The flash of the big guns, the smoke of the battle, the splashes of-the shells rising far above the mastheads in Claus Bergen’s powerful painting on our cover of the German battle line at Jutland in May 1916, evoke in one observer strong and opposing emotions: “How I wish I had been there; how glad I am that I wasn’t.”
Impressive as that battle was, as Rear Admiral Edward Wegener writes in “Theory of Naval Strategy in the Nuclear Age,” it “remained without aftermath . . . . For the strategic situation would not have been changed a bit by even a memorable and resounding victory. The English had all they desired: mastery of the sea throughout the Atlantic . . . .” The Germans “were unable to recognize that their North Sea coast, locked off geographically by England, did not constitute a geographical position in relation to the Atlantic. Without a geographical position on the disputed sea area, the German fleet, so far as Atlantic sea traffic was concerned, did not exist and, with all its might, did not constitute sea power.”
Nowadays the second naval power is not Germany, but the Soviet Union, a country that is, as Admiral Wegener says, “just as much shaped by continental traditions, possessing long coastlines and some fine ports, but lacking, as did Germany, naval strategic positions adjacent to the oceans. In fact, the similarity of the two countries with regard to their naval strategic situation is quite striking.”
It is not only in their comparative strategic positions that the old Imperial German and the modern Soviet navies have much in common. Created by a land steeped in the great traditions of warfare ashore, each was—or is—faced with a rival accustomed to look upon itself, with justice, as the prime naval power, with vast experience in blue-water warfare behind it. Each, in little more than a decade, created a powerful fleet of ships whose individual qualities were at least as impressive as their numbers. Each proudly announced its presence with strong squadrons in distant seas.
The main difference between the two may be that the Soviet navy has the advantage of seeing how the German attempt to provide themselves with sea power failed. For, as Admiral Wegener concludes from his brief examination of World War I, a war perhaps more worth the attention of naval officers today than any other, seapower “becomes a product of fleet and position. If one factor is zero, the product itself becomes zero: the fleet is worthless without position, and without a fleet position does not count.” Jutland points dramatically to the futility of providing one without the other. So does Singapore, in World War II.
Poorly endowed with position as they are, what can the Soviets do about it? In war, it seems obvious what they can and must do if they are to employ their fine ships to effect. It is—or should be—obvious particularly to the Norwegians, the Danes, the West Germans, the Turks, the Greeks, the South Koreans, and the Japanese, for it is on their lands and in their waters, and only there, that the Soviets could gain the strategic positions they need if they are to have, not merely a powerful collection of fine warships, but seapower.
But the Soviets need not wait on war to gain such positions, for as Admiral Wegener writes, “A naval strategic offensive or defensive can take place on two levels, on the political in peace, and the military in war. Since in non-war the use of military force is excluded, only the political-diplomatic level is conceivable for the maritime offensive. The same is true of the maritime defensive. If one wants to prevent the taking of a maritime position, one can resort only to methods compatible with non-war.” The continuing Soviet pressure on the coastal states just named, and NATO’s unhappy experiences in the past few months with Iceland and Malta, are gloomy evidence that the Admiral’s perception is accurate, and that the Soviet Union appreciates more than does the West both seapower and how to acquire and maintain it.
While the Soviet Union was busy creating her fleet, what was the United States doing with hers? More than any single thing, she was employing that fleet in lieu of air bases ashore in Southeast Asia. That is appropriate use of a fleet, when one has unquestioned mastery of the sea, as the United States did when we entered the Vietnamese war with our own forces. Indeed, as Vice Admiral Malcolm Cagle writes in “Task Force 77 in Action,” because in the spring of 1965 “land bases for tactical air were not available and could not be produced quickly enough, CinCPacFlt directed on 16 May the establishment of Dixie Station, about 100 miles southeast of Cam Ranh Bay. This assignment would last for 15 months until land-based aviation had been established sufficiently so as to be able to handle the bombing load within South Vietnam.”
