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"Let us study the leaders!” writes Rear Admiral Walter Ansel in Hitler Confronts England. In this remarkable work, published by Duke University Press 13 years ago, on "the pivotal event of the war and one in history,” the Admiral shows that, after the German legions had conquered most of the Continent and only a few miles of water stood between them and the dominion of the world, it was because of the failings of the Third Reich’s political, military, and naval leaders that the German forces made no attempt to cross the English Channel and subdue their principal enemy.
It is the leaders—who and what they are—that we must understand.
With thoughts such as these in mind, the Naval Institute asked John Erickson, professor of politics and lecturer in higher defence studies at the University of Edinburgh, to write "The Soviet Naval High Command.”
The Soviet naval leadership consists of men whose experiences, whose Service’s history, and whose country’s history, are all very different from those of our naval leaders. The men who now lead the Soviet Navy have known bitter opposition at the hands of Stalin and Khrushchev and crushing defeat at the hands of the Germans. They have survived all these things and they are tough men. They have seen how the possession of powerful navies has permitted the Western allies to influence events far from home while simultaneously frustrating Soviet desires beyond the reach of Soviet armies. We have seen the preparation and the response of these able men in the powerful war fleets which cross our bows in any part of the world the Soviet Union wishes to send them.
Who are these men? How do they rise? What are their thoughts? What are their means of influencing the thoughts of others? We cannot answer all these questions, at least not all of them here and now.
But, more than any other single person, Professor Erickson has answered them and many others.
Professor Erickson observes that though some Western commentators "insist that the Soviet Navy has been designed and even deployed to 'win without combat,’ such a prescription must strike the professional naval man in the Soviet Union as somewhat bizarre in view of his own training, indoctrination, and background. There is, for
Preface 5
example, none of this metaphysical meandering in the basic textbook on the history of naval operations compiled for use in the Soviet Navy’s higher naval schools. What determines the development of the Soviet Navy is the assessment of naval capabilities on the part of a potential enemy, as well as the nature of the war in which Soviet naval forces will presumably participate. NATO naval forces are the potential enemy and their capability is exemplified most formidably in nuclear submarines and attack carriers. . . . The Soviet Navy is assigned to counter these maritime threats, in addition to co-operation with the Soviet ground forces on 'coastal axes’ and attacking enemy maritime lines of communication. This was also to be an oceanic navy capable of undertaking 'strategic tasks of an offensive nature,’ though the absence of aircraft carriers meant that surface units could not operate under war conditions save within the operating limits of shore-based air cover. . . After examining the nature of some of the new Soviet warships, Professor Erickson points out that "Soviet attention seems to be riveted on the problem of survivability and winning in the coming ship-to-ship missile environment.”
An aircraft carrier of sorts is nearing completion on the shores of the Black Sea, but it will be a long time before this ship and her successors can have substantial influence on the strategy, operations, and tactics of the Soviet Navy. For the foreseeable future that navy will continue to consist mainly of submarines and shore-based airplanes. The possibilities open to them in war and, even more, those of the spectacular Soviet surface ships, will be hampered by the absence (or at least, scarcity) of seaborne airplanes.
"Where will they operate in war?” We might better ask, "Where must they operate?”
Part of the answer to that question is supplied by Captain Gerald E. Synhorst in his examination of "Soviet Strategic Interest in the Maritime Arctic.” Captain Synhorst makes the point known to all of us, yet sometimes ignored, that "access to the open ocean can never be taken lightly by Soviet naval planners.” Not so much because of the location’s desirable qualities as because of deficiencies almost everywhere else, the Soviet Union’s premier naval base lies well above the Arctic Circle, at Murmansk, "the only Soviet port with ready wartime access to
the world’s oceans.” Hence, one finds at Murmansk "not only the largest naval base in the Soviet Union” but also "the world’s largest naval base, exceeding in number of ships supported, all the U. S. Atlantic ports combined.”
