Part VIII: Soviet Naval operations 1965-1968: Expanding global role
This era might be called the prelude of the greatest Soviet - or even Russian - epoch of naval history. During the late 1960's the vessels specified during early 1960's were rapidly entering service although in practice there were much problems, especially in managing the combat situation picture. Defensive and offensive operations of a battle group with high speed of modern weapons was discovered to demand much more extensive data transmission and computational facilities than thought initially necessary. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that Western navies during the period had also similar problems.
But even with teething problems taken into account the new Soviet fleet seemed to symbolize the Soviet Union entering the world political scene as an equal of United States. While US defense efforts were tied in increasing quaqmire of Vietnam the Soviet Navy was supporting Brezhnev's new assertive foreign policy in the Middle East and Africa.
First operational mission to support foreign policy was the Soviet involvement in so-called Beira patrol to ensure that no oil would reach Rhodesia ruled by white minority. The Soviet offer was something United Kingdom was afraid of but had to accept as the blockade was part of an UN effort. Making of the offer was also matter of controversy in the Soviet leadership, as it was coldly calculated that a long conflict would perhaps be in Soviet interest. On the other hand, Soviet deployment was calculated to generate much good will in the West and would also give a good opportunity to learn from the Royal Navy, traditionally held in high esteem by the Soviet Navy.
In the end, the deployment was a complete success. Soviet Navy deployed CVN Moskva and her battlegroup initially followed by deployment of pairs of destroyers and cruisers. The potential blockade runners were stopped by combined RN-Soviet Navy effort which was larger than initially thought due to pressure to deploy a larger force of RN than Soviet Navy to keep the mission leadership in British hands. In the end, the oil embargo was not enough to stop the flow of oil to Rhodesia as there was no political will to extend the embargo to South African ports. This also played to Soviet hands as Soviet Union could display it's determination to work in an international effort but simultaneously USSR could show that Western Imperialists (TM) would not really bring up the pressure against South Africa, Portugal and Rhodesians. Soviet support for "movements of national liberation" was still rather covert in nature but this was merely preparing the ground for massive interventions of 1970's.
The Soviet naval support for North Vietnam was deliberately kept at low level. While supply of modern weapons was discussed it was decided that even deploying coastal ASM's might have deleterious effect. However, the exercises and deployments of Soviet Fleet perhaps had an influence on US naval efforts in sense that during the war North Vietnam was never truly blockaded, supply ships ran to Hanoi throughout the conflict.
The most serious US-Soviet clash at sea was the role of US 6th Fleet and Soviet Mediterranean Eskadra during the Six Days War. Before the conflict Soviets made a surge deployment to the Eastern Mediterranean which resulted an US 6th Fleet deployment in turn. Soviet Eskadra helped Egypt fairly aggressively with the most celebratory example being the relay of the information about Israeli massive air strike on Egypt by Soviet picket destroyers. Due to ineptness of Egyptian Air Force this did not much help the Egyptian Air Force, mostly resulting in more fighters being scrambled to be destroyed in dog fights.
While the war at sea was of minor consequences to the result of the war at whole it was a curious episode that Israeli forces engaged both Soviet and US navies during the conflict. US intelligence vessel USS Liberty was sunk by Israeli Air Force planes which resulted in surprisingly little tension between US and Israeli governments. Soviet picket destroyer Odarenny (Project 61 Kashin) was engaged during same day by Israeli destroyer INS Eilat (ex-British Z-class). The ship was (rightly) suspected by the Israelis of helping both the Egyptian air defenses and also the few Egyptian surface combatants. INS Eilat employed powerful EW measures against the ship at fairly close range. After being harassed for a number of hours the INS Eilat was hit by a torpedo and sunk by an Egyptian submarine. This incident, although minor by standards of any great naval war, led into "sub-craziness" years of 1970's when the small SSK was touted to be the greatest equalizer available for navies.
While Czechoslovakia was landlocked the Soviet Navy had a role to play during it's occupation. As a part of disinformation effort the Soviet Navy performed it's first truly global naval exercise, OKEAN-68, to display it's new might. While this exercise was in public, as everything in Soviet Union, a complete success, in reality the exercise revealed significant shortcomings especially in area of naval communication and command systems. However, the idea of networked strike force was determined to be practically sound. To perfect it a yet new generation of ships would be designed to be fielded in late 1970's.