Until recently the advent of the atomic bomb convinced many Americans that the United States had to commit itself to a new strategy in which sea power was to lose whatever significance it formerly claimed as an element of national security. That dark hour may have passed. As the events of the Korean war were unfolded the prophets of the Atomic Age, who could see naught but power in the air, learned through a clear and indubitable demonstration that we do need a navy to win. Once again, saluting the proud power of our Navy, we have come to learn that the mysterious and distant sea was still to play an heroic role in the destiny of America. The military argument is won. But is there an historic argument, too, which favors the strengthening of our power on the sea?
Russia, no less than the United States, has felt the importance of sea power in her historical development. And to face confidently the challenge which may sooner or later be upon us, we must not fail to perceive the relentless historic mission of Russia which, among other things, has impelled her to follow an urge to the sea. The Russian historical process in this single respect has its roots buried in the past when Varangian traders from Kiev made their way down the Dnieper River in their long boats to Constantinople, and when merchants from Novgorod first flushed their crude craft into the waters of the Baltic Sea. This seaward expansion was so intrinsically a part of Russian national destiny that it was arrested only temporarily by the thirteenth century invasion of the Mongolians who pressed out of Asia to overwhelm the medieval Kievan State. It was reborn again after 1502 when Ivan III threw off the last detested vestige of subservience to the Mongolian Khan of the Golden Horde. At Moscow, the new center of Russian political authority, modern naval aims were conceived. Access to the seas was not enough. Russia had to command them.
Since the days of Peter the Great Russia has been struggling to control the waters washing her shores. The first Russian naval frontier was established in 1696 when Peter, sailing down the Don River with his new fleet, took the Turkish fortress of Azov. In 1703 he captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenschantz at the mouth of the Neva River, opening up another naval frontier on the Gulf of Finland. His aims were further advanced six years later when he took the strongholds of Riga, Dvinsk, Pernau, and Revel, after defeating the Swedes at Poltava. Through the treaty of Nystad in 1721 he consolidated his Baltic aims by winning Karelia and Ingria, as well as Esthonia and Livonia, and a part of southern Finland with the fortress of Viborg. It remained for Peter’s successors to open new sea frontiers.
Catherine II, who ruthlessly continued Peter’s foreign policy, was obliged to face Turkey’s military might in 1768 when that country declared war upon Russia. Bold plans were devised to subdue the Ottomans. While the Russian Army under Rumiantsev moved to the Danube, the Russian Baltic Fleet made its way around the whole of Europe to the Mediterranean and sank the Turkish squadrons in the Bay of Chesme. When peace was declared in 1774 at Kuchuk Kainardji, Russia received control of the Bug, the Dnieper, and the Don rivers along the Straits of Kerch, while the Tartar dwellings at Azov and the Crimea were made independent of Turkish control. Nine years later Russia seized the whole of the Crimea. Before her death in 1796, Catherine II expanded Russia’s Black Sea possessions to include the Taman Peninsula, and left her heirs the command of a strong naval frontier on the nothern littoral of the Black Sea.
The Peace of Adrianople which terminated the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829 was followed a few years later by the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi. This treaty closed the Straits and the Dardanelles to the military vessels of all the nations except those of Russia and Turkey, a settlement which produced great apprehensions among the western powers, especially since it became clear that Russia’s naval objective in the south was no longer the Black Sea but the Mediterranean. Turkey’s declaration of war upon Russia in 1853 enabled the Russian Black Sea Squadron promptly to strike a telling blow at her adversary’s naval power by sinking the Turkish Fleet at Sinope. However, French and British units entering the Black Sea on the side of Turkey deprived Russia of the fruits of her victory. The Russian Fleet, consisting solely of sailing vessels, could not possibly have opposed the combined strength of the Anglo-French Fleet since several of its components were steam- driven vessels. The Treaty of Paris of 1856 annulled all Russian rights to maintain either a fleet or naval bases in the Black Sea region. Alexander II took advantage of the Franco- Prussian War of 1870 to renounce the naval limitations of the Treaty of Paris. After a brief encounter with Turkey, a European coalition was directed against Russia at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Russia was allowed to navigate on the Black Sea, but the Turkish Straits were closed by international agreement, a restrictive measure which prevented the best units of the Russian Fleet from operating in the Mediterranean.