"To the south of the Arctic basin are the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Across these go the vital American lines of communications. To be effective, the Soviet ballistic missile submarines homeported in Murmansk must exit the Arctic and attain position off the U. S. coast. Soviet attack submarines, too, must exit the Arctic to get at those maritime lines of commerce.
"This coin has two sides. The Russian planner, working out the defense of either the Murman Coast or the Northern Sea Route and Siberia, would not want to wait until the opposing hostile submarines had gained the expansive shelter of the Arctic ice cap. If there are gates into the Arctic he would want to stop the opposition at the gates. Thus, both America and the Soviet Union have strong motives for wanting to patrol the gates between the Arctic Ocean and the rest of the world’s oceans. In case of war, certainly, both would like to be able to close the gates.” By far the most important passages, says Captain Synhorst, are those that lie between Greenland and France, known collectively as the "Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap,” or G-I-UK Gap. In this respect, "Iceland and the Denmark Strait would be just as important today as they were in the summer of 1941 when America took over the defense of Iceland and U. S. destroyers began patrolling the Denmark Strait.
. . the position of Norway, especially northern Norway, appears untenable. On the one hand, ships and aircraft operating from the Norwegian ports, such as Hammerfest, Tromsp, and Narvik, control the entrances to the Barents Sea. On the other hand, it would be difficult to foresee a situation in which Soviet naval power would not be absolutely predominant in the same area.”
Because of these facts, among others, the Soviets "have tailored their surface naval units based at Murmansk to exercise control in the Norwegian and Barents seas—that is, in the waters north of the G-I-UK Gap. These ships have sacrificed endurance and ammunition reload capacity for economy and speed. They are meant for the short distances
6
U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Naval Review 1973
required in these northern waters.”
There is much more to it than that, as Captain Synhorst makes clear: "The shallow, narrow stretch of water of the North Sea between the Shetlands and southern Norway is also strategically important. If the Atlantic powers can maintain the eastern extremity of the G-I-UK Gap here instead of at the Strait of Dover, some important advantages arc gained. The Soviet sea line of communciation between the Baltic and Barents forces remains unusable. The bulbous part of southern Norway, where the population lives, stays in communication with the West. Perhaps most important, a shield is formed which permits shipping across the North Sea from Britain to Belgium, Holland, and West Germany.
"Troublesome to U. S. naval planners contemplating the G-I-UK Gap ... is the fact that NATO supply lines to West Germany lie on the Arctic side. . . . The loss of southern Norway would mean the isolation of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Germany unless communications across France were possible.”
There is a shorter route to southern Norway for the Warsaw Pact than from Murmansk: from the Baltic via the Danish Straits.
As Rear Admiral Edward Wegener of the Federal German Navy wrote in Naval Review 1969,
"Southern Norway must ... be defended in Denmark and the Norwegians must rely on the proper functioning of the Danish defense system. If it fails, southern and western Norway fall easy prey to a Russian attack through the Skagerrak. The Red Baltic Fleet and its naval air units could advance into Western Norway’s fjords, where, their connection with their sources of power in the Eastern Baltic well secured, they could join forces with their Arctic Sea Fleet. This powerful combination of naval forces would be in a position to control the Arctic Ocean and the North Sea, and threaten Great Britain. The antisubmarine defenses of NATO would be in danger. Soviet submarines would not only be several hundred miles closer to their operation areas in the Atlantic, but could get there in relative safety.”
It has been said that the Soviet Baltic Fleet is no serious threat because it lacks powerful seagoing ships, such as the Yankee-class ballistic missile
submarines and Kresta-class missile cruisers. This is a simplistic view, and it misses the mark because such large ships can serve little purpose in the Baltic. The ships useful in that narrow sea are submarines, fast patrol boats, minelayers and sweepers, and landing craft. In all these useful types the Soviet Union and its associates in the Warsaw Pact can overwhelm the NATO forces, as pointed out by Gerhard Albrecht in the recently-published Weyer’s Warships of the World, 1973: of submarines the NATO Baltic powers (West Germany and Denmark) have 16, the Pact (the U.S.S.R., Poland, and East Germany) has 61; of missile-armed fast patrol boats the West has none, the Pact has 70; of other fast patrol boats the West has 56, the Pact has 225; of minesweepers the West has 82, the Pact has 170; and of landing craft the West has 24 and the Pact, 115.