Much more important to the Fleet was Yankee Station, deep in the Tonkin Gulf, from which hundreds of ship-based aircraft were—and at this writing still are being—launched against targets in North Vietnam, Laos, and occasionally South Vietnam. The main targets of the American bombing in North Vietnam were at or near Hanoi, Haiphong, and the coastal towns to the south. The naval aircraft, flying from bases safe from hostile attack, even though they were normally “less than 100 miles from the enemy’s coast,” were, interestingly, closer to their main targets than were the majority of land-based combat aircraft, which had to operate from bases in Thailand.
The lessons a nation could learn—if it would—from the experiences of the American aviation effort over North Vietnam are numerous. Are we ready and willing to learn any of these lessons? As Admiral Cagle points out, “after Korea we concluded that never again would we give sanctuaries to an enemy; never again would we fight on the enemy’s terms; never again would we handcuff ourselves.”
Certainly, the contrast between the courageous and competent men who flew their missions through deadly barrages of hostile fire and the inconsequential nature of the targets they were ordered to attack—not, for example, a ship with ten thousand tons of war cargo but a truck with one ton—is sufficient to bring into question something about the people who ordered such things. As we know, a great many questions, though not necessarily the right ones, have been on the public market for a long time. The “most important military lesson of the war in Southeast Asia,” Admiral Cagle says bluntly, “was that it is not possible to conclude a conflict successfully if those who direct it are convinced it cannot or should not be done.”
Though it may not be possible to keep the public relations men, political scientists, mathematicians, economists, and statisticians in Washington from advising that airplanes be ordered aloft on impossible missions in impossible weather in pursuit of questionable goals; though it may not be possible to keep the Services from labelling as “all-weather” airplanes that are anything but that (thus adding to the confusion of those determining the missions); perhaps we are still justified in hoping that, on a technical level, we can learn.
In view of the enormous cutbacks in the size of the Armed Services which have occurred and—in the absence of the draft in the foreseeable future—will likely continue, our experience with modern weapons may be a matter of the highest importance. Among such weapons are the Walleye TV-guided bomb and the A-6 Intruder. Though it is by no means an all-weather weapon, one admiral said of Walleye that it permitted him to “launch one aircraft carrying one weapon with a reasonable degree of confidence that significant damage could be inflicted on a selected target,” and Admiral Cagle calls the Intruder “perhaps the best tactical military airplane ever developed.” Intruders, attacking singly or in pairs, oftentimes through the vilest weather, were able time and again to carry out missions which much larger groups of other aircraft simply could not manage. Can one reasonably hope that a small number of high-class aircraft, such as these, armed with weapons such as Walleye, will be able to replace effectively a much larger number of simpler aircraft armed with simpler weapons? If so, could the number of men needed to operate and support our air striking forces be cut substantially? If so, this would appear to be the right course to follow with our smaller forces of the future.
“The most curious military lesson of the interdiction campaign,” wrote Admiral Cagle, “was one which did not surface until 1970. We had forgotten that supporting the land battle is strictly a secondary and collateral task.” For the best part of a decade, carriers “had been employed as floating airfields—tied to a geographic station less than 100 miles from the enemy’s coast, sending aircraft against targets deep in the enemy’s land. This type of employment had become so habitual and predominant that, in the minds of many, it was assumed to be the primary purpose of attack carriers . . . .” And, indeed it was when there was no other navy prepared to contest for the mastery of the sea. Now, there is such a navy; now we must re-examine the purposes of all the types of ships and airplanes and forces we have in the U. S. Navy. Hence, Captain Stephen T. De La Mater’s examination of “The Role of the Carrier in the Control of the Seas.”
The main forces the Soviet Navy would employ in the struggle for mastery are nuclear-powered submarines (increasingly, armed with missiles which can be launched from beneath the surface), long-range bombers armed with long-range missiles, and surface ships also armed with long-range missiles.
Against such forces, one cannot hope to succeed if he depends on ships’ guns or anti-air missiles. Admiral Cagle indicates that it took about 30 North Vietnamese SAMs to down one airplane; most U. S. aircraft lost were downed when the threat of the missiles forced them low, into the range of enemy short-range automatic guns. (According to Weyer’s Warships of the World, 1971, the American Charles F. Adams class of DDG—to take an example of a well-liked American design—carries 42 missiles for her Tartar launcher and has no light automatic guns. Indeed, to find a cluster of light automatic antiaircraft guns, one would have to cross to the other side and examine the Soviet Kresta II class which carries—in addition to antisubmarine weapons and surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, four 57-mm. and eight 30-mm. automatic guns. If anyone in the West can take any comfort from these facts, well and good.)
