WI: Naval war between Sweden and USSR?

If Soviet ships had crossed the battle line, the coastal artillery guns and mine stations would have gone to battle stations, strike aircraft armed with anti-ship missiles and reconnaissance planes would have been scrambled, and fast attack craft would have been sent out to confront the ships.

How do I know this? This actually happened when two ships were detected crossing the battle line. It turned out those were two German cargo ships entering the port of Karlskrona.:D

But with these forces at hand, and considering the fact that the Soviets had only a handful of destroyers and tugboats at hand, the Soviets would probably have gotten a bloody nose. Once they crossed into Swedish territorial waters, they would have been warned to turn back, and if they ignored that warning, the destroyers would have gone down. But it would likely be a pyrrhic victory for the Swedes.

After this, the Soviets may have conducted a retaliatory airstrike against the Karlskrona naval base to destroy the base and its fleet to avenge the humiliation and restore national pride and deterrence. They would also want to destroy the submarine to keep the Soviets from stealing their secrets. Soviet pilots would probably be equipped for air-to-air combat with Swedish interceptors, and if the Swedish Air Force scrambles the jets in time, we will see actual dogfights taking place. This in addition to the anti-aircraft fire that will initially greet the Soviets. I would bet on the Soviets prevailing in the dogfights. So overall, the Swedes would have some damage and casualties at the base, a few ships damaged and maybe sunk, and some planes shot down. My guess is the Soviets would lose one or two planes, but maybe a few more.

After this, the conflict pretty much ends. The Soviets have exercised vengeance, and are not interested in a full-blown naval war, especially one that could draw US or NATO involvement. Sweden, meanwhile, abandons its policy of neutrality and quickly seeks to join NATO.

I totally agree whit your assessment.
 
An bombing of Stockholm goes under Krigsfall 2 C. No mobilization is in place to defend the Capital.

1981 is 31 years ago. I would be surprised if you could see any of the old air defenses. They were several permanent emplacements spaced around Stockholm in bases that are still used today (I'm too lazy to actually Google them up and list them but there is at least 3 still in use) and were based on radar guided ground to air robots. It's not old ww2 equipment so you would not see men on the streets whit searchlights.

If mobilization could be conducted there is several mobile ant air units to be placed in Stockholm (the famous BAMSE system could be deployed on the back of a truck). But in case of surprise attack the regular static air defenses and the fighter cover would have to defend the capital.

Now how effective the were in reality I don't know. Not so much against wave after wave of the whole Soviet Air force but small attacks etc I would gather it would have been really effective. Its costly enough to discourage some half hearted lone bomber attack.

According to wikipedia the only Bamse we had to defend ourselves with in 81 was the cartoon bear
 
I believe the Soviets sent a destroyer and two frigates to pick up the sub and bring it home. The PM's orders were to hold the border and the coast defences and air force were ready.

Sweden was quite militarized at the time, and by then much of the armed forces were alerted and ready. Coast and air defences around Karlskrona, which was an important naval base, were very good. (Lots of missiles, coastal artillery, missile boats, rangers stationed on the small islands, and a heavily mined sea).

As mentioned above, would the Soviets had crossed the border they would had been warned, and ultimately fired upon and sunk.

This was exactly the limited skirmish the armed forces was good at, and I believe the Soviets would lose those ships if that happened.

While I weren't there at the time, I know of a (then) lieutenant who was. Special forces were ready to take control of the sub.

I believe preparations were made for an air campaign. A lot of Swedish roads are built to act as emergency airfields, and the JA 37 Viggens (like the Gripens today) are capable on landing on those short strips to be re-armed by a handful of conscripts. At the time that organization was apparently prepared to "go live".

(In the event of a war the airfields were, probably rightly, assumed to be the #1 Soviet target. The fighters were to lift of, fire their missiles against incoming bombers, land at roads, be rearmed and go back up again).

Both the planes and the pilots were of very high quality. (I believe a JA 37 was the first plane to intercept and lock on to a SR-71 for example).

At the time I believe Sweden was to well defended against air or naval attack for the Soviets to try with anything.

Of course the Soviets could strike back and defeat the Swedish armed forces if they really wanted to, but I doubt they would want the effort, casualties and take the risk. After all, there were US subs in the archipelago, and as recent research has shown, Sweden was (and is) informally a NATO member.

More likely they would lose a ship or two, but they are handed their sub back through diplomacy and the entire thing is covered up.

