WWIII in the Black Sea: 1987

MacCaulay

Banned
I'll be honest and say that I'm just picking 1987 at random. But World War III is often discussed on this board in terms of the Fulda Gap slugfest.

What's not normally thought about is the probable attempt by the Soviets to break out of the Bosphorus and the fight the Turkish (and Greek) militaries would have to put up to stop them.

The Soviet Black Sea fleet was a fearsome creature that never was truelly unleashed, not even in the time of the Russian Empire, when the Russo-Japanese War saw a Second Pacific Squadron formed out of North Sea based ships.

So...what would have been the battlefields on sea, land, and air, and how do you think they would've gone?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
I'll be honest and say that I'm just picking 1987 at random. But World War III is often discussed on this board in terms of the Fulda Gap slugfest.

What's not normally thought about is the probable attempt by the Soviets to break out of the Bosphorus and the fight the Turkish (and Greek) militaries would have to put up to stop them.

The Soviet Black Sea fleet was a fearsome creature that never was truelly unleashed, not even in the time of the Russian Empire, when the Russo-Japanese War saw a Second Pacific Squadron formed out of North Sea based ships.

So...what would have been the battlefields on sea, land, and air, and how do you think they would've gone?

Wasn't there a Harpoon scenario that modeled this? IIRC it was a real bitch to win from the Turkish side.
 
What's not normally thought about is the probable attempt by the Soviets to break out of the Bosphorus and the fight the Turkish (and Greek) militaries would have to put up to stop them.

The Soviet Black Sea fleet was a fearsome creature that never was truelly unleashed, not even in the time of the Russian Empire, when the Russo-Japanese War saw a Second Pacific Squadron formed out of North Sea based ships.

So...what would have been the battlefields on sea, land, and air, and how do you think they would've gone?

Although I have doubts about the ability of NATO to successfully cooperate with the Greek-Turkish differences, I think the ability of the Soviets to successfully (and quick) take the area around the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles is literally a bridge too far for them.
Especially by '87 the Turks aren't (militarily) the sick man of Europe anymore, with a decent large army. A lot would probably depend on how many forces the Soviets move through Bulgaria to oppose them.

And even if they manage to do take those area's, I don't doubt the American Sixth Fleet will be waiting for them, which is if I'm not mistaken a lot more powerfull then the Soviet Black Sea fleet.

Probably the Soviets would have enough airpower to make it very hard for any Allied fleet to be in the Eastern Med, but in the case of WWIII, that airpower will probably be occupied elsewhere.
 

J.D.Ward

Donor
Access denied

Can the Turks simply deny the Bosphorus to the USSR by blocking it with sunk ships, as the Egyptians did with the Suez Canal in 1967?

I know the strait is too large to block completely, but could ships be sunk at selected narrow and/or shallow points to render the Bosphorus impassable, until after the war has been decided elsewhere?
 
Mine the Bosphorus. Worked like a charm against the Brits & French in WWI. No matter how fast the Sovs & Bulgarians move on land the Turks will be able to seed the Straits quite nicely, and with modern mines as well not just old contact types. In order to clear the minefields the Sovs will need to occupy both sides of the Straits all the way otherwise land based artillery will make hash of the minesweepers (again ref: Gallipoli).

Eventually the Straits will be more or less clear, but the time needed to do this will mean NATO med forces will be waiting when the Sovs attempt to break out.
 
If it helps, here's the Soviet Naval OOB for surface ships in 1987:

1 Slava CG
3 Kara CG
6 Kashin DDG
3 Kotlin-mod DDG
3 Kotlin DD
1 Ognevoy DD

Granted there are SSK's, but it's not exactly an impressive force.
 
Why would the Soviets be going to war in just the Black Sea?

In a general WWIII, this would be a theater of war, but IIRC there weren't any major flashpoints in this area since the late 1940s (Stalin's attempt to bully concessions from the Turks and bite chunks out of Iran).

