Blackdam wrote:
On Dec. 8, 1971, the U.S. Seventh Fleet received orders to dispatch Task Force 74 to the Bay of Bengal. The battle group was centered around the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, accompanied by nine other ships including a nuclear attack submarine. The move occurred in the face of opposition from the naval leadership, including Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, who knew it could achieve little.
Accurate and the delaying tactic I might add worked as 'planned' as TF74 arrived too late to do any good.
In fact, some argue that Task Force 74 was actually intended to pressure the Soviets to make India call off the war. According to this explanation, the task force would harass Soviet ships in the Bay of Bengal, not attack India — a plan which Navy leadership thwarted by slowing the Enterprise’s cruise with a fueling stop in Singapore and assigning it to a corner of the Bay of Bengal where there was a low probability of encountering Soviet ships. They were worried an accident could provoke World War III.
Doubtful on many levels though that may have been a post-situation 'spin'. The Navy was of course opposed to the whole deployment, (as TF74 was assigned to Vietnam and its leaving severely reduced force availability to that primary mission) which is why they made it clear they would not be deploying in a manner to do so. I'm sure this was back-channeled to the USSR.
Indeed, a Soviet naval task force from Vladivostok consisting of a cruiser, a destroyer and two attack submarines under the command of Adm. Vladimir Kruglyakov intercepted Task Force 74 in the makings of a deadly Cold War standoff.
I'd have expected better from "warisboring" actually since there was quite obviously no 'standoff' nor was the incident planned to be "tense" or "provocative" which can easily be seen by the forces involved.
TF74 was not at full strength and the Navy specifically limited it's force projection ability.
The Soviets sent a 'token' TF of their own with no ability to either defend itself or prosecute an attack on the American forces
Both "Super-Power" forces simply "confronted" each other while events played themselves out with no real tension or aggression on both side so that they both saved 'face' and could report 'success' to their superiors.
Kruglyakov gave a rousing account in a T.V. interview of “encircling” the task force, surfacing his submarines in front of the Enterprise, opening the missile tubes and “blocking” the American ships
Which sounds good unless you fully understand what's going on in which case you now KNOW there was no intention on either side of allow ANY type of "incident" to happen. "Surfacing" ones submarines is a sign of non-aggression as now the submarines are obviously 'located' and vulnerable to attack. Opening you missile tubes is like opening your gun-ports in the age of sail BUT an important factor is that IF the 'enemy' can see you do so, (and why would you do it where they can't see it as it then has no effect) then he's already well inside you MINIMUM range and it an idle threat at best. Keep in mind that all this was only possible because the US Navy ALLOWED it to happen since they would have spotted and tracked the Soviet TF from port and everyone in TF74 was aware of where the Soviets were and what they were doing.
no nuclear weapons ! and who would win ?
Assuming the Soviets fire first and don't put on any of the 'silly' displays of OTL then they MAY get a single salvo off with total surprise, the chances are not high they generate any hits though. If the 'cruiser' is an older Kynda class (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kynda-class_cruiser) she can salvo eight (8) Shaddoks, whereas if it's a Kresta 1 class they it can only launch two (2) neither of which is capable of overwhelming the defenses of TF74. The attack subs will be spotted and tracked long before they get into attack range and at the first sign of conflict the US SSN will sink one if not both of them with back up from TF74s ASW assets. The Shaddock's will be knocked down either by Enterprises' CAP (which can easily engage a Mach 0.9 air target) and if any got through that the Standard Block-1s would take out the remaining before they reached the Enterprise. And that's that. IF Enterprise has no attack assets in the air the two Soviet surface ships have a slim chance to run for the coast of Pakistan but it is unlikely they'd make it before being destroyed by either air strike or torpedoes. They have too few defenses on too few platforms to have any chance of engaging or surviving.
If the American's 'engage' first the Soviets can take down some aircraft but the end result is little different simply because there is no force parity in this scenario. Which was, I'll point out again, the whole POINT of the 'confrontation' as the Soviets specifically didn't send out enough forces to be either 'threatening' or provocative to the US forces but counted on the US forces to avoid engaging in any provocative actions. It was literally a 'show' of force with no meaning or threat by both sides.
Randy