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Reserves: Don't ask, order . . .
When the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf, they tasked the Commander in Chief, Pacific (CinCPac), and the Commander in Chief, Atlantic (CinCLant), with providing three vessels each for the effort. The CinCs knew that the Joint Chiefs were considering such action some time before receiving the actual order.
The Pacific Fleet’s nine minesweepers are all in the Naval Reserve Force (NRF). So when CinCPac issued his deployment orders about five days prior to the sailing date, Commander Naval Surface Force, Pacific, did not even attempt to seek reserve volunteers to man the NRF minesweepers. Instead,
he ordered active ships to provide specific rates to specific minesweepers.
The Atlantic Fleet has 12 minesweepers, three in the active force and the rest in the NRF. Of the three required, only one was available from the active force: the other two had to come from the Naval Reserve. Being closer to the Gulf and thus having more time until the sailing date, the Atlantic Fleet solicited and got 15 drilling reservists to help man the ships.
Subsequent to the ships’ departure, the Pacific Fleet’s Mine Squadron One developed a list of Selected Reserve volunteers who could man the Pacific minesweepers. The Atlantic Fleet also compiled a list of follow-on volunteers to relieve those already on their ships.
Had they asked me, I would have decided differently. Were I the decision-making flag officer, I’d call my chief of staff and say, “Mike, I am going to recommend that the Preside^1 exercise his authority under Title 10, specifically 10 USC 673b, and involuntarily recall the Selected Reserve members of those minesweeper crews.”
Not being a “yes man,” Mike responds, “But sir, isn’t that awfully controversial? Won’t we invite debate by taking that approach?”
To which I reply, “The minesweeps are in the Naval Reserve because we need them relatively infrequently; corn bined active-duty and Selected Reserve crews man the ships; we tell the assigned reservists that they are part of that ship’s crew; if we need the ship we should need her crew; and since
campaign the quick loss of four capital ships in one afternoon taught the Allies the foolhardiness of attempting to force even a small defended minefield without effective countermeasures and support. After trying and failing for a month to pass the Dardanelles, not only did four heavies rest on the bottom, but every ship of the assault force required major repairs. Failure in the Dardanelles led to the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
German submarines scattered 58 mines in six U. S. ports shortly after American entry into the war. This paltry investment paid off in the sinking of the armored cruiser the USS San Diego (CA-6) and four merchantmen and damage to the battleship the USS Minnesota (BB-22). The closure of several of the mined ports necessitated extensive sweeping with pickup forces. Mines had caught the U. S. Navy’s attention.
German failure to follow up was a significant break for the United States, whose Atlantic coastline is vulnerable to mining. With the German threat in abeyance, Americans trained their major weapon—industrial capacity—on the problem of mine production. The now familiar Mk-6 mines, designed for mass production, soon rolled off U. S. factory lines. The famous North Sea mine barrage—70,117 moored antisubmarine mines in a belt 15 to 35 miles wide and reaching 230 miles from Scotland to Norway—was composed 80% of the Mk-6, laid by the “Yankee Mining Squadron.” Postwar clearance required a year.
The United States had some warning prior to entering World War II, but with a base of not more than two or three desks in Washington, the mine warfare organization had again to be created anew. Ironically in view of this low state of readiness, the first U. S. ship to make a World War II enemy contact report was a minesweeper operating off Pearl Harbor-
From meager beginnings the mine warfare effort became commensurate with all other wartime undertakings— conducted globally and without stint of men or materials. Again, Germany mined North American ports, scattering some 350 or fewer from Trinidad to Halifax. Again, the effort was too little to stop the Allies; but it was sufficient to close several important ports for up to two weeks and to require extensive sweeping and deployment of defensive fields'
Amphibious assault operations reached historically unprece" dented levels in World War II, necessitating assault sweep11'!’ at every beachhead as well as, usually, the setting of defer1" s>ve fields. These operations demonstrated that the mine fofC motto, “Where the fleet goes, we’ve been,” was neither immodest nor inaccurate.
In scope and effect one of the greatest of naval epics is blockade of the Japanese empire. From India, Australia, Hawaii, and hard-won island bases, Allied ships, submarine5’ and aircraft hunted down and attacked Japanese shipping- They sowed mines in the shipping lanes along the Asian coast from Rangoon to Korea and Japan. Not even the interior rivers of China were immune. In the final stage, Opera' tion Starvation, U. S. Air Force B-29s saturated Japanese waters with mines. The Japanese merchant marine nearly ceased to exist, as did the import-dependent Japanese empire'
As in past wars, peacetime brought the need to clear the
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personnel. Strictly volunteer,
aw permits it, why not? I certainly °n 1 want to be the one to tell those rWervists who bust their buns for that J"P that when their ship is needed, they’re not!”
Mike makes no further comment and assures me that the communications MU be sent.