While contacts between U. S. and Soviet warships in the Norwegian Sea are episodic and in the Baltic they are simply rare, in the Mediterranean, they are commonplace. In the Mediterranean alone do the two largest navies in the world maintain substantial fleets in the same waters. Each fleet has important missions to perform, some offensive, others defensive. Accordingly, as the Chief of the Hellenic Navy, Vice Admiral Constantine Margaritis, writes, at the beginning of a war, "The primary objective of the Soviet Navy will be the destruction of as many ships as possible of the U. S. Sixth Fleet.” Of course, the reverse will be equally true: "The conflict with the Sixth Fleet and the naval forces of the other NATO countries of this sector will take the form of an all-out struggle for survival and destruction of the enemy.”
"In this contest,” Admiral Margaritis continues,
"a strong NATO grip on the Turkish Straits is bound to doom Russian forces in the Mediterranean because of the resulting Soviet inability to provide adequate logistic support, reinforcements, and air cover to those forces. In case the Turkish Straits arc seized by Warsaw Pact forces, so long as the Greek ports located in Thrace—Thessalonika, Kavalla, and Alexandroupolis—do not fall into Soviet hands or, at the very least, as long as NATO maintains control of the Aegean, the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet is still doomed.
"Should the Soviets occupy Thrace and gain control of the Aegean, they will render the Turkish
Preface 7
Straits untenable to NATO for, in addition to the obvious possibilities of overland assault through Bulgaria and amphibious assault from the Black Sea, the defenders of the Straits will be cut off in the rear from all help. . .
If disaster, indeed, occurs in Thrace, or at the Straits, what then? Is all lost? Must reinforcements and supplies for the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet pour south inevitably from the Black Sea? Is it then inevitable that the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet will control the Eastern Mediterranean?
No, not yet, and perhaps not at all, says Admiral Margaritis, for—unless NATO were either extremely unlucky or extremely foolish—the Aegean islands would still be available and, most importantly, so would Crete. That famous, craggy island, "together with the islands to its east and west . . . forms a natural defensive line in the Aegean which, when properly organized, can form an effective barrier to any exit of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet into the Mediterranean. ... It is obviously also useful as a base for operations to meet the threats from the south. These advantages make Crete the most important base in the Eastern Mediterranean for supporting operations for the control and surveillance of this sea and the protection of the supply routes to Greece and Turkey.”
Of course, without forces to use it, Crete is nothing more than a large hazard to navigation. Airplanes there must be, and soldiers and ships. Not big ships, for they would find the short distances and narrow waterways of the Aegean confining; therein they would become not hunters, but hunted. What then? Small submarines, missile-armed fast patrol boats, mine layers and sweepers. Ships similar to those which would contest for control of the Baltic would serve well in the Aegean. "Depths and geography . . . render the operations of small submarines more advantageous than those of large nuclear ones. FPBs and FPB(G)s can operate in the Aegean throughout the year by taking advantage of weather-protected bays, coves, and sea areas to the leeward of the islands, and by hiding in suitable indentations in the coast from which they can make surprise attacks against much more powerful ships. . .
Accordingly, the Hellenic Navy "is making considerable efforts toward modernization by placing
emphasis on FPB(G)s and modern submarines.” Similarly the Turkish Navy, whose main mission is in the Black Sea "for the control of the Straits in cooperation with land and air forces,” will rely "mainly on FPBs and submarines.” Turkey has 11 of the former and 16 of the latter. Unfortunately, all of Turkey’s submarines are quite old and too big, for they are former U. S. submarines, designed and built to fight in the enormous Pacific Ocean.