Hmm...perhaps there's ethnic mayhem in the Caucasus during the later stages of Soviet rule and the Soviets blame the Turks?

Still, there'd be ways for the Soviets to hurt the Turks without open war--according to Larry Kaplan (author of "Soldiers of God" and other interesting books), the Soviets funded both right-wing and left-wing Turkish extremists to make trouble for the government.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Why would the Soviets be going to war in just the Black Sea?

They wouldn't be. It's just that when we have discussions about WWIII, they normally revolve around two things: CalBear schooling everyone on nuclear launch procedures like he's in a bunker somewhere sitting next to Dr. Strangelove, and me bitching about Soviet autoloaders.

But that all comes down to what's going on over the Central Front, aka: East and West Germany, and Austria.

Not a whole lot of people think about the forces arrayed in the other theatres where war would probably break out also.

Douglas said:
If it helps, here's the Soviet Naval OOB for surface ships in 1987:

1 Slava CG
3 Kara CG
6 Kashin DDG
3 Kotlin-mod DDG
3 Kotlin DD
1 Ognevoy DD

Granted there are SSK's, but it's not exactly an impressive force.

Hmmmm...no Kiev? I thought they had a Kiev in the Black Sea. But I guess I was wrong.



Oh! This is from Soviet Military Power: Prospects for Change, a Defense Department publication that was put out in 1989. It's not 1987, but it gives a good general overview. Though I'm not inclined to trust everything the Pentagon says, as I'm sure this book is half informational and half funding pamphlet.

The Southern Region has several potential subtheaters: the Mediterranean Sea; Turkey, the Turkish Straits and Thrace; and the Balkans and northern Italy. Soviet long-range aviation will probably initially attack NATO nuclear forces and sea power in the eastern Mediterranean. Warsaw Pact success in this theater will depend on long-range power projection through the air and via amphibious operations. Unlike the Central Region, NATO countries in the Southern Region depend almost totally on their own resources for defense. The most significant link between these countries is a maritime one. The key to the balance of power in the region lies in controlling the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the connecting Bosporus/Dardanelles-Aegean reinforcement route, while for the Pact the Black Sea guards access to the Soviet Union, which provides the vital sea lines of communication to Bulgaria, and supports the movement of Soviet land forces into Greece and Turkey.

While NATO enjoys a manpower advantage over the Pact in the region, the Pact forces have qualitatively superior equipment and hold an advantage in the number of combat divisions, tanks, antitank missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and surface-to-surface missiles.Ten Greek and Turkish divisions deployed in Thrace around the Bosporus/Dardanelles passage represent the highest concentration of land forces in NATO's forward defenses. However, the slow pace of modernization and the lack of such key weapons as antitank systems will limit these forces' effectiveness. In addition, these forces could be augmented by one or more US Army divisions and a Marine Air-Ground Task Force. While it is true that both NATO and Warsaw Pact countries in the region have been relatively slow to modernize their forces, the Soviets have improved considerably the quality of forces in that area.

Personally, I think there's a little bit of "Boy, we wish Greece reads this and buys some F-16s from us instead of Mirages from France!" in that whole thing about "the slow pace of modernization...will limit these forces' effectiveness", but there's a fair amount of information to glean from that.

The Soviets would have to land a godawful amount of troops to take the Strait if they wanted it, and if they just wanted to control the ocean, then they'd be running a gauntlet every time if they actually did clear the sea lane.
 
For some reason, I keep thinking of the Black Sea becoming a 'no-man's water' with all the anti-ship weaponry, but there's a 99% chance I'm being ASB.

Hmmmm...no Kiev? I thought they had a Kiev in the Black Sea. But I guess I was wrong.

I don't think it would make sense to put a Kiev in the Black Sea, the Russian's were pushing it as it was calling their escort carriers 'aviation cruisers' to get through the straits. Kiev's would be more useful for the Pacific and Atlantic theaters.
 
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