Faith has been expressed by many that a VSTOL airplane, such as the Harrier, launched from a destroyer-sized ship, would provide the necessary air defense. But, when launched vertically, this sub-sonic airplane has an effective range of 50 miles, according to reports in the aviation press. Against what Soviet weapon would that succeed? Not against a ship or an airplane which can launch her missiles from twice or thrice that distance, or even farther. Sometime, there will be a successor to the Harrier which, no doubt, will do better. But so far, none has appeared, even in manufacturers’ publicity.
That brings us to the shore-based airplane. But, as Captain De La Mater points out, “the range of a combat-ready fighter is short; in fact, the range of a fighter on CAP—measured as it is in the modest hundreds of miles—is inadequate when one is dealing with oceans . . . .” For so many situations, “there just are no feasible land-based alternatives” to carrying the necessary airplanes on the decks of ships.
If the airplane confined to use of ground bases (rather than, as is the carrier plane, able to use both land and sea bases) often cannot get where it will be needed, and if the only alternative afloat which can meet the competition is the high-class airplane, then the case for the high-class airplane carrier, no matter what her failings, is made. As Captain De La Mater writes, “The carrier . . . embarks the fighter aircraft that make the difference against the bomber, and, no matter what its source, the missile; she embarks the attack aircraft that have the range to outshoot the surface ship; and she embarks the antisubmarine aircraft that permit her to conduct an ASW search outside of missile and torpedo range.”
Though the fiercest situations would have to be reserved for the biggest ships, such as the forthcoming Nimitz and Dwight D. Eisenhower, many others could be handled by a carrier of 40,000 tons. Why not an even smaller ship? Because, Captain De La Mater points out, as we get smaller we begin to lose too many important qualities; indeed, if one goes much below 40,000 tons (Essex size), he gives up the opportunity to operate anything save a VTOL aircraft or helicopter.
Though not with the same degree of conviction as does Captain De La Mater, so does Captain Robert H. Smith, in “ASW—the Crucial Naval Challenge” look upon the ship-based aircraft as a primary weapon in the struggle against the submarine. Captain Smith points out that “The submarine, with her long-range stand-off weapons, has merged with the total threat and ASW is not again to be considered as a separate and distinct part of naval warfare. It is all one and the same.” Captain Smith also shares with Captain De La Mater the view that the land-based patrol aircraft is a useful but limited ASW tool—limited because we have been unable to make it “independent of major, fixed supporting base structures” and because land-based aircraft, even large ones, are subject to “time and distance factors which still would prevent them (or require prohibitive numbers of aircraft) from providing the needed air ASW capability.” For these reasons, “surface forces must contain strong organic air capability of their own.” This, Captain Smith sees, should be in the form of a CVS, for the price of placing antisubmarine aircraft aboard a CVA “will probably be too high in terms of cost to the CVA’s primary mission . . . ,” which it would be if the CVA’s primary mission were other than to take part in the struggle for the mastery of the sea. In any event, Captain Smith believes “It will be far more efficient and sound if the necessary number of separate, medium-value ships can be created for ASW, and their decks loaded with advanced aircraft built for the ASW mission.” Inasmuch as he points out that ASW has merged with the total threat and is no longer a separate and distinct part of naval warfare, it appears as if he and Captain De La Mater with his 40,000-ton sea control ship are talking essentially about the same ship.
Unlike Captain De La Mater, Captain Smith believes that the submarine has the edge over her opponents: “the submarine will probably continue to keep a long reach ahead of those who oppose her, and her ascendancy in the seas will grow increasingly secure.”
One thing both officers agree on is the future of the destroyer. Captain De La Mater, speaking about aircraft-carrying sea control ships of even modest size: “. . . they would be abler than the common destroyer which has fascinated our Navymen for so many years, but which, like the battleship, may be much closer to becoming the Navy’s dinosaur than is the carrier.” And Captain Smith: “The qualities that the surface ship brings to the task of offensively hunting down and sinking submarines, . . . are, compared to the qualities of the submarine, all so transparently adverse as to render both pretentious and tragic the idea of a destroyer, or any number of destroyers, setting out to corner and bring an advanced nuclear submarine to bay. They would resemble a ring of children attempting to encircle a lion . . . .”