What the Hellenic and Turkish navies lack most of all is fighter and attack aircraft, for "the success of naval operations in the advanced areas of the Aegean and the Black Sea will depend largely upon the ability of the Hellenic and Turkish air forces, reinforced by Allied aircraft and aided, as far as the situation might permit, by aircraft of the Sixth Fleet, to ensure air superiority or at least air balance in these areas. . . .” To be sure, as Admiral Margaritis points out, Allied air forces do exist in the area, but they are likely to be engaged heavily in their own efforts and in support of the battle ashore. In such circumstances, air forces are likely to leave navies on their own. Curiously, of all the European nations, only West Germany and France appear to have learned this lesson and provided accordingly for their naval aviation needs.
Although the U. S. Navy has long been well ahead of the rest of the world in its understanding and use of aviation at sea, it has long been behind most of the rest of the world in its understanding and use of small combatants at sea. But the grounds for that criticism are disappearing rapidly, as Arthur Davidson Baker, III, points out in "Small Combatants—1973,” which is the second half of a two-part survey of the world’s small warships.
"Hardly more than a year ago,” Mr. Baker says,
"small combatant development in the United States was subject to criticism—principally because so little was being done when so much potential (and need) was evident. This is no longer the case. . . . Today, craft like the PHM and the CPIC are ready for full production, and we may regain the lead lost to Western European and Soviet naval shipbuilders during the 1950s and 1960s.”
Meanwhile, two of the modern, but under-armed Asheville class of fast patrol boats, the Antelope and the Ready, "were rearmed during 1971-1972 to include two launchers for surface-to-surface version
of the Standard missile,” an "outgrowth of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s 1971 experiment in sending two of the class, the Surprise and the Beacon, to the Mediterranean to shadow Soviet missile ships. This they were able to do, but, unfortunately, as then armed, the ships posed little (if any) threat to the vastly more powerful Soviet ships. . . .
"The next step for the U. S. Navy is the introduction of the hydrofoil, propelled by gas turbines and armed with missiles. . . . Not only does the U. S. Navy have a requirement for such a craft, but several of the NATO navies have also expressed a serious interest. The PHM will be a true offensive warship for use in attacking enemy surface forces. . In this respect, Lieutenant Commander J. B. Finkclstein’s entry for 9 December in his "Naval and Maritime Events” for 1972 is pertinent: "The USS Plainview (AGEH-i) successfully test fired two Sea Sparrow missiles while foilborne and traveling at 42 knots off the coast of Washington. . . As Mr. Baker points out, at 310 tons, the Plainview is the world’s largest naval hydrofoil and, though Sea Sparrow is not intended for use against ships, the test remains significant.
Certainly, one can find plenty of use for small combatants in the narrow seas we have been discussing. But do they have use in the great oceans—the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian? It is in the last-named that we get an answer. An Indian naval officer, Lieutenant Commander Ravi Kaul, writing about "The Indo-Pakistani War and the Changing Balance of Power in the Indian Ocean,” tells us that the Indian Navy planned, after war with Pakistan had begun, for some of the eight new Osa-class FPB(G)s acquired from the Soviet Union to "spearhead the attack on the Karachi fortress. . . Three Osa-class boats, escorted by a pair of Russian-built Indian frigates, attacked Karachi at night: "Two Pakistani destroyers patrolling outside the harbor were hit by missiles and severely damaged. . . . The Khaibar sank and the Badr'% bridge was hit by a missile, resulting in complete loss of command and control. Pakistan subsequently announced the positions of six wrecks in the approaches to Karachi harbor.” A few nights later a second attack hit some oil storage tanks and sank a British merchant ship in Karachi harbor. Too late for inclusion in his essay, Commander Kaul
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added the information that, for the first attack, the Osa boats were staged from the advanced base at Okha on the Gulf of Kutch, some 220 miles from Karachi. For the second attack, a tow was used. It might be objected that these attacks by small warships took place on the fringe of a great ocean, But, no matter how great the ocean, seaports are all on the fringe and seaports are where the enemy’s ships, both naval and merchant, are to be found. Of course, as Commander Kaul points out, the Osa boats "would not be able to operate in the open sea even in moderately severe sea states.” But there are more sea kindly hulls than the Osa’s, more advanced missiles and fire control systems, and, perhaps most importantly, in large parts of the world, the sea seldom is very rough.
