Largely Naval WW3

From John Wingate’s ‘Frigate’, ‘Carrier’ and ‘Submarine’ trilogy

‘Assuming the superpowers were compelled to fight, even at the expense of destroying civilisation on this planet, the outcome of the land battle on the central plains of Europe would depend on whether the armies of the West could be reinforced from the American arsenal on the other side of the Atlantic.

If the Soviets were to win the Atlantic, by denying the sea-lanes to NATO reinforcements, it would be pointless for NATO to resist on the central plains. But if NATO won the Atlantic, it would be illogical for Russia to invade Europe because she would, in the end, be overwhelmed as the American reinforcements began rolling into the European ports.

The corollary was brutal: whichever side won this Battle of the Atlantic, Europe would be spared the holocaust of land warfare, a condition that the superpowers preferred: a devastated continent was a liability to both contestants, whoever nominally won.’


There is land fighting in Norway as the Soviet Union seeks to cover its naval forces moving out into the Atlantic (but doesn’t go for Iceland…….) and the Bulgarians move towards Greece and Turkey but apart from that, the fighting is confined to the convoy battles plus some cruise missile attacks on dockyards in the UK and the US while the land forces glare at each other across the German border.

What would have been the chances of this kind of scenario, I can’t see the SU giving the US time to get reinforcements across.
 
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I dont know, but "The Third World War" and Red Storm Rising" also focus quite a bit on a 1980's battle of the atlantic for the same reasons you mention.
 
Even at it's peak the SU Navy only only ever a sea denial force, rather than the sea control task of NATO. But what a sea denail force, with it's own sattelites, Tu95-142 ultra long range search aircraft, the Tu22M/AS4 as a naval strike aircraft and an array of subs which boggle the mind. But I think that the amount and power of their NATO targets would make it a huge task to stop the flow of reinforcements across the Atlantic.
 
This scenario doesn't seem to work out, because if Russia attempts to contest the atlantic, it is logical to drive as far into europe as possible, so that in the case the battle is lost the lines can dig in, and make the allied fight for moscow slow enough that an armistice or something can be arranged, or a variety of other plans that might take time could be accomplished.
 

CalBear

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It is only possible if Ivan wants to lose. The cold hard truth was the Sovs were much better off going for broke in a fast drive for the Rhine than any other strategy.

The U.S. had too much of everything, much of it air transportable for the Soviets to sit and wait a month or two & see how the Battle of the Atlantic III worked out. If you wait two months, the U.S has already moved several divisions to mate up with Reforager pre-positioned supplies, flown in tons upon tons of supplies (American law allows the USAF to take over private airliners in a National Emergency), and landed them in Europe. The Americans have also been given time to reorientate their scattered forces to the main point of attack & refresher train the huge numbers of reservists that make up a significant part of the U.S. military.

When the Red Army finally attacks it runs into a NATO force that is cocked and locked & the Soviets couldn't handle a cocked and locked NATO (and they knew it).

The belief that the Soviets would actually try to shut down the Atlantic is a fallacy. The "shut down" was more of a filtering process designed to last long enough to inflict a ground defeat on the NATO ground forces. Moscow had no doubt of what was going to happen to its sub force when it faced off against NATO; it was going to die. The same went for long range strike aircraft, they were expected to last a few missions, slow down the troop ships and pull resources away from the German central plains during the critical time period of the ground war.

A two month (or even a month) long effort to defeat the NATO fleets was doomed to fail. The Soviet Navy never had the strength to do that, their boats were too vulnerable, their surface fleet too small, and naval air arm too much of a joke to make it happen. By the time they came up with a fairly decent (i.e. scary good) sub design the Sierra (Project 945) and Akula (Project 971) class boats, the USSR itself was out of business, until then they had the "send out a bunch of lousy boats and we'll swamp 'em with numbers" mindset. That works, to a degree, at Stalingrad, it works not at all in the open ocean.

Between SOSUS, Nimrods, P-3 Orions, S-3 Vikings, USN & RN fast attacks, and the NATO destroyer/frigate fleet (with their ever present helos) and the other detection and attack resources, it was not going to be pleasant to be a Soviet submariner if the balloon went up. The Soviets would have done a lot of damage, but inside of 60 days, the Red Navy was going to be combat ineffective. That was how long Moscow had to win any war with NATO.
 
The big problem with attacking the convoys was that the USN wanted to fight and win a battle up in or beyond the GIUK gap. Therefore just to get to the convoys the Red Navy would have to transit a 'bubble' of naval power projected out to a radius of about 1000km from a multi carrier task force. Even if the Red Navy fought and won this battle I doubt they'd have the strength remaining to do much damage to the convoys.
 
I am reminded of a cartoon I once saw in a magazine. There was a group of Russian soldiers partying. In the background is the Eiffel Tower. One of the soldiers asks the others, "Oh and who won the naval war?"
 

CalBear

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I am reminded of a cartoon I once saw in a magazine. There was a group of Russian soldiers partying. In the background is the Eiffel Tower. One of the soldiers asks the others, "Oh and who won the naval war?"


There is also a version of this regarding the "air war".

In both cases they are wrong to a point that is almost stunning in its stupidity.

The Sovs needed to temporarily control the sea lanes AND the air in order for their ground offensive to work. Unlike the idiot political cartoonist(s), Moscow understood this. The Soviet leadership also understood that they couldn't pull it off (and that, even if, by some high order miracle, they succeeded, that their motor rifle divisions would wind up as radioactive ash).
 
Something like wiping out all the carriers, a whole lot of the surface ships and some land bases might accoplish this but it sounds very hard to do.
 
Short of using tacnukes, I don't see the Soviets winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Like others have said, they can interfer with the North Atlantic not control it.

I'm wondeirng did NATO think that the Soviet Fleet would try to move past Iceland and put itself across the sea lanes? Most fiction on WWIII I've read has the bulk of the Russian fleet staying north in the Norwegian Sea except for the subs and ships already at sea.
 
This scenario doesn't seem to work out, because if Russia attempts to contest the atlantic, it is logical to drive as far into europe as possible, so that in the case the battle is lost the lines can dig in, and make the allied fight for moscow slow enough that an armistice or something can be arranged, or a variety of other plans that might take time could be accomplished.

Pretty much.
The Soviet navy was pretty crap, their job is really just to delay American reinforcments/interupt them as much as possible whilst the warsaw pact's ground troops try to knock out Europe before the Americans can get there.
 
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