Were it the governor of a state and e had a severe natural disaster, he c°uld recall the National Guard to augment flre ancj p0fice departments. Were c°uld use the Guard to quell it. So p y couldn’t the President of the n*ted States use the Naval (or Army,
0r Air Force) Reserve for similar pur- l)0'ies on an international level? sn 1979, Naval Reserve P-3s flew rve'llance missions over the CamPeche Bay oil spill in the Gulf of Mex- lt°- The requirement was incremental, did not relate to training, readiness, nd fleet support at deployment sites. It serve crew members and mainte- ese people had to secure special per- ^'ssion from their civilian employers take additional time away from their v'lian jobs. Sufficient personnel vol- leered to do the mission’s requirements, but not one crew consisted entirely of people who had trained together. Had that situation been potentially hostile, it would have been risky to put such crews together.
When time has permitted the Naval Reserve has often sought volunteers to meet specific fleet requirements. There has never been a shortage of personnel willing to return to active duty. The recommissioning crews of the battleships have had many reservists on recall. The Campeche Bay flights, the Cuban refugee flights in 1980, and the Vice President’s South Florida AntiDrug Task Force in 1982 are all examples of reservists volunteering for special duty.
When funding constraints and congressional pressures force the Navy to assign large portions of specific missions to the reserve component, however, problems arise. Reserve missions (combat search and rescue, for instance) are usually those the Navy expects to execute only during a limited war or some greater crisis. Or they are those done in peacetime, but infrequently (minesweeping, for example). Under certain conditions, there may not be time to call for reserve volunteers to perform these missions. That is what happened with the deployment of the Pacific Fleet NRF minesweepers.
Had there been sufficient notice, I am confident that Selected Reserve volunteers could have filled the applicable portion of the crews. They may not have come from that ship’s crew and it may have taken some time to get the people together, but it would have happened. The issue is simply this: If the Navy needs a specific contingent of Selected Reservists (such as a ship’s crew), should the president call them for service involuntarily, or should he find other personnel and detach the assigned reservists from their ship? I submit that the latter defeats the purpose of the “total force,” in which active and reserve components serve as partners in executing the nation’s maritime strategy.
The Navy—as well as the Congress and the executive branch—has some hard choices to make. If we want to place missions in the reserve component, we must be willing to call the reservists involuntarily whenever the Navy wants that mission performed.
A former surface warfare officer, Captain Avella earned his naval flight officer wings in the Naval Reserve and commanded Patrol Squadron 66. He has served on the Secretary of the Navy’s National Naval Reserve Policy Board and works for Honeywell Federal Systems, Inc.
°usands of mines still hazarding shipping throughout the °rld. These clearings were long, dangerous, and expensive n(iertakings. There also remained the problem of drifting 'nes, 40,000 of which were estimated to be loose in the acific in 1946.
At war’s end the U. S. Navy stood unchallenged as the y0r,d’s preeminent sea power. Yet less than five years later a • ' S- commander was forced to report, “The U. S. Navy ,as Mst control of the sea.” A fifth-rate communist satrapy ati mined the Korean harbor of Wonsan. Offshore, more , atl a hundred U.N. ships with thousands of embarked troops ‘,*1? e9uipment steamed for a week in the tedious circles of Operation Yo-Yo,” while minesweepers (seven of which arA) struggled to clear a channel through some 3,000 mines.
As bad and embarrassing as that situation was, even more J’bering was that U. N. forces had come within a whisker of ^countering the same fate at Inchon a month earlier. North °rean forces (and their Soviet mentors) were within a day r two of mining Inchon when the landing took place. During e first two years of the Korean War all Navy ship losses nlj0% of Navy casualties could be attributed to mines. efJhe impact of the Korean experience was temporarily ben- g lcial. The Navy quickly restored mine warfare capabilities. r ‘*.Ved-up sweepers and fine new ships entered the fleet. The nks of the mine warfare force grew significantly. The heli- q Pter emerged as a capable countermeasures vehicle. Every ■>5et training exercise had to include a mine warfare phase. e Navy seemed to be learning the lessons of the 20th century. Unfortunately, the lessons were apparently soon forgotten again.
Not that the intervening years lacked reminders. Mining and other blockages—material and political—closed the Suez Canal for years, forcing expensive revisions of world shipping patterns. U. S. forces had to overcome crude but effective mines in Vietnamese rivers and they themselves engaged in extensive aerial mining. As that war wound through seemingly interminable peace talks the United States mined the port of Haiphong (belatedly in the eyes of many), producing a quick response from the North Vietnamese delegation negotiating in Paris. Britain used converted fishing trawlers to clear Argentine mines in the Falklands. In 1984,“mystery” mines appeared in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez. Terrorist groups claimed responsibility, but evidence pointed to the infamous Colonel Moammar Gadhafi as the perpetrator and the Soviet Union as his supplier.
Clearly, the historical record confirms that mine warfare is an integral element of naval power. It illustrates that maritime nations are vulnerable to mining in both home and distant waters. It shows that less developed nations and rogue political groups can wage effective mine warfare. And it demonstrates a record of interwar neglect of mine warfare in the U. S. Navy that culminated in the Persian Gulf crisis of 1987—when the world’s foremost sea power failed to counter with any celerity the antique mines of a minor power, despite knowing beforehand that mines would certainly be laid.
Captain John F. Tarpey, U. S. Navy (Retired)
^eedi
ings / February 1988
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