Commander Kaul also has some interesting commentary on the Enterprise task force’s entry into the Indian Ocean while the Indo-Pakistani War was on, an act which India found unfriendly: "When India finally does go nuclear, the Enterprise's visit will have assisted the process.” Whatever purposes might have lain behind the American dispatch of Task Force 74 into the Indian Ocean at that time, and whatever American purposes might have been served, this thought should also be included in our thinking on the subject. Clearly, naval presence is a useful instrument, but it can cut two ways.
Of course, Commander Kaul writes of events from the viewpoint of an Indian. Certainly, there are other viewpoints—Pakistani and American, to name the two most prominent in his talc—to be heard on various of these matters.
An interesting strategic point made by Commander Kaul concerns the Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal. "Owned by India, they arc important to any navy aspiring to control the Bay and the entrance to the Malacca Strait.” He remarks that "India is defensively poised as far as the security of the islands is concerned. There is concern about Chinese submarines and fishing vessels and possible encroachments from Indonesia—a legacy from the Sukarno era.”
It was American concern about China, and perhaps Indonesia, too, in the Sukarno era, that appears more than anything to have prompted American entry into the Vietnamese War. And whilc India’s wars with China and Pakistan have been
Preface 9
mercifully brief, Vietnam’s war with herself, and our share in that war, have not been. In "Marine Corps Operations in Vietnam, 1969-1972.” Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons describes the last three years of the Marines’ long campaign in that country. The last battles fought by the Marines in Vietnam I took place not far from where the first ones took place. As observed in Naval Review 1968, there was a ^ "similarity between this particular ground war and the normal conditions of naval war, which is also frontless. In naval war, . . . the sinking of a U-boat 3 in a given position yesterday provides no guarantee that there will not be another one in the same place today. Neither does the destruction of a Viet Cong battalion today mean that tomorrow there won’t be another one in the same place. Just as with the U-boat, until the enemy show themselves, we probably won’t know they are there.”
’ Near the end of the fourth and final essay in his s series on Marine Corps operations in Vietnam—the first three appeared in Naval Review 1968, 1969 and 1970—General Simmons observes that "at least a state of equilibrium if not victory had been reached in South Vietnam. . .
For the future of the Marine Corps and the position of amphibious warfare in the armory of American military skills, perhaps the central 1 observation General Simmons makes concerns the amphibious forays the Marines made in Vietnam: "Most important of all, perhaps, was that the lfC landings not only kept the amphibious art alive, but e also actually advanced it by providing testing and >° training in a combat environment. A large number of Marines and Navy men were exposed to the doctrine, procedures, and techniques of amphibious operations which they otherwise would have missed.” When one considers what has happened recently to the amphibious cause in both the Marine Corps and Navy, evidently that wasn’t enough, d While the Marines were drawn into Vietnam in perhaps a larger way than best served the interests of the nation—or, at least, in a way that made little use of their most important skill, that of amphibious warfare (in Naval Review 1972, Colonel J. B. Soper called it the art of "forcible entry”)—the Coast Guard was well employed—eventually—as is made plain by Rear Admiral James W. Moreau in "The iilf Coast Guard in the Central and Western Pacific.”
But looking to the future, he says that "the Coast Guard has many special capabilities that should be employed fully from the beginning of any future conflict.” He points out that there "are far too many persons who want to convert the Coast Guard into a non-military force. To do so would deprive our nation of a valuable defense force. . . .”
One of Professor Erickson’s observations is that the "vast Soviet trawler and ocean fishing fleets are handled by the Ministry of Fishing Economy, which maintains a communications center to track and signal its fleets. This is a prestigious and productive empire, and Gorshkov and his associates have labored to exploit it. . .” Among those who must deal with those prestigious and productive trawler and ocean fishing fleets are the officers and men of the U. S. Coast Guard.
