended sea lane" concept, which seemed to work well but there were nowhere near enough escorts to make it work across the Atlantic. The USN shipbuilding plan included seven military convoy escort groups, each with a Spruance-class DD as flagship and 9 frigates. I haven't found any more info on those convoy groups - where they were supposed to sail, escorting which ships, etc.

 

I also have a copy of a 1990 NATO study on merchant ship availability ("Merchant Shipping for NATO: An Assessment of the Supply and Demand for Merchant Shipping in Crisis and War"), which (in summary) states that projected 1995 peacetime civilian shipping requirements were for almost 12,000 cargo ships. During a period of tension before the outbreak of war, that requirement drops to 8,000 and stabilizes at around 5,500 after the outbreak of war, as rationing kicks in and economies convert to wartime production. The military shipping requirement is about 800 ships during tension, 610 during early war and 400 during an extended war. (The military shipping requirement drops as US forces complete deployment of equipment).

 

The study concludes that NATO will have enough shipping available to meet its requirements in almost every ship type and that it will have significant excess in most types (which will be able to make up the backlog of cargo from the shortages, just not as efficiently).

 

This feeds into the conclusions of a 1979 study ("Securing the Seas: the Soviet Naval Challenge and Western Alliance Options" by Paul Nitze, Leonard Sullivan and the Atlantic Council Working Group on Securing the Seas) which concludes that the Soviet Navy, given its priorities and limitations, could not deploy enough forces to interdict NATO shipping - they didn't have enough aircraft, submarines and torpedos to sink the thousands of ships going to Europe. The greatest threat would be at the outbreak of war, when Soviet forces are dispersed around shipping lanes and NATO navies haven't been able to start atritting Soviet anti-commerce forces. Even at this point, the greatest vulnerability is loss of cargos rather than the ships.

 

So one approach is for NATO to form hunter-killer teams and respond to flaming datums. Essential military cago could be dispersed among the masses of civil/economic cargos, and the chances of any ship having a military cargo is about 10 percent. Convoying military cargo while leaving economic cargos unescorted might allow the most valuable targets to be convieniently grouped together.

 

Just my $0.02!

[KingSargent]

Convoy reduces efficiency of shipping 50-70% Ths is because instead of trickling in to a port to unload, all the ships arrive at once and clog the loading facilities. On the out-going end, the loaded ships ditz around waiting for the rest of the convoy to load.

 

The reason convoy worked in WW1 and 2 was because it was an offensive measure. The convoy concentrated the targets in one area, and if they were found (some convoys just sailed through), the ASW vessels were also concentrated right there. In order to get at the convoy the subs had to expose themselves to the ASW escorts - IOW the convoy was 'bait' to lure the subs onto the ASW screen. This worked when the ASW got good enough.

 

Theoretically, in muddirn tymze NATO is supposed to know where the subs are without having to attract them by dangling a juicy convoy. Given the advertised range of some ASW systems an ASW vessel can cover a good length of sealane without having to be right next to the target.

 

And if the Nukleer Gluvvz came off, can you imagine what one nuclear-warhead torpedo could have done to a convoy massed together like those of WW2?

[Cromwell]

I can only speculate. But this is what I think. The Soviets would have deployed beyond the G-I-UK gap most of their fleet. Regardless of agreed policy before any war, The governments would have screemed as loud as they could, for the naies to kill all boomers as soon as possible. Therefore Red SSNs would have had the opportunity to have run wild on merchant shipping in the Atlantic. Europe in the 80s required about 50 ships of 30,000grt of all types to land at European ports EACH day otherwise Europe's oil, food and industry would diminish, probably exponentially. But if I was in government I would have been screeming about the Red boomers like the rest. The boomers probably would be destroyed as NATO had great advantages on both technology, training and the numbers were not that bad. But it would take time, probably several weeks. By that time the Central Front would be in big doo doo and the nuclear nightmare would have been looming from a different dimension.

 

I have a distant cousin who served on Soviet SSKs in the late 60s and he said at least those he visited where barely seaworthy. he later was sent to a Gulag to be released in 1973 and then ended up being drafted to fight in the Yom Kipur war. Oddly he is still a committed socialist and later tought this drivel at LSE.

[Argus]

Convoy reduces efficiency of shipping 50-70% Ths is because instead of trickling in to a port to unload, all the ships arrive at once and clog the loading facilities. On the out-going end, the loaded ships ditz around waiting for the rest of the convoy to load.