Restrained on one naval frontier, Russia advanced upon another. Losses in the Far East sustained by Russia at Nerchinsk in 1689 were won back in 1858 by the Treaty of Aygun, seven years after Admiral Nevel- skoy planted the Russian flag at the mouth of the Amur River. The whole left bank of the Amur and a large part of the right bank' extending to Vladivostok, as well as the northeastern half of Sakhalin and the region of Usuriisk were ceded to Russia. Japan controlled the southern portion of Sakhalin until 1875 when that, too, was ceded to Russia in exchange for the Kurile Islands. Russia had opened up her third naval frontier, on the Pacific Ocean.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century Russia possessed the third strongest navy in the world, but her naval ambitions were thwarted by mediocre leadership, poor strategy, and international restrictions which kept part of the Russian Fleet locked up in the Black Sea. These disabilities gave a decided advantage to Japan in the Russo- Japanese War of 1904-1905. All Russia’s principal ships were either sunk, disabled, or scuttled, before Port Arthur fell. The Russian units from the Baltic which appeared in the Far East under the command of Admiral Rozhdestvensky came around the Cape of Good Hope, a voyage of over seven months’ duration, only to be destroyed by the well-trained Japanese Fleet in the fateful battle of Tsushima. The Treaty of Portsmouth was disastrous to Russian naval aims in the Far East. Russia lost her lease to both Port Arthur and Dairen, the southern half of Sakhalin was given up by Russia, and Korea was recognized as being in the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia’s defeat resulted largely from her failure to regard her navy as an instrument of offensive warfare. After 1905 it remained for Russia to prevent another naval disaster by strengthening her debilitated naval power and scrapping her purely defensive naval policy.
When World War I began Russia had less than 400,000 tons afloat in the Baltic and the Black Sea, with 346,000 tons in new construction. Consequently she ranked eighth in naval strength among the powers, trailing behind even Italy and Austro-Hungary. The fleet had hardly gained confidence in itself when the sailors of the new Red Navy mutinied at Kronstadt in 1921, consummating the ruin of Russian naval morale and discipline. At the Naval Conference of 1924 held in Rome, the Soviet delegate wanted the Turkish Straits closed to all military vessels except those of Turkey, the states whose shores were not fronting on the Baltic denied access to that sea, and the Straits of Korea disarmed. The nature of these requests emphasized clearly the general collapse of Russian naval power on all her sea frontiers.
With the construction of a new Soviet naval force there followed a realignment of naval planning with a view to making the Red Navy capable of conducting offensive as well as defensive warfare. The geographic restrictions of the narrow passage between Denmark and Sweden had kept many Russian vessels confined to the Baltic Sea. The development of a canal connecting the White Sea with the Baltic through Lake Ladoga had received its first impetus under Peter the Great. It was completed as a military waterway after the Russian Revolution. In the spring of 1933 units of the Russian Baltic Fleet for the first time steamed through the newly-opened White Sea Canal. Today vessels may leave the White Sea following the Shijnia, Vyg, and Povenchanka rivers to Lake Ladoga, and from there follow the Stalin Canal to Leningrad.
In 1940 Russia acquired the Baltic Republics which gave the Soviet Navy new bases of operation. Control of the northern shore of Esthonia with the important coastal city of Tallinn gave Russia mastery over the southern approaches to Leningrad on the Gulf of Finland. With Latvia, Russia gained the harbor of Riga and the two ice-free ports of Ventspils and Liepaja, which also provided Russia with important naval air stations. Memel, another ice-free port, was acquired by Russia when Lithuania lost her independence. Russia’s principal naval base in the southern Baltic is Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg) which enables her to dominate the Bay of Danzig, and has already served as a salvage port. One German war vessel, sunk in the Baltic during the war, was salvaged in 1947 and towed to Kaliningrad, and the hull of the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was brought there from Stettin. The strategic value of these bases was made clear during World War II when the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, dominating the Baltic Sea, stopped a strong German assault on Leningrad. Recently Russia has claimed a 12-mile limit for her territorial waters, and may now be attempting to encroach upon long-established international rights in the Baltic.