In the huge area examined by Admiral Moreau, the Bering Sea is of central concern, and "Honolulu-based cutters will continue to be involved in patrolling the 6,500-mile Alaskan coastline and the Bering Sea. . . . More than 1,200 individual foreign fishing vessels regularly operate in Alaskan waters, and at any one time, there will be from 100 to 600 of them. In July 1971, there were 574 Japanese vessels alone in the patrol area. At that time only 23 Soviet vessels were present. However, in February 1972, in this same Alaskan patrol area, the number of Soviet fishing vessels peaked at 171, and Japanese vessels numbered 86. These vessels ranged in size from 85-foot catcher boats to 20,000-ton factory ships.” Though the Japanese fishing vessels cause little trouble, that is not always true of the Soviet vessels; at one point a Coast Guard cutter had to man her gun battery before a fleeing Soviet factory ship, carrying away with her a small Coast Guard custody crew, hove to.
Admiral Moreau concludes with the observation that the "thrust of Coast Guard operations will shift towards regulatory work and law enforcement,” and he expresses concern that "future Coast Guard roles and missions may not involve or employ adequate seagoing force to give the Service a proper balance. This balance becomes critical as the ratio of shore to sea billets increases, for the nature of our work ashore requires administrators with extensive experience afloat.”
A fast-developing segment of that regulatory and
10 U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Naval Review 1973
law enforcement work is discussed by Lieutenant Commander Hugh Williams in his "Dangerous and Exotic Cargoes.” Because of the shortage of energy in the United States, this country "will soon be importing large quantities of hazardous bulk materials.” Such materials are generally liquids and while oil is the largest single hazardous cargo, there are about 360 others, including liquefied natural gas and benzene. Such cargoes can burn or they can poison. Moreover, "chemicals can be corrosive, radioactive, pyrophoric, or explosive . . . and, if a chemical possesses any one of these disagreeable characteristics, that is no guarantee that it doesn’t also possess some of the others.” For example, on 1 February 1972, it was benzene which destroyed the SS V. A. Fogg and her crew of 34. On 20 November, it was benzene that killed three people in an empty tank of the William T. Steele. In the first case, the men died in an explosion, in the second, by poisoning. While, generally, "discovering and understanding hazards is not a 'learn-by-experience’ process,” these disasters show that sometimes it is only through experience that we are willing to learn.
As we have seen, dangerous and exotic cargoes can take a few lives, as in the case of the William T. Steele, or they can take a lot of lives and a whole ship, as in the case of the V. A. Fogg or the SS Marine Sulphur Queen. The latter, laden with 15,260 tons of molten sulphur and a crew of 39 "departed Beaumont, Texas, en route to Norfolk, Virginia, on 2 February 1962. On 20 February, a life preserver and a foghorn stenciled with the vessel’s name was found. That was all. The wreck of the ship has never been found.” Their potential for taking hundreds of lives has not been tested since the explosion which wiped out the waterfront at Texas City, Texas, in 1947, but we have had a couple of close calls, such as in March 1972, when a chlorine barge broke loose from her tow and became lodged in the spillway of a dam upriver from Louisville, Kentucky. That "required that tens of thousands of people suddenly be evacuated.”
Interestingly, "the major portion of hazardous bulk materials carried in U. S. flag vessels is moved by barge in domestic trade. Ocean shipments in the U. S.-flag tankers are also almost wholly limited to domestic movements, primarily coastwise and intercoastal.” Because "our substantial foreign trade
in hazardous bulk materials is carried almost entirely in foreign flag tankers,” for the protection of American lives and property, the U. S. Coast Guard is engaged in inspection of ships being built in foreign yards for those foreign owners who hope to send their ships into American ports (and even, in some cases, of ships which are not ever expected to enter U. S. ports).
The Gulf coast is that part of our country where "most bulk chemical movements begin or end. It is from Houston, Galveston, New Orleans, and other such ports that tank barges and ships move inland or coastwise, and chemical tankers sail for foreign destinations. . . . The northeast ports currently receiving shipments of liquefied gas include Providence, Boston, and New York. But the primary deep-water trade pattern for the more hazardous cargoes is between the Gulf coast and Western Europe. Rotterdam appears similar to the Gulf coast in this respect. . . .”
