The Third World War: August 1985 полностью

The first thing to do, having established that Commander Western Approaches South (COMWAS) was organizing the search for survivors and sending tugs to the damaged oil tankers (neither of them had yet sunk), was to order any other NATO merchant ships approaching the declared War Zone to turn back. The next was to consider, with SACLANT, the implications of these attacks. The situation which now faced the maritime commanders, in the Atlantic and the Western Approaches, was critical. It was quite obvious that unless SACEUR could be certain of being reinforced by fresh combat forces from the United States by 15 August, he could not throw in his final reserves on the Central Front within the next four or five days, and thus stand some chance of holding up the Warsaw Pact advance to the Rhine.

A group of military convoys, with a speed of advance of twenty-three knots, had sailed from Halifax NS on 8 August. They could be disembarking troops and equipment in northern French ports by the 14th. But there were strong indications that a wave of Soviet submarines, which had sailed from the Kola Inlet on 4 August, was now crossing the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. Denial of the Faroes to a Soviet raiding force had fortunately helped to maintain NATO anti-submarine surveillance of the key area, and three more Soviet submarines were known to have been destroyed, two by NATO submarines operating independently and one by a combination of air and surface forces. On the other hand, at least one NATO submarine had failed to report on leaving her patrol off the North Cape. In two days’ time, it was estimated, there would be twenty-four Soviet nuclear-powered submarines in the North Atlantic.

Had time permitted, at least some of the vital initial convoys could have been routed south of the Azores, where they would have been beyond the reach of Backfire maritime strike aircraft from Murmansk. The effective radius of these aircraft was about 4,000 kilometres. As things were, there was really no choice but to assemble the most powerful escort and support forces available, and fight the convoys through by the shortest route across the Atlantic. It was expected that NATO submarines operating to the north of the gap would further reduce the number of Soviet submarines reaching the convoys. Most important of all, US Strike Fleet Atlantic, supported by maritime aircraft based in Iceland and northern Scotland, would cover the whole operation. If Soviet Backfires could attack convoys in mid-Atlantic, the US Strike Fleet could pulverize the Soviet Northern Fleet base from a position in the Norwegian Sea. Its approach, plumb through the middle of the gap, could not of course be concealed from Soviet reconnaissance. Nor could it be ignored by the C-in-C Soviet Northern Fleet. The battle of the Gap would be quite unlike Jutland, or Midway. But battle there would be.

Once again, the question of ‘to use or not to use’ nuclear weapons in the war at sea had to be faced. It was the opinion of the naval commanders that, on the ‘form’ so far, the use of nuclear depth charges or nuclear warheads or torpedoes would by no means show gains commensurate with the risk of escalation. As to nuclear strikes on the Soviet bases in the north, only if nuclear weapons had finally been resorted to on the Central Front would these be carried out.

SACLANT had been under less pressure from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour and day-to-day events since the war broke out in Europe on 4 August than his Western Approaches colleagues. The departure from Halifax NS four days before of the group of fast military convoys which formed part of Operation CAVALRY could not possibly have gone unobserved and unreported; and the route which the convoys took could not be varied much. It was not surprising that a fierce battle was taking place, the outcome of which would be critical for events on the Central Front. Operation CAVALRY had to succeed.