For purposes other than ASW, Captain Smith does see a need for some destroyer-like vessel: “. . . there is a continuing need for a medium-size warship for other aspects of the sea-control mission than ASW.”
What might those other aspects be? In “Small Combatants—1972,” Arthur Davidson Baker, III, agrees that the “destroyer’s primary role of antisubmarine warfare seems an increasingly obsolete concept.” Yet, cruisers and destroyers, “now increasingly vulnerable to modern weapon systems, are no longer cost-effective tools for the necessary functions of coastal patrol and interdiction.” Mr. Baker continues: “A missile gunboat can be purchased for less than a tenth the cost of a destroyer. . . . Except for ASW, many missile boats, West Germany’s new Type 143, for example, are better armed than some contemporary destroyers ten times their size . . . destroyer and frigate speeds have dropped to where 30 knots is a typical sustained maximum, while displacement-hulled fast patrol craft are up to ten knots faster . . . and hydrofoil speeds of 100 knots are feasible. Range is no longer entirely an advantage to the larger ships . . . at flank speed the ranges of modern destroyers do not exceed those of some of the fast patrol boat designs.”
Seeking a role for the larger ships, Mr. Baker points out that “The provision of area anti-aircraft defense remains the principal field where destroyers and frigates excel over smaller platforms . . . .”
Certainly, small combatants need help against air attack, as Admiral Cagle makes plain in his coverage of the several brief engagements between North Vietnamese small combatants and U. S. carrier-based tactical aircraft. In each case reported, the airplanes defeated the boats decisively. In the absence, then, of fighter cover, a “medium-size warship,” to use Captain Smith’s term, armed both with SAMs and light automatic antiaircraft guns, might well find herself an indispensable part of a formation of small combatants. Indeed, some years ago it was reported in the press that the West German Navy was planning to employ its three Charles F. Adams-class DDGs in exactly that manner. Hopefully, they would be able to do better than the one airplane per 30 missiles fired that the North Vietnamese achieved.
Be that as it may, the modern small combatant, armed with weapons comparable in range and striking power to those borne by the battleships shown on our cover, but displacing only one per cent as much as those superb ships did, appears to have a promising future. As for larger combatants, if our authors are right, most of those which do not submerge will have to turn into some form of aircraft carrier.
“The twin goals” of naval war, says Admiral Wegener, “are the protection of one’s own sea traffic and the stopping of the enemy’s. The shipping of both sides must be controlled.” What is essential to all this is that there must be shipping to be controlled. The NATO countries have a great deal of shipping, and so do other countries friendly to America, such as Japan. But the United States, itself? At the beginning of 1971, reports Lieutenant Commander J. B. Finkelstein in his “Naval and Maritime Events, 1 January-30 June 1971,” the Unite States flag flew over the sterns of 764 ships. Near the end of the year, on 1 December, Mr. Finkelstein reports in his chronology of the second half of 1971 there were only 563 such ships. It is likely that a large part of that drop of 201 active American merchant ships was caused by the longshoremen’s strike on both coasts, but how many ships, driven out of business by that strike, will return? Because so many are old and tired and not really competitive; the answer is, very few.
Despite their absence from the American merchant marine, there is a growing need for supertankers, according to “The U. S. Shipping Emergency of the Seventies,” written jointly by Rear Admiral George H. Miller and Mr. Max C. McLean. As these writers point out, not only will our increasing dependence on foreign sources of oil “tend to restrict U. S. political and military freedom of action . . .” but the restrictions will be “even more serious to the extent the United States is forced to rely on foreign-flag tankers.”