 

Sarge I concur on the offensive nature of Convoy in conventional warfare and its inverse when people start throwing buckets of instant sunshine around. However AFAIK the efficency cost of convoy was more like 10-15% during WWI/II, not 30-50%, or are you numbers cold war specific? I realise there's be quite a shift in merchant cargo operations since 1945...

 

shane

[DB]

From Rear Admiral JR Hill, "Anti-submarine Warfare" - Ian Allan, 1984.

 

It's clear that the UK planned convoy ops described as "Naval Control of Shipping". Each convoy would have attached naval units, but the route would be additionally protected by "Support groups" comprising a core support carrier (Invincible, say), frigates and submarines, supplemented by maritime patrol aircraft where possible. He indicates that three of these would be available provided French and Dutch assets were included. He also states for all this to work, the RN would need 50 frigates

 

This seems to me to be a hybrid of the pure convoy and the "defended lane" policy Chris Werb describes.

 

Typical understatement in the book: "How far east they (the shipping) would get depends on the state of the land war, but the chances of say Hamburg being popular as a port of entry would clearly be low"

 

In addition to the convoy plus defended lane, umm, doctrine, there were also "Barrier Operations" - which covers the classic "G-I-UK gap" scenarios where the thin grey line of LRMP, barrier mining and attack submarines would prevent the Russian "surge" of subs from out of the "Bastion".

 

David

[KingSargent]

Sarge I concur on the offensive nature of Convoy in conventional warfare and its inverse when people start throwing buckets of instant sunshine around. However AFAIK the efficency cost of convoy was more like 10-15% during WWI/II, not 30-50%, or are you numbers cold war specific? I realise there's be quite a shift in merchant cargo operations since 1945...

 

shane

'Efficiency cost' was directly related to port facilities. Liverpool, say, could clear a backlog resulting from a convoy arrival fairly quickly. OTOH a convoy arriving at Espiritu Santo in the Pacific could wait months before everything got unloaded. Your 10-15% might apply to big ports, but I think it was higher even then. As with all things, it improved as things went on and people learned to handle it. I would say 30-50% would not be an excessive estimate for a 'come as you are' war.

[Koesj]

But it would take time, probably several weeks. By that time the Central Front would be in big doo doo and the nuclear nightmare would have been looming from a different dimension.

 

The Naval Wargames indicate that such a long(er) war scenario would seriously diminish chances of sudden nuclear release...

[FlyingCanOpener]

Most interesting... any chance I could secure an online copy of both papers?

 

 

You can get Securing the Seas for US$1.44 from Amazon...

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/089...2613410-4964737

[Archie Pellagio]

I find it hard to believe that idea of thousands of ships going to france, what were the numbers from ODS,one hundred and forty odd from memory? Half of those weren't seaworthy for weeks even months from memory.

 

At the same time my understanding was the soviets never had a truly detailed effort to stop the REFORGERs like we thought they would...

[DB]

I find it hard to believe that idea of thousands of ships going to france, what were the numbers from ODS,one hundred and forty odd from memory? Half of those weren't seaworthy for weeks even months from memory.

 

At the same time my understanding was the soviets never had a truly detailed effort to stop the REFORGERs like we thought they would...

The total number of cargoes required to supply Europe was about 40 per day. That included the non-war base load economy as well.

 

David

[Archie Pellagio]

The total number of cargoes required to supply Europe was about 40 per day. That included the non-war base load economy as well.

 

David

 

What i want to know is where these ships would come from and who would crew them?

 

The real world showed we couldn't manage it in 1990.

 

The only go-around to the merchie-marine would be to draft in more phillipino's and their ilk of 3rd world merchies, but nobody's going to want to do that for quids in a shooting war...

[DKTanker]

What i want to know is where these ships would come from and who would crew them?

 

The real world showed we couldn't manage it in 1990.

One major difference, the 1990 war was an elective war, the coalition participants wanted to do it without mobilizing or disrupting their peacetime economies more than absolutely necessary. Had there been the desired need and will, shipping could have been acquired simply by paying for it. The exception perhaps being RORO ships. OTOH, with POMPCUS stocks, RORO ships wouldn't have been an immediate necessity, and had they become a necessity full RORO ships could have dumped their cargo to make room for military cargo. The same is true for container ships.

 

As for the airlift in 1990, most of it was accomplished with MAC. Again, had there been a need and desire for more airlift, it could have been acquired for a price....a price not deemed worth the inconvenience in 1990.