Several air incidents were handled in a similar manner. Swedish jets often intercepted Soviet flying too close to the border, and often some kind of chasing / dogfighting happened (with no firing), yet sometimes with casualties. I know of at least one MiG that crashed into the sea (with pilot) after trying to follow a Viggen in a dive.

Let me see if I understand the situation here.

Some sort of naval skirmish occurs in the Baltic as a result of the submarine incident, with the Soviets getting the worst of it. At that point, there is a Soviet decision to make about how to follow up. Most here seem to be of the impression that escalation is the only option, but that seems likely to be a very expensive one from the Soviet perspective.

Let's define the freedom of action for the USSR here.

1. The USSR is not going to invade Sweden and occupy the country. NATO would have a cow over something like that, and it would be a costly undertaking at best. One wonders what the diplomatic repercussions would be as well.

2. The USSR cannot totally ignore the incident. It'd probably be too humiliating for domestic factions to stomach, and make the Soviets look weak.

The problem with a reaction closer to #1 than #2 is that the USSR will be unable to control Sweden's actions afterwards, and they are unlikely to be favorable. A harsh Soviet reaction that involves bombing Sweden leaves the door completely open to a tide of NATO support during the conflict, and would seem to guarantee Swedish membership in the alliance later. I doubt that Thatcher and Reagan are going to complain much about the cost of defending Sweden from Soviet aggression either, and Moscow wouldn't likely be winning any friends in Denmark or Norway.

There's no doubt that the USSR could eventually win a conflict with Sweden if it was willing to invest the effort and military resources. It's the overall costs to the long-term Soviet position that makes further escalation a very costly and unrewarding proposition for Moscow, even if it "wins" a limited war.


Very much doubt they would retaliate if the coast defence fired on their salvage operation. As others mentioned before me, the defences would make anything short of an all-out attack a quite costly thing for the Soviets, and they knew it. That was the plan all along, called "the Swedish hedgehog". Too sticky to be worth it.


Their best option at the time was to return eventual fire, while working through diplomacy and threats to get their sub back, cover it up, and forget it.

The Soviets at first probably wanted to sail up to the sub and tow it home. Would the ships they sent be fired upon they would return fire, but they probably knew that would be their end. So they tried to see if the Swedes would let them through peacefully, and they wouldn't. So they didn't try.

We eventually handed them their sub back anyway, with the nuclear torpedo and everything.
 
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Let's define the freedom of action for the USSR here.
1. The USSR is not going to invade Sweden and occupy the country. NATO would have a cow over something like that, and it would be a costly undertaking at best. One wonders what the diplomatic repercussions would be as well.
Off on a tangent, there appears to have been a subset at the
conservative end of the political spectrum who firmly believed that the
NATO reaction to the inevitable Soviet invasion would be, essentially, to
point and laugh at the silly neutral liberal lefties as they were overrun.
 

Hkelukka

Banned
Off on a tangent, there appears to have been a subset at the
conservative end of the political spectrum who firmly believed that the
NATO reaction to the inevitable Soviet invasion would be, essentially, to
point and laugh at the silly neutral liberal lefties as they were overrun.

If well played by Nato this could lead to every USSR border and Near border country joining NATO in one fell swoop. If NATO playes this well the cold war ends in 1988 but anyway they play it, a liberal sort of pro-soviet leftie which refuses to actually join NATO and do its part gets destroyed by the soviets in one full show of force for no real provocation and the US-NATO just points and goes "see, thats what we told you the USSR does, we're just going to sit back because YOU DIDNT WANT IN NATO REMEMEBER?!"

After that I doubt that evern the Swiss would be able to stay out of NATO.
 
The Soviets could simply launch a larger retaliatory attack and then declare victory. Aerial bombing, cruise and surface-to-surface missiles, etc. They could simply attrite the Swedish naval and aerial forces into irrevelance without a ground war and if it's done fast enough, NATO can't really do much.

That vindicates Soviet arms but at the same time doesn't risk NATO involvement the way a ground invasion through Finland would.

Of course, if Sweden gets spanked hard enough (they would due to numbers if nothing else), they're likely to join NATO.

That might actually be beneficial to the Soviets--NATO is likely to check further Swedish moves.
 
Sweden had in 1981 several batteries of MIM-23 Hawk SAM, that had been purchased earlier. IIRC the Swedes named it Rbs 77.

RBS 77 is in limited quantity 81 and its more likely RBS 70 is deployed around Stockholm as it been in domestic production longer.
 
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