An interesting point Admiral Miller and Mr. McLean make is that while both the container ship and the barge carrier are revolutionary in their impact upon shipping practices and economics, they stem from opposing philosophies. The container ship forces the cargo to go to where the ship is, and tends to concentrate all traffic in a small number of ports, while the barge carrier, through her ability to deploy her barges is able to “go to the point most convenient to the cargo.” The container ships might well result in there being “only two container ports in the North Atlantic basin—perhaps New York and Rotterdam, with the distribution on both sides being made by inland transportation . . . .” Plainly, for military purposes the barge carrier is to be preferred. But the major weakness of both types is their dependence on outside help for loading and unloading. Only the small and dwindling number of self-sustaining container ships can take care of themselves in this fundamental respect.
An interesting alternative to the noisy and polluting heavy truck traffic on our coastal roads is hinted at by the observation that there will “be a continuing requirement for smaller merchant ships to redistribute and assemble the loads carried by these wholesaling, larger transoceanic ships.” To be able to drive up the New Jersey Turnpike, for example, without the menacing presence of large long-distance trucks would substantially improve the mental and physical well-being of all who have to use such roads. If most of the goods bound from one coastal point to another, say New York to Norfolk or Jacksonville, were to travel in coastal ships, this improvement could come to pass. Unfortunately, nothing can be done in this respect for inland dwellers.
Unlike the American merchant marine—or most others, for that matter—according to T. B. Millar in “The Australian Naval Situation,” that country’s merchant marine is “overwhelmingly engaged in coastal trade important for industrial production.” Most Australians live, hence most Australian industry is, in the southeastern part of that huge country.
But the iron ore is in the northwest, and the only way to move it from where it is to where it is needed is by bulk carrier. Equally, the only way to move most things into or out of Australia is by ship, including three quarters of all the oil used in that continent. That oil comes from far away places (from Australia every other place is far away), most, in fact, from the Persian Gulf, on the other side of the Indian Ocean. Thus the extension of Soviet naval activities to that ocean has had a great impact on Australian thinking. More than anything else. Dr. Millar points out, that Soviet extension “has prompted the Australian government to begin construction of facilities at Cockburn Sound, and to deploy ships more frequently than before in the Indian Ocean.” One can foresee the time when the main body of the Australian fleet will be deployed on that side, rather than the Pacific side, of the country. Even so, the distances from Cockburn Sound to anywhere else are enormous.
What is the source of those disquieting Soviet warships? It is, says Mr. Norman Polmar in his “Soviet Shipbuilding and Shipyards,” a powerful and modern shipbuilding industry with its roots deep in Tsarist times. There are 18 major shipyards, and, according to Mr. Polmar, about half their efforts “are devoted to naval programs. The capability of these yards and of Soviet ship designers and laboratories has been dramatically demonstrated during the past decade by the quantity and quality of warships built.” This includes a powerful assortment of nuclear-powered submarines and perhaps even an aircraft carrier or sea control ship. Despite this great naval shipbuilding effort, “four of the five major shipyards built in the Soviet Union after World War II build only merchant and fishing vessels.”
Since, according to Dr. Robert Athay in “The Sea and Soviet Domestic Transportation,” ocean shipping “occupies a minor position in the Soviet domestic transportation system,” what is the purpose of the Soviet merchant marine? It is, wrote Admiral Miller and Mr. McLean, to take part in “a drive for world influence and control whose success surpasses in speed and scope all similar drives in recorded history. The spearhead of this Russian drive is not the army, as was the case in earlier times, but the commercial fleets (merchant and fishing), supported and protected by a rapidly growing naval fleet.”
This Soviet effort at sea is not without its hazards to the Russians, for, as Admiral Wegener points out, “the more the Soviets appear on the oceans of the world . . . with their growing merchant fleet, the more they expose themselves to possible maritime measures of the West.”
In the main, Dr. Athay says, the Soviet Union depends on a powerful and efficient railroad system to carry its domestic traffic. Only in the Far East does coastal shipping “have great importance for the regional economy . . . nearly all points on the extensive Pacific coast of the mainland, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and Sakhalin Island depend solely on ships for their connections with the rest of the country.”