After the Russo-Finnish War, Finland ceded her portion of the Rybachi and Sredni peninsulas to Russia. In 1944 Finland gave up Petsamo, her one ice-free port on the Arctic. Russia was quick to begin developing Petsamo into a naval base to supplement Murmansk, making it clear that her Atlantic naval aims were no longer to be conditioned by the good will of Sweden and Denmark. An outlet to the Atlantic around the North Cape also gave both the sea and air arms of the Soviet Navy an opportunity to develop offensive and defensive strategy in the polar regions. Within the scope of these aims Spitzbergen has figured prominently, especially since part of the island’s coastline is warmed by a drift current. Today Norway and Russia operate coal mines there, but for the latter Spitzbergen has much greater military interest. In 1944 the Soviet Union requested Norway to agree to an important revision of the 1920 Spitzbergen Treaty which gave Norway sovereignty over the island. Again in 1947 Russia proposed to fortify the island jointly with Norway, and, although the Norwegian Government rejected the proposal, a great deal of interest had been aroused in Washington since Soviet air and sea bases at Spitzbergen would have diminished the importance of American bases in Greenland.
Russia’s northern aims, however, were not limited to the North Atlantic alone. Shortly after the Russian Revolution attempts were made to connect the White Sea with the Pacific Ocean. The first Kara Sea expedition was undertaken in 1919. In 1924 only three ships navigated across the Kara Sea. Ten years later, the ice-breaker, Litke, leaving Vladivostok in June, traversed the entire northern sea route, and arrived in Murmansk three months later. By 1940 sufficient hydrographic surveys had been made and navigational aids established that a hundred cargo vessels and thirteen ice-breakers were navigating across the northern sea route. The Soviet Government also has built many polar research bases on the numerous islands of Franz Josef Land. At least a dozen permanent meteorological stations have been set up north of the Arctic Circle, the most northerly of which is about four hundred miles from the North Pole.
To keep the northern sea lanes open the Soviet Northern Fleet has been joined by many ice-breakers. Those of later design are fitted with airplane catapults. The Josef Stalin, for example, built in 1937 at Leningrad, carries three hydroplanes. Russia’s ability to operate her vessels in the icebound regions of the north has possibly given her some limited economic advantages. What still must be determined is the naval strategy of tomorrow and the tactical advantages won by Russia in being able to move her ships from the North Atlantic to the Pacific along her own shores.
After Russia readjusted her historic naval aims in the north by bypassing, via the North Cape, that uncertain Baltic outlet to the Atlantic, she was to employ a similar maneuver in the Black Sea region. In 1940 a secret protocol attached to the Three Power Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan on the one side, and Russia on the other, provided for the final abrogation of the Montreux Straits Convention of 1936, and the granting to the U.S.S.R., the right of unrestricted passage of its navy through the Dardanelles at any time. The rupture of Nazi-Soviet relations left the settlement of this problem for a later date. At the Potsdam Conference in 1945 Russia requested bases on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and the right to share in the defenses of the Straits, but even then the problem remained unsettled. Once more in 1946 the Russians proposed a reorganization of the control of the Turkish Straits, but the Turkish reply of August 24 was a firm rejection of the Soviet proposal. Yet, what Russia was unable to achieve through negotiations she obtained through the Italian Peace Treaty drawn up in 1947. In conformance with article 28 of that document, Italy recognized the island of Saseno at the mouth of Valona Bay as Albanian territory and renounced all claims to it. Since Albania had been allotted to the Soviet sphere of influence, and the Albanian puppet government is obedient to the Kremlin, the transfer of ownership of Saseno was actually a Soviet gain. Russia did not hesitate to take possession of the island with its deep caves and tunnels cut in the rock by Italian military engineers. Because Valona Bay has remarkable possibilities as a submarine base, it would not be surprising if submarine pens are actually being constructed in the Pasha Lima Cove by Soviet-imported German naval engineers. The Karaburun mountain range constitutes a natural barrier for Valona Bay, and some reports assert that the range and Saseno are being fortified with rocketfiring platforms, torpedo-launching stations, and gun emplacements. From this newly- acquired naval base Russian submarines could easily cruise down the Adriatic and Ionian seas to intercept traffic in the Mediterranean sea lanes. If the Russians are successful in exploiting the military advantages offered by the island of Saseno, they will have side-stepped the final obstacle to their historic objective of influencing the naval strategy of the Mediterranean Sea. Regardless of Anglo-American air power, a free flow of eastern oil from Tripoli, Haifa, and through the Suez Canal to western ports is a major factor in the defense plans of western Europe.