It is not surprising, in view of the foregoing that, "in just four years, the Coast Guard’s involvement in hazardous materials safety has created a new officer career specialty” or that, as Admiral Moreau says, the nature of this work requires officers "with extensive experience afloat.”
On this issue, Rear Admiral John D. Hayes observes in his Sea Power Commentary, "The Sea 1967-1972,” that "regulation and order are now coming to the growing barge traffic on U. S. inland waters, once as free of controls as today’s ocean shipping. Enlightened maritime legislation and U. S. Coast Guard enforcement are bringing this about.”
Even though we may be establishing order in our inland waters, Admiral Hayes points out that "all is certainly not right upon the oceans. Chaos there is rather the order of things. Collisions, explosions, and sinkings are increasing; competence of crews, especially licensed officers, is deteriorating; traffic conditions in critical seaways, like the English Channel, are becoming unbearable; and the oceans, especially their rich continental shelves, are being polluted.”
Perhaps it is here, under international auspices and internationally funded, that the U. S. Coast Guard can continue to provide as a service, both to the mariners of the world and to its own people, the deep-water experience they need in order to work
most effectively in their own specialties. This is no new thing, of course; the ocean stations which only recently have been abolished (with one exception) and which were served mainly by ships of the U. S. Coast Guard, were paid for internationally. An even earlier—and still operative—example is that of the International Ice Patrol, funded internationally since soon after the Titanic was sunk in 1912 and carried out almost ever since by the Coast Guard.
As Commander Williams and Admiral Hayes agree, it is the search for energy overseas and the need to bring it home, which are such driving forces in our time. Admiral Hayes writes that "no doubt a turning point in the economic history of the United States was reached in 1972 when the first load ever of foreign crude oil was brought into Texas City for refining.” Where that particular load came from, the Admiral doesn’t say. But clearly, more oil will come from the Persian Gulf than from any other source.
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Preface
To reach the United States, Persian Gulf oil must travel south through the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and north through the Atlantic, between Africa and South America. Captain Raymond A. Komorowski says, in his "Latin America—An Assessment of U. S. Strategic Interests”, that not only does Europe depend on oil passing through these waters but also we ourselves: "However great U. S. security interest in the South Atlantic-Atlantic Narrows area may now be because of NATO commitments, the future will likely increase U. S. concern” because of the energy shortage in our country.
"Atlantic Narrows” is a comparative term only. From Natal, on South America’s easternmost point, to Freetown, near Africa’s westernmost point, are nearly 1,600 sea miles. This is no place to depend on small combatants either to attack or protect ships passing through. It is a place for large submarines, shipborne airplanes, and other naval instruments able to operate for long periods far from any base. It is no surprise, then, that, as Captain Komorowski tells us, Argentina and Brazil are building in their own yards, or buying elsewhere, modern submarines and escorts. Regrettably, not a single one of these new ships will be built to designs originating in the United States.
It is a matter of more than mild interest that, while the Soviet Navy builds Kynda, Kresta, Kresta
II, Krivak, and now Kara, the U. S. Navy has not a single comparable ship; while the Soviet Navy builds Moskva, Leningrad, and the mystery carriers on the Black Sea, of which the first is provisionally assigned the name Kiev, the U. S. Navy discards old carriers faster than it adds new ones; while the Soviet Navy builds a dozen nuclear submarines a year, the U. S. Navy builds half that number. To a degree, this kind of thing is bearable, even for a nation which must live by the products which come from across the oceans. But this kind of thing has gone on for a long time now. When will it stop? When will the graph of American naval power turn upward?
In presenting these essays in Naval Review, the Naval Institute does not pretend to do more than offer tools to other men, with the aim of helping them add to their knowledge of professionally important and interesting things and perhaps to help them sharpen their own thinking on these subjects. Those who disagree with what is written here, in part or in whole, explicitly or implicitly, are invited to take issue with our writers. Our pages are open to them.
O-V.
Frank Uhlig, Jr. Editor
27 February 1973