Thus, while European navies and the U. S. Atlantic Fleet could have little influence on the economy of Russia or the logistic support of its deployed forces, the U. S. Pacific Fleet and the fleets of Japan and other Pacific states could have considerable influence on both. Perhaps more important even than this, in view of Sino-Soviet relations, is the fact that the Trans-Siberian Railway, which “forms the main transport link between the European and Asiatic areas of the U.S.S.R.,” passes, for some four-tenths of its length, within 100 miles of the Chinese border and, for long stretches, is much closer than that. The most reliable all-weather alternative to this vulnerable link is the sea passage from European Russia: through the narrow seas and straits dominated by NATO allies, south along the western rim of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, across the vast Indian Ocean, through one or another of the Indonesian straits and the Asian seas, and finally, through the Strait of Tsushima between Korea and Japan, before arriving at Vladivostok or Nakhodka on the Sea of Japan. Variants on this are the Cape Horn or Panama Canal routes. These facts, combined with the necessity to hold together the two ends of the empire may be some of the reasons behind the Soviet maritime offensive and may help us anticipate where the next thrust of that offensive will come.
One of the ironies of our time is explored by Captain Dominic A. Paolucci in “The Realities of Arms Limitations.” “If mutual deterrence at a reduced arms level is achieved through an acceptable agreement, what is the effect of the reduced number of weapons on the degree of international tension? The capability for both sides to destroy each other is still present, but, at the same time, each nation is much more vulnerable to cheating by the other—the greater the reduction in arms, the more vulnerable.” Therefore, as arms decline, tensions rise. The essence of the problem, of course, is the absence of mutual trust; with trust the arms would go away quickly enough without need of agreements. But trust must be mutual: “The failure of many agreements has been the direct result of too great a trust on the part of one of the parties . . . .”
Though, when arms limitations are discussed, weapons such as Polaris and Minuteman spring to mind, there are many other systems of direct import to large segments of the Navy which might be affected by an arms treaty. For example, the Soviets have raised the issue of the nuclear-capable bombers based aboard carriers in the Mediterranean or Pacific which could attack Soviet territory, and the “ASW forces designed to counter the SLBM forces of the other side are vitally important . . . .”
While men in Vienna, Helsinki, and Paris talk of peace, other men are still fighting in Vietnam. Curiously, the peace talks in Paris have gone on almost as long as the fighting has and now the Americans, having put their forces into the field seven years ago, have just about completed removing them with the war still in progress. The frustrations in the air over North Vietnam recorded by Admiral Cagle had their parallel ashore as Colonel James B. Soper says in “A View from FMF Pac of Logistics in the Western Pacific, 1965-1971.” American military men, writes Colonel Soper, "stand flat-footed in frustration as they defend themselves not only against an enemy they were prohibited from defeating but also the hostile element in their own society . . . the U. S. involvement has been a defensive war characterized by its logistic, rather than operational, nature.” From 1969 until the present, we have watched the interesting spectacle of ships and planes passing “in opposite directions, those loaded with equipment for South Vietnam and those returning other equipment to the United States . . . while supporting a war in one direction, we were withdrawing, re-establishing, refurbishing, inactivating, and returning material and equipment to stores in another.” The ever-thrifty Marines, whenever possible (which was quite often), using amphibious shipping already at hand, returned their forces with their equipment to various American bases where they were made ready once again to go wherever they might be required. The only question Colonel Soper has, and it is a big one, is whether, with all the decommissionings of our amphibious ships we have had and still anticipate, the Marines will still be able to carry out their share of the nation’s military burden: “If the forecast decommissionings occur, it is doubtful that the art of amphibious warfare, and the only forcible entry capability available to the United States, will remain viable.” In light of this view, it would be appropriate to glance at the table on page 338, showing what has happened to the country’s amphibious force and what is yet to occur.
Every so often it is well to be reminded that, even in peace, the mariner’s is a hazardous life, and especially, if he follows his calling beneath the surface. In his meticulously constructed tables of major submarine losses (any loss of life or severe damage to the ship constitute his criteria) in peacetime since the beginning of the century, Mr. Chester L. Somers makes plain this little-remembered fact.
The Naval Institute believes it will be clear to the reader that, in preparing their critical examinations of one aspect or another of the Navy and the world in which it operates, the authors of Naval Review 1972 have not been required either to approve or disapprove present doctrine, present action, or present trends in the fields they discuss. Each was asked to express his views on his subject, whatever those views might be.
[signed]
Frank Uhlig, Jr.
Editor
9 March 1972