We have fallen into the comfortable conviction that wherever and whenever necessary, the U.S. Navy rules the seas. But in the not-too-distant past, our ability to "rule" was, by our own commanders' admission, in grave doubt. Leaders such as Vice Admiral Isaac "Ike" Kidd, however, devised a variation of the "bait and switch," referring to his game pieces by these colorful names.
In the winter of 1971, danger lurked in the "wine-dark" waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The possibility was real, as so often was the case in preceding centuries, that the region again could see the clash of mighty naval forces and the spilling of national blood and treasure.
The narrow seas around 33° North Latitude and 330 East Longitude, labeled "Camel Crossroads" by the vice admiral commanding the U.S. Sixth Fleet, were being roiled by the wakes of dozens of major U.S. and Soviet warships, threaded by ballistic-missile and attack submarines, and overflown by armed aircraft of both nations.
The prime reason for all this activity and for the high state of readiness and alert was the shooting war that had been going on in Jordan since September. The Bedouin army of the monarchy was locked in battle with a powerful force of Palestinians who had been displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars and were actively supported by Syria. The United States stood strongly on the side of the Jordanian government.
Two carrier battle groups, built around the John F. Kennedy (CVA-67) and the Forrestal (CVA-59), steamed within striking distance to lend emphasis to our interest. A U.S. helicopter carrier, the Guam (LPH-9), with battle-ready Marines, stood ready to evacuate U.S. citizens from the combat zone. The Soviet Union championed its Arab clients and had reinforced its already powerful Mediterranean forces with warships and with aircraft based in nearby Egypt.
In mid-February of that year, I was afforded an enviable view of the volatile strategic and tactical situation from the perspectives of the two flag officers most directly and immediately involved. As Special Assistant (speech writer) to Secretary of the Navy John Chafee, I had taken leave, with my boss's approval and tacit encouragement, to visit the Sixth Fleet and see the situation for myself. My host was then-Rear Admiral Stansfield Turner, who in his last tour ashore had been Secretary Chafee's executive assistant and as such had recruited me. At this time, Admiral Turner commanded a task group of the Sixth Fleet.
The inside track I had gets even better. The Commander of the Sixth Fleet, Vice Admiral Ike Kidd, had been a classmate for the one year-plus that I had spent at the side. And both knew of my intention to write a book, calling attention to the resulting mortal danger to our people. Those relationships permitted frank, specific, and prolonged talks, in situ, about the current state of affairs. As a recently retired naval aviator, I was cleared to attend flag briefings and to participate in flight operations on a not-to-interfere basis. I derived what follows from those conversations and briefings.
As of 15 February, 48 Soviet warships were in the eastern Mediterranean—16 surface combatants, 11 submarines, 7 amphibious ships, and 14 auxiliaries. In comparison, the total number of ships flying the Stars and Stripes was 43. "This," the Sixth Fleet intelligence officer reported to his boss, "makes us definitely Number Two." And he went on to remove any comfort his listeners might have been harboring on the basis of qualitative superiority.
"Even our latest ships," he continued, "are nowhere near as good as the Soviet new ones. For example, their Krivak-class DDGs [guided-missile destroyers], at only 3,400 tons, have all the most modern antiair, antisubmarine, and antimissile weaponry, with the electronics to match, and can do 36 to 38 knots on gas turbines—which makes them much better that our 963s [Spruance (DD-963)-class destroyers] at 5,000 tons, which won't be operational for a couple of years."
About 50% of all out-of-country Soviet ships, he told us, were in the Med—an indication of the importance the Soviet Union assigned to this area.
In addition to the surface ships and submarines, according to this briefing, the Soviet Union had 80 to 90 supersonic Badger bombers, with air-to-surface missiles, in the Black Sea area. They could be flown into Egyptian bases at Matruh, Aswan, and Cairo West in less than one day. At Matruh, on the northwest coast of Egypt, the Russians were reported to be dredging the harbor, extending the breakwaters, lengthening the runways to 9,500 feet, and erecting a tent city for 10,000 men.
Later, I asked Admiral Turner about this air threat. (Two Badgers had overflown the task group at low altitude while the briefing was in progress. The John F. Kennedy air plot said that the Forrestal screwed up the intercept.) He was less than sanguine.
"I don't feel confident," he told me, "of our ability to take care of ourselves in the Med. The outcome would depend on strategic warning and augmentation." What worried him most was the movement of Soviet aircraft to North Africa.
"If they spread out to Libya and Algeria, we are in deep trouble. A raid of, say, 40 Badgers would bloody us up." He pointed out that a Badger with ten 1,000-- pound bombs had an operational radius of 1,300 miles, which from Aswan took in southern Italy, Greece, and most of Turkey. From Matruh, it reached all the way to Spain.
"What do you feel you would need to tip the balance our way?" I asked him. "A third CVA [carrier]," he said, "more antiair warfare ships [guided-missile destroyers], and lots more E-2s [early-warning and air-control aircraft]."
"How would we defend against the kind of raid you are concerned about?"
With a layered defense, he said. That would encompass fighters at long range, Talos, then Terrier, then Sea Sparrow missiles as the range closed, electronic jamming, chaff, and gunfire. And it would include something new, called "blip enhancing," which made a small radar target into one the size of an attack carrier and drew radar-homing missiles to the wrong target. This would be a neat trick, I thought.
