At the roof of the world lies the Arctic L Ocean. It is vast, deep, and impenetrable. It is a thorn in the side of a navy which boasts that seventy-five percent of the earth’s surface is water, thereby implying that sea power can control three quarters of the globe. In the Arctic Ocean, the old cliche breaks down. Ships can navigate in its waters, but only along its fringes when the forces of nature permit. And yet, this great ocean area would undoubtedly become a major war theater in any future global conflict involving the Western democracies and the nations that make up the Soviet bloc. It would certainly be penetrated by the forces of both sides, no matter how great were the difficulties encountered. In the air of the arctic regions these difficulties have already been met and largely overcome. It takes little or no imagination to visualize the course of air warfare over this area. When we come to ground warfare, the picture becomes more hazy. Still, we have sent expeditions into the Arctic and Antarctic in the past, and we have developed techniques for the survival of troops under severe climatic conditions. True, the scale of ground warfare which could be conducted would depend largely on our ability to overcome the problem of logistic support, but in this we are learning daily. The establishment of the DEW line and the logistic support of arctic radar stations has provided a basic textbook. Finally, we come to the Navy. What would be the composition of naval forces which could penetrate this area and carry the war to the enemy? What type of ship would the Navy use to enter the area known as the Russian mare nostrum?
Consider past attempts to operate naval forces in arctic regions. Almost without exception such attempts have been characterized by disaster. At times these disasters were of such proportions that they threatened the eventual outcome of the war in which they occurred. In recent history, perhaps the best example of failure in attempting to operate naval forces in arctic regions was the series of P. Q. convoys which sailed to Murmansk during World War II. The difficulties encountered by naval forces escorting these convoys are best summed up in a letter from Sir Winston Churchill to Premier Stalin.
17 July 42
Prime Minister to Premier Stalin
We began running small convoys to North Russia in August, 1941, and until December the Germans did not take any steps to interfere with them. From February, 1942, the size of the convoys was increased, and the Germans then moved a considerable force of U-boats and a large number of aircraft to North Norway.... In the case of P. Q. 17 the Germans at last used their forces in the manner we had always feared. They concentrated their U-boats to the westward of Bear Island and reserved their surface forces for attack to the eastward of Bear Island. The final story of P. Q. 17 convoy is not yet clear. At the moment only four ships have arrived at Archangel, but six others are in Nova Zembla harbours. At best therefore only one-third will have survived.
I must explain the dangers and difficulties of these convoy operations when the enemy’s battle squadron takes its station in the extreme north. We do not think it right to risk our Home Fleet east of Bear Island or where it can be brought under attack of the powerful German shore-based aircraft. If one or two of our very few most powerful battleships were to be lost or even seriously damaged while Tirpitz and her consorts, soon to be joined by Scharnhorst, remained in action, the whole command of the Atlantic would be (temporarily) lost. Besides affecting the food supplies by which we live, our war effort would be crippled. . . .
My naval advisors tell me that if they had the handling of the German surface, submarine forces, and air forces, in present circumstances, they would guarantee the complete destruction of any convoy, to North Russia.... It is therefore with the greatest regret that we have reached the conclusion that to attempt to run the next convoy, P. Q. 18, would bring no benefit to you and would only involve dead loss to the common cause. At the same time, I give you my assurances that if we can devise arrangements which give a reasonable chance of at least a fair proportion of the contents of the convoys reaching you, we will start them again at once. . . .
