The Cold War: A MILITARY History (38 page)

The final weapon in this sequence was the SS-N-19, which entered service in 1983 aboard Oscar-class SSGNs and, like previous Soviet anti-ship missiles was also carried aboard surface warships – in this case the aircraft carrier
Kuznetsov
and the Kirov-class battlecruisers. The SS-N-19 had a turbofan engine with a rocket booster and was extremely fast, enabling it to be fired from a submerged Oscar on the basis of information received from a satellite via the Punch Bowl data link, thus avoiding the need for mid-course guidance. It could carry a nuclear 350/500 kT warhead, high explosive, or bomblets.

For many years the ship- and submarine-launched missiles required mid-course corrections to enable them to find their targets, and this was usually supplied by high-flying aircraft such as the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear-B, operated by the Soviet navy. Mid-course guidance could also be supplied by versions of the Kamov Ka-25 shipborne helicopter.

The ultimate threat to the US navy carrier task groups was that a small proportion of the Soviet Union’s SS-18 land-based ICBMs were available to be targeted against US carrier task groups.

fn1
The ordnance load was reduced to 1,985 tonnes from the third-of-class onwards, to compensate for the new Kevlar protective lining over the ship’s vital spaces.

fn2
The Sea Control Ship design was eventually sold to the Spanish navy, which, having modified and updated it, built it as the
Principe de Asturias
. The V/STOL Support Ship project also lives on, as the new Wasp-class amphibious assault ships have a secondary role as Harrier/ASW helicopter carriers.

fn3
This plan was a virtual rerun of the raid led by Lieutenant-Colonel James Doolittle against Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe in Japan on 18 April 1942. In this raid, sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers were loaded aboard the carrier USS
Hornet
and were successfully launched at a distance of some 1,250 km from Japan. One bomber made an emergency landing at Vladivostok, while the others flew on to China, where the crews bailed out.

fn4
Some authorities suggest that this may have been the result of an inability to develop a reliable steam catapult rather than the ‘ski jump’ having been developed on its own merits.

fn5
The Dutch carrier was later also sold to Argentina.

20

Surface Warships

THE MAJOR ELEMENT
in every navy, and also the most visible to the public, the media and other navies alike, was the surface fleet, and vast amounts of money were expended on its vessels. These ships were given a variety of traditional designations – cruiser, destroyer, frigate and corvette – but these terms not only were interpreted differently by different navies, but were also applied in a contradictory manner within some navies. This has caused considerable confusion in the past, so two functional designations will be used here: fleet escort and ocean escort.

The fleet escort was designed to provide area air and anti-submarine defence for a fast task force, usually centred on an aircraft carrier. Such a task group typically consisted of one carrier, six fleet escorts (usually three for air defence and three for anti-submarine warfare) and one or more fast replenishment ships. Towards the end of the Cold War surface-action groups made a somewhat surprising comeback, centred upon an Iowa-class battleship in the case of the US navy and on a Kirov-class battlecruiser in the Soviet navy. Such high-value assets also needed an escort.

The primary mission of the ocean escort was to defend convoys against attacks by Soviet submarines. This function was of far greater importance to NATO than to the Warsaw Pact, since the former depended upon transatlantic convoys to bring men, equipment and supplies to Europe in the event of a war.

THE US NAVY

Fleet Escorts

The fleet escort was required to accompany surface task groups and to operate at fleet speeds, which meant good sea-keeping with a high cruising
speed
(which can be translated as a speed in excess of 30 knots in rough weather) and long range. There were, in essence, two types: the area air-defence ship and the anti-submarine ship.

The area air-defence ship stemmed from the realization in the late 1940s that guns were no longer capable of providing effective air defence against modern high-performance jet aircraft and that missiles were therefore required. Contemporary radars and missile systems were bulky and heavy, and large magazines were needed to accommodate the number of missiles judged to be necessary. This, in conjunction with the speed and sea-keeping requirements, meant that large hulls were required, and, in order to get the systems to sea quickly, eleven Second World War cruisers were converted to the new role, entering service as missile ships between 1955 and 1964. Some had their main guns completely removed and replaced by missile launchers both fore and aft, while others retained their gun turrets forward and had the launchers on the quarterdeck. These ships served as a ‘quick fix’ for air defence and gave the navy valuable experience in operating missiles, but they were never intended to provide more than an interim solution and their service lives were relatively brief.

This line of development led to the
Long Island
, the first purpose-built, post-war fleet escort, which joined the fleet in 1961. Displacing 15,060 tonnes, this ship was the largest surface combatant (apart from aircraft carriers) built in the United States during the Cold War, and was the first escort ship to have nuclear propulsion. It had a huge fixed array for the air-search radar and carried a very substantial armament, including three SAM launchers for air defence and an anti-submarine-missile launcher, as well as more conventional weapons such as two 127 mm guns and twelve 533 mm torpedo tubes. Proof of its capabilities came in 1968 in the Gulf of Tong-king when, on two separate occasions, its missiles engaged and destroyed MiG fighters flying over North Vietnam at a range of some 105 km from the ship.

Long Island
was very expensive, even by US standards, and the eight missile-armed