On the general subject of incoming antiship missiles, Admiral Turner said the hardest ones to counter would be the submarine-launched variety. "Surface ships we can keep track of—in fact, we update each ship's position every four hours with radio direction finders as long as they are transmitting—and our E-2s can provide warning of airborne missile carriers. The only way to counter the submarine-launched missile is to know at all times what every radar target is, within a minimum of 50 miles—150 is better. Then when a new one pops up, you know it's a sub." (During my visit, a Soviet Charlie missile submarine was caught and photographed on the surface in exactly this way.)
Speaking softly but occasionally raising his voice and reverting to sailor language to make an important point, Admiral Kidd agreed with Admiral Turner about the sub danger. "The threat is from SSMs [surface-to-surface missiles]," he said, "regardless of launching platforms. Surface platforms are easy to find and keep track of. Air platforms can be dealt with. But sub platforms are hard as hell to locate and counter." And he also was worried about the deployment of hostile aircraft along the North African coast. "We can normally handle about 16 raids," he explained. "After that, our effectiveness drops off sharply. If they use chaff and jamming, our detection range is reduced to the point that, with Mach point eight and point nine missiles, we don't have time to counter."
But Admiral Kidd told me of another electronic trick similar to Turner's blip enhancer. Called a "range gate pull off," it captured the radar beams that guide incoming missiles and pulled them off to the side, where they homed on chaff released from Zuni rockets or friendly aircraft. But this kind of electronic defense was useless, he cautioned, against the shorter-range SSMs, which required no external guidance, and with which the newer opposition warships were equipped. And, he noted, frowning, "It only works against conventional warheads. Even pulled off, a nuclear weapon would still be way too close."
Admiral Kidd Went on to describe the defensive tactics he had used during the height of the Jordanian crisis late the previous year. The carrier task forces were restricted in their movements. They were required to support and protect the Guam and her evacuation helicopters, to escort U.S. Air Force troop carriers and evacuation aircraft coming down from the north, and to provide combat air patrols over the Amman airport, should that be required. Taking advantage of our relative immobility, the Soviets, he said, had positioned their missile ships every 400 to 600 around our carriers, at ranges of between 40 and 60 miles.
If the shooting started, Admiral Kidd suggested, "we can expect the Russians to act as they have for hundreds of years. They used massed Cossack charges, massed infantry in World War I, massed artillery and rockets in World War II. And when they lock on to a valuable target like a CVA, they will fire all the missiles in every launcher-four to eight per launcher, depending on the ship."
To counter the Soviet missile threat, Admiral Kidd had used what he called his "doctrine of vertical dispersal." He had kept the maximum number of armed aircraft in the air at all times, capable of being over the hostiles or protectively overhead whenever required. And he had assigned "tattletales" and "bird dogs" to each Soviet guided-missile ship.
A tattletale was a destroyer type that stayed close enough to its adversary that hostile missiles would not arm and therefore be ineffective. The tattletale reported directly to Commander, Sixth Fleet, every move on board the other ship, especially the manning of battle stations and preparations to launch weapons.
A "bird dog" was essentially an armed airborne tattletale, which remained within visual distance ready to strike when ordered.
Admiral Kidd expected that if shooting started, the tattletales probably would provide at least ten minutes' warning, which was time enough to launch a wave of attack airplanes, "get chaff out, jammers ready, and weapons ready for lock-on."
At the height of the crisis, with missile ships deployed and tattletales and bird dogs on station, Admiral Kidd reported, shaking his head as though disappointed in his adversaries: "The Soviets displayed unprofessional jitters—went to general quarters, led out hoses, ran antiaircraft missiles out on their launchers, and trained them on our aircraft. When the aircraft drew away, all their ships trained weapons on the tattletales, which reported blow-by-blow to me."
After this happened one afternoon, the next morning Admiral Kidd put his flagship, the Springfield (CLG-7), alongside the flagship of the Commander, Soviet Mediterranean Squadron, a Sverdlov cruiser, and transmitted a flashing-light message in Russian, "saying, in effect, 'This operation will be going on for some time. Suggest you keep a weather eye, and take an easy strain.'" Almost immediately, Admiral Kidd said, the opposition ships "secured from General Quarters, ran their missiles back down, and trained their guns fore and aft." The situation had been defused. War at sea had been avoided.
Another more subtle action that served, according to Admiral Kidd, to convince the Soviets we were serious about supporting the Jordanian monarchy was the dispatch of a carrier on-board delivery plane to Tel Aviv. It was sent "with working-level people to get GCI [ground-control intercept] frequencies and procedures, and other nutsand-bolts data necessary for active intervention. It was a signal to Moscow, which resulted in a pull-back of tanks and troops and aircraft, and things generally quieted."
Despite the defusing of this particular potential international bomb, the overall situation in the Med remained grim, according the Commander, Sixth Fleet. "NATO can no longer depend on the Sixth Fleet for support in the event of a land war," he said. "The Sixth Fleet must first take out the Soviet naval threat, then their land and air bases in North Africa, then support NATO." But, my classmate insisted, "we haven't been run out of the Eastern Med. It's just a poor place to operate."
I returned from leave still alarmed at the growing power imbalance at sea and elsewhere, but reassured by the steady but bold and innovative leadership of our naval forces, as demonstrated by the two admirals I knew best.
The book proposal based on this and other research was turned down by the New York publishers, who said in one voice that they were "reluctant to encourage an arms race." They failed to realize, in their fuzzy-minded insularity, that the race was already in progress—and we were losing.
As we all know, our luck held for a decade after this, until the Reagan administration paid closer attention to the problem.
Commander Stafford is the author of several books, including the Naval Institute Press Classics of Naval Literature book, The Big E.