Why did these powerful naval forces suffer the greatest losses, percentage wise, of all time? Why was the route to Murmansk the most hazardous of them all, even worse than the route to Malta? The naval forces used to support P. Q. 17, were extremely powerful. The convoy escort consisted of six destroyers, two anti-aircraft ships, and eleven smaller craft. In close proximity to the convoy, was an “immediate” support force under the command of Rear Admiral Hamilton. It consisted of two British and two American cruisers plus three destroyers. Nine British and two Russian submarines were deployed along the north coast of Norway to attack any German surface raiders which threatened the convoy or at least give warning of approach of German ships. Nor was that all. To the west of the convoy was the main covering force consisting of the battleships HMS Duke oj York and USS Washington, the carrier HMS Victorious, three cruisers, and a flotilla of destroyers. The sea area involved was large and offered room for unrestricted maneuver (e.g. the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea). And yet only a third of the merchant ships in the convoy got through. But even more decisive than the damage done to this one convoy was the fact that, for the remainder of the war, the Arctic convoys had to be suspended during the summer months. There is no way of telling how many Allied lives would have been saved if the war materials for Russia had been delivered as planned.
Conditions in the Arctic enhance the defense of land areas against threat from the sea. The principal enemy of the ships in the Arctic is the elements. Pack ice. Unpredictable weather. Twenty-four hours of daylight for each calendar day during summer months. With the exception of icebreakers, no ship in our Navy is capable of operating in pack ice. To think of operating a carrier in an ice field is preposterous. Cruisers, destroyers, none of them are constructed for really cold weather operations. Nor would our present day electric battery submarines fare any better. On two occasions, once in the Arctic and once in the Antarctic, I had the opportunity to observe one of our submarines trying to negotiate pack ice. The picture of the submarine Sennet, dead in the water in the middle of an ice field, with large cakes of ice jamming themselves up over her ballast tanks and deck and forcing her under, is still very vivid in my mind. Fortunately, the icebreaker Northwind arrived on the scene while Sennet's conning tower was still above water. It took the North- wind two days to tow the submarine Sennet clear of the ice pack. Once clear, she never entered it again.
But the first question that comes to mind is why would the Navy have to enter the Arctic Ocean in the event of a global war? Why would ships have to transit this area? The answer is that, in spite of the natural defenses posed by the elements, the Soviet Union is extremely vulnerable from the north.
In spite of ice, bad and cold weather, twenty-four hours of daylight during summer months, Russian defenses from anything except air attack along the coastline of the Arctic Ocean must be either stretched thin or almost nonexistent due to the vast distances involved.
We usually picture the two coast lines of the United States as the two most vulnerable parts of our borders. But does not this type of vulnerability also apply to the Soviet Union, providing we had a weapon which could operate in the Arctic Ocean? The coastline of Russia adjacent to the Arctic Ocean is one of the longest, continuous coastlines in the world. It extends from approximately thirty degrees east longitude, eastward through the one hundred eightieth meridian to approximately one hundred seventy degrees west longitude—almost half the periphery of the world at seventy degrees north latitude when viewed from a polar coordinate chart. It is in this area, to put it bluntly and vulgarly, that the Navy will have to “cut the mustard” or be relegated to the purely secondary role of supporting the efforts of the other two services in the Arctic theatre. If this were all that was involved, from the viewpoint of overall national security, it would not be important. If the effort in the Arctic Ocean areas found the Navy unable to participate and the other two services still able to carry the war to a successful conclusion, our national objective would be fulfilled. But the Navy has a weapon which can operate successfully in the Arctic Ocean. The Navy now possesses the only type of weapon that would be capable of intercepting the summer convoys transiting the “northern route,” that Arctic Ocean route along the northern coast line of Russia by means of which so much material was transported for use in the Korean War. This weapon, unique to the Navy, is the only vehicle, in any of the services which would be capable of launching guided missiles into Russian complexes hidden to the eastward of the Ural Mountains. It would be the only vehicle which could launch missiles which arc presently in existence and hit targets deep in Siberia. This vehicle is, of course, the nuclear submarine, whose ability to remain submerged for prolonged periods of time is no longer open to doubt.