The Far Eastern naval frontier of Russia, almost annihilated in 1905, was restored after the Bolshevik Revolution in so short a period of time that by 1922 the U.S.S.R. was moving its Red Army into Vladivostok. The anti- British agitation of the Soviet Union ultimately forced England to foresake the concessions which she had earlier enjoyed at Hankow, Amoy, and Chin-Kiang. By 1945, through the terms of the Russo-Chinese Treaty of that year, the Soviet Union was able to recover a considerable degree of the naval security which Russia had possessed before her disastrous conflict with the rising power of Japan. Both Russia and China were to use Port Arthur as a naval base, an awkward arrangement which, however, worked to the favor of Russia since it was agreed that the chairman and three of the five members of the Military Commission regulating the joint use of the port were to be representatives of the Soviet Union. Russia’s dominating position in Port Arthur gave her command of the seaward approaches to all of North China. Since the Communist conquest of China, Moscow has naturally sought to increase Russian naval security in the Far East. According to the Moscow-Peiping Alliance made public on February 16, 1950, the Russians demanded full control of seven Yellow Sea ports: Port Arthur and Dairen in which Russia already enjoyed special rights, and Chinwangto, Haichow, Chefoo, Weihaiwei, and Tsingtao. In spite of secret codicils which may have been attached to the treaty, the significance of the pact lies in Mao Tze-tung’s agreement to place all seven coveted Chinese ports under Soviet supervision in the event of war.
To protect the Russian mainland to the north, it was imperative that the Japanese Kurile Islands south of the Kamchatka Peninsula be controlled by the U.S.S.R. During World War II the Japanese had understood their strategic importance and had fortified them so that they became an effective military barrier between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk. At Yalta it was agreed that if Russia would join the Allies against Japan, the Kurile Islands were to be ceded to the Soviet Union. These oceanic fortresses not only enable the Russians to maintain communications with their strong naval base at Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka, but also act as a defense for Sakhalin, now entirely in the hands of the Soviet Union in accordance with the terms of the Yalta Agreement. At the ice-free port of Okha in northern Sakhalin the oil wells are extremely important for the operation of Russia’s Pacific Fleet. The island’s coal is also of considerable value since about half the coal produced in Russia’s eastern territories comes from the Alexandrovsk field in northern Sakhalin. The southern approaches to the Sea of Japan, controlled from the mainland by Korea, were also of interest to Russia. A few days before the signing of the Sino-Soviet Pact, a Korean spokesman had announced from Seoul that Russia had leased port areas on the east coast of Communist North Korea.
The Soviet Union probably became convinced of the wisdom of developing sea power during the last war when Russian naval officials witnessed the tremendous importance of American and British sea power in bringing war materials to the dependent Soviet Armies. But several years before, the age-old defensive naval policy of Russia was being abandoned for a more aggressive and realistic naval program. Indeed, the Soviet purge of 1936-1938 had its naval phase, too, since most of Russia’s defense-minded Admirals were relieved of their commands and replaced by officers who were known to advocate an offensive navy. The most remarkable appointment in 1939 to the office of Commissar for the Navy was Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov, a man of only thirty-eight years. A year before, Molotov had laid down the terms of Russia’s new- naval policy when he said that the “mighty Soviet Power must have a navy, both on sea and ocean, commensurate with its interests and worthy of our great cause.” Shortly afterwards, M. Kalinin urged the shipyard workers in Leningrad to “outdo” the strongest capitalistic naval powers. In 1945, in connection with the observance of Red Navy Day, Stalin said the “Soviet people wish to see their navy still stronger and mightier. Our people will create new fighting ships and new bases for the navy. The task of the navy is tirelessly to train and improve the cadres of seamen, to master fully the experience gained in the patriotic war, and to raise still higher the naval skill, discipline, and organization.” On the same occasion Navy Commissar Kuznetsov asserted that it “was necessary by strenuous military preparation to study and consolidate the experience of naval warfare which has been accumulated.”
The Soviet Navy of today is composed of four component fleets: the Northern, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Pacific. There are flotillas maintained on the Danube, Dnieper, and the Amur rivers, and the Caspian Sea. These forces are administered by the Commissariat of the Navy which consists of the Chief of Naval Staff, the Chief of Political Administration, and other administrative departments dealing with such matters as shipbuilding, training, and supplies. The Red Navy is manned in accordance with the principle of compulsory military training, the draft age being nineteen. Terms of enlistment vary according to the branch of service: five years for seagoing sailors, four years for men in aviation and on shore establishments, and two years for other branches. Soviet naval personnel, upon discharge, are transferred to a reserve status in which they remain eligible for active service until the age of fifty. The promotion of officers is carried out after fixed terms of service and vary according to rank. With an expanding naval program it is difficult to find adequate numbers of thoroughly trained professional naval officers. And, although most Soviet naval officers graduated from one of Russia’s several naval academies, there are today a few admirals in the Soviet Fleet who began their service two or three decades ago as ordinary seamen.
The Soviet Union has recognized that a progressive naval shipbuilding program must be accompanied by concurrent advancement in other naval sciences. In December. 1945, Rear Admiral I. Lapoushkin, writing in the Soviet Krasni Flot, emphasized the great importance of the hydrographer in World War II whose additional duties included “the direct guaranteeing of fighting operations of the fleet.” The requirements of current tactical operations made it imperative to alter the form of hydrographic security during the evolution of combat operations. The Russian hydrographer, joining the staff of a Soviet warship, became an instrument of immediate battle-line activity. The significant contributions made by these hydrographic units are evidenced by the numerous decorations awarded their members by the Soviet High Command. To improve the hydrographic safety of vessels “on the seas of the U.S.S.R.,” a main hydro- graphic department and a Naval Cartographic Institute have been organized. Several important works on piloting and navigation have been projected, and, in the meantime, the hydrographic study of the Barents Sea, the White Sea, and the Pacific Ocean is being continued.
The strength of the Russian Navy today has given rise to a great deal of speculation. The editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships for 1947- 1948 observed that it was “extremely difficult to secure accurate information regarding the Russian Navy.” In the 1949-1950 issue of the same publication a foreword of caution is offered since reports gathered “could not be reconciled one with the other.” The secrecy with which Russia shrouds the number and disposition of her ships is well known. In 1939 Russia withheld detailed information concerning her naval power from publication in the British Returns of the Fleets. Even in the early days of the war before Nazi-Soviet relations had deteriorated Germans were not permitted to repair or fit out their warships in Russian yards. In 1947 Sweden planned to send her cruiser Gotland., accompanied by several destroyers, to Leningrad on a good-will call, but was denied permission on the equivocal grounds that the harbor was not in shape to receive foreign warships.
While the present estimates of Soviet naval strength are inconclusive, they may serve as an indication of naval trends in Russia. The Archangelsk (ex-H.M.S. Royal Sovereign) which was loaned to the U.S.S.R., was returned to Britain in February, 1949 when, in accordance with the terms of the Italian Peace Treaty, the 23,600 ton Italian battleship, Giulio Cesare, was sent to Russia and received by Soviet naval officials at its first stop in Valona Bay. The Murmansk (ex-U.S.S. Milwaukee), loaned to Russia under similar terms, was returned to the United States in March, 1949, for which Russia received the Italian cruiser, Emanuele Filiberlo Duca d’Aosta. In October of the same year the first of several destroyer-escorts, given to Russia under lend-lease in 1945, were returned to the United States Navy in Japan. In these transactions the Soviet Navy has shown a reluctance to return loaned warships, but no less has it revealed an anxiety to stabilize its sea power by possessing naval units in full title. In August, 1949, the Italian Government was asked by Russia to accelerate the delivery of warships which Italy was obliged to cede to the Soviet Union. These included, besides the Giulio Cesare and the Duca d’Aosta, four destroyers, fourteen torpedo-boats, two submarines, one training ship, and various small craft. In order to obtain early delivery, the Kremlin was prepared to forego the article of the treaty which obligated Italy to put the ships in “perfect efficiency.” Russia already has received three destroyers, Artigliere, Fuciliere, and Riboty, three torpedo- boats, two submarines, and thirty-six small craft, making up almost her whole share of the Italian Fleet.