The nuclear submarine is the logical weapon for the Navy to use in combating the restrictions placed on naval operations in the Arctic by the elements. Why? Because, a true submersible—nuclear submarine—operating in the Arctic Ocean would still be operating in its natural medium—water. Regardless of the state of the weather, the long hours of daylight, the sea-covering ice pack, the nuclear submarine operating at a two hundred-foot depth in the Arctic Ocean should find conditions roughly similar to a submarine operating at two hundred feet anywhere else. There would be no apparent motion to the submarine in spite of the worst type of Arctic gale above. In fact, for the nuclear submarine, sea and weather conditions would favor the submarine over the defending forces.
The Russian Arctic Sea Route extends from the Barents Sea, through the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea, to the Eastern Siberian Sea. During World War II, German U-boats were able to extend their operations along this route only as far as Vilkisti Straits. Ice and the reliance of an electric battery submarine on the atmosphere prevented them from going further. The U-boats knew that considerable shipping was undertaken between northern Russia and Siberia. Icebreakers made the route possible. The Russians regard this trip of ocean as “their ocean.” At the present time they arc right. The Arctic Ocean route is secure from attacks by conventional warships. But imagine the opportunity these convoys would present to nuclear submarines. Slow speed ships often stuck in the ice. Dependent on a single ice-breaker up ahead to clear a channel for them. And the nuclear submarine, immune from attacks by escorts —or by aircraft. Firing on sound bearings from heavy, loud, slow turning screws of an icebreaker pounding ice at full power and going relatively nowhere. No zig plans to contend with. Or think a moment of the problem of defense against a nuclear guided missile submarine which fires a charge from deep depths on a dark Arctic night and blows a hole in the ice pack overhead. Is the noise of the explosion at some shore-based listening post recorded as a man-made explosion or as a berg breaking up? The noise the berg would make would be greater. Or the pip on the radar scope. Is it a guided missile submarine surfacing through a hole in the ice pack? Or is it a pressure ridge which has just formed and is forcing ice hummocks high in the air? In the Arctic Ocean, the problem of classification of the initial contact could well prove insurmountable.
Here is the flaw in the reasoning. Is it possible for even a nuclear powered submarine to make a transit under the Arctic ice cap? What about the ice? How deep does it go? All our information indicates that sea ice never extends deeper than forty feet below the surface. In fact, seldom is it thicker than fourteen feet. Bergs are different. Icebergs can draw several thousand feet of water, much deeper than the test depth of any existing submarine. And you do find icebergs in the Arctic Ocean. Icebergs are formed from glaciers, frozen rivers of ice. Gravity makes the glacier move slowly towards the sea. At the foot of the glacier, where it meets the sea, great chunks of ice splinter off That’s when icebergs are born. But icebergs can be avoided. They make noise and lots of it, especially when they work against pack ice in the swell of the open sea. An iceberg can be heard by the sonar of a submarine thousands of yards away. Electric battery submarines such as the USS Atule and the USS Redfish have made limited cruises under the Arctic ice and found the ice itself to be no great hazard. However, the best of theories often fall apart when put to test. The only certain way to ascertain the feasibility of such an operation would be to try it. The question of penetrating the water beneath the polar ice cap can only be resolved by a series of nuclear submarine cruises, each one extending further in scope, until the complete transit of the Arctic Ocean is finally accomplished—if such be feasible!
Before dismissing the proposal as fantastic, it is desired to point out that transit of the polar ice cap would require a submerged voyage of not more than fifteen hundred miles. This capability has already been realized. Such a voyage would capture the imagination and acclaim of the public throughout the world. It would offer yet another weapon capable of carrying the war to the Russian homeland in the event of a global conflict. But more important, it would act as a deterrent on war. It would show the Soviets that their entire northern coastline is now exposed to attack from submarine launched guided missiles and that their Arctic Sea Route can no longer be regarded as invulnerable.
From the success of this one project, a new barrier could be erected in the far north for the defense of our nation. It would make possible such things as the extension of the distant early radar net to include stations on the polar ice cap itself, the establishment and resupply of interceptor airfields in the farthest Arctic, and the rescue of aviators downed on the ice.
A voyage beneath the polar ice cap may seem fantastic, but is it any more fantastic than nuclear power itself?