According to the Tripartite Naval Agreement made at the Berlin Conference in 1945, Russia also received a share of the German Fleet which included the prize cruiser Nürnberg of 6,000 tons, renamed Admiral Makarov, ten German destroyers of the Narvik and Elbing class, and ten or more U-boats (Type VII-C and Type XXI). Russia also had possession of the damaged hulls of the German air-craft carrier, Graf Zeppelin, and the coastal defense vessel, Schleswig-Holstein. From Finland the Russians acquired another coastal defense vessel, the Väinämöinen, of about 4,000 tons, which was renamed the Viborg.
Russian construction of major warships, because of alleged technical deficiencies, has been slow, but this, in view of a revitalized naval policy, cannot be regarded as a permanent condition. The Soviet battleship, Tretii International, renamed and better known as the Sovielski Soyuz, was laid down in Leningrad in 1939. The hull was damaged during the war, a fact which probably greatly retarded construction. But, while its launching reported in 1945 was generally doubted, La Revue Maritime, in December 1947, asserted that a 36,000 ton battleship, armed with better than fourteen-inch guns, was launched at Leningrad and was probably the Sovietski Soyuz. Reports early this year said that this major Soviet war vessel now has been commissioned as a flagship of the Soviet Navy, while her two sister battleships, Sovielskaia Belorussia and Strana Sovietov, are now nearing completion in the northern port of Archangelsk. All three are reportedly equipped with catapult towers designed to fire radio-controlled aerial torpedoes. But reports such as these are still doubted by some naval observers, and the question must remain unanswered until these ships are seen at sea. Two battleships known to have been engaged in World War II are the Oktiabryskaia Revolutia and the Pariskaia Kommuna, which is now called the Sevastopol. Both ships, of about 24,000 tons, were built during World War I and modernized in the 1930’s. The former pocket battleship (ex-Deutschland), which had been sunk in shallow water near Swinemunde, was refloated and has been refitted, according to some reports, to serve as a sea-going gunnery training vessel for the Soviet Baltic Fleet.
The Soviet Union, demonstrating a reasonable skill in cruiser construction, has emphasized fast, maneuverable ships carrying air-craft which are the chief features of the Kirov class of cruisers. The first of these, of which there are at least six, all built between 1936 and 1940, made its appearance within one year of its launching. Two others were blown up by the Russians at Nikolaiev during the war to prevent their falling into German hands. In 1945 Russia also acquired two large German cruisers, the Lützow and the Seydlitz, renaming them respectively, Pelropavlovsk and Poltava. Brassey’s Naval Annual for 1949 reports two additional cruisers, Kalinin and Kaganovich, being built in Russia and probably completed. The Soviet Navy also possesses the Krasny Kavkaz (ex-Admiral Lazarev), a 7,600 ton cruiser which was launched in 1916 at Nikolaiev but completed only in 1930, and the Marti, a mine-laying cruiser finished in 1936 and capable of carrying three hundred mines. Brassey lists several others, but these are queried.
During the war Russia lost heavily in cruisers of the Leningrad class and destroyers of the more recent Stremitelni class as well as a good number of Tsarist vintage, dating from 1910. Although the Red Navy lost about thirty destroyers during the war, it gained some twenty-one foreign destroyers through the peace treaties of 1947: two from Rumania, three from Italy, six from Japan, and ten from Germany. It is also possible that a good number of the projected total of thirty-six Stremitelni destroyers, of which at least ten were launched when war broke out, are now either completed or near completion at Leningrad. At present Russia may have about 110 destroyers, but again such an estimate is based upon information ferreted out with difficulty and compiled with doubt.
Even though all these warships were in fighting trim and in readiness for wartime operation, which seems highly improbable, the United States would still have a vast numerical superiority in surface vessels. To the military analyst, this has strategic significance. But the military historian, aware of the remarkable consistency of Russian policy through the last few centuries, can illustrate with equal significance that when Russia was unable to conquer a foe outright she often pursued a program of neutralization. Since Russia probably could never create a surface fleet equal to that of the United States, is it not possible that she may be pursuing her naval aims by attempting to neutralize American sea power? The real power of the Soviet Navy, therefore, will not come from its number of major and minor war vessels, but from its formidable undersea fleet, which was begun very modestly under the first Five Year Plan. The exact number of submarines in the Red Fleet today is unknown, but it is believed that Russia has conservatively between 250 and 300 submersibles of all types, including those built in Russian yards as well as those acquired from the navies of Germany, Italy, and Finland. In addition to these, there may be a good many midget submarines of the German Seehund type being built at Kronstadt, Odessa, and Nikolaiev to be used in coastal defense work. Plans for the next few years include the construction of hundreds of submarines. By the end of 1952 Russia plans to have about 1,000 of them. This is an ambitious program, to be sure, and not very realistic, but it is a good indication of present trends in Russian naval construction.
Besides seizing shipbuilding installations on the Baltic, Russia obtained several German snorkel U-boats (Type XXI), and with them some of the best German submarine experts. At Peenemunde, for example, U-boat assembly yards and engine manufacturing plants were dismantled and shipped to Russia along with 4,000 technicians and construction supervisors. Although we can only guess how thoroughly Russia has exploited the knowledge of these imported submarine engineers, we might easily suppose that the Russian submarine is a far more effective weapon than was the German U-boat with which Hitler began hostilities in 1939. Despite the fact that Germany used hundreds of submarines in the course of the war, the danger is all the more striking when one recalls that the Nazi Fleet began undersea combat operations with not many more than fifty U-boats. In April, 1948, Captain Russell Grenfell of the British Royal Navy said that it “behooves us ... to make quite sure while there is still time, of the adequacy of our anti-submarine defences .... It would really be rather a pity were we to become so transfixed with fear of atomic explosion as not to realize that an older form of attack could still bring us down, especially since it has nearly brought us down twice already.” And is it not also quite natural that Russian naval planning should be conditioned by the landlocked, ice-blocked character of more than half the Soviet Union’s sea frontiers?
In June, 1947, Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, then Pacific Fleet Commander, said that a considerable number of Russian submarines were operating in the North Pacific. In March of the following year the Secretary of the Navy reported that several Russian submarines had been sighted off American shores, and in the summer of 1949 Norwegian fishing vessels reported the presence of Russian submarines operating in the Arctic, sometimes in flotilla formation. In February, 1950, there were reports that Soviet submarine activity has taken place near Eureka off the California coast. Reports such as these, when collected from various sources over a period of years, may not look very formidable, but they ought to be considered with care as we continue to live in that unstable, Soviet-inspired atmosphere of no peace, no war.
From her naval frontiers in Europe and the Far East, Russia may ultimately be able to strike out with telling effect unless her future adversaries are able to match Soviet undersea power with adequate weapons of defense. The confidence which it has been customary to place in the A-bomb alone is not justified in the face of a great Russian undersea armada. The influence of sea power upon civilized nations in the past has become confirmed as an historical principle which gigantic explosions may modify only in degree. The stalking menace of a vast number of fast Soviet submarines infesting the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific is serious enough. How much more serious will the danger be in the future if Russia’s undersea fleet will be prepared to launch atomic missiles on American shores? Since heavy, land-based bombers are hardly equipped for extensive sea searches, the danger can only be removed by squadrons of carrier-based planes that can survey, to far greater advantage, the far-flung oceans for the dark hull of a submerged submarine, or the feather-like wake of a snorkel. Navy planes can conduct reconnaissance flights over great expanses of water while the carrier, advancing the search pattern, would act not only as a refueling station and repair base, but as a combat information center, directing concerted attacks of hunter-killer groups against enemy contacts. Thus the sea lanes would be kept open and the danger to our homeland, from one treacherous quarter at least, would be minimized.
The maintenance of a strong navy, therefore, deserves urgent consideration in our future defense plans. We must not allow ourselves to weaken our sea arm by falling again under the spell of those obdurate partisans of the big bomber who see in air power alone the only key to survival. A navy with power above, on, and below the waves, like the three-pronged spear of Poseidon, makes us masters of the oceans, and this with land and air power, masters of our fate. It has been all too common, and could as well be a tragic mistake, to think of the Russian Navy of today as though it had not changed appreciably since the dark days of Tsushima. Indeed, Russia has not only reached the goals set by Peter the Great, she has gone beyond them. To dominate a new world of Communism, Russia must neutralize our control of the seas, and the final resolution of this problem may mean for us the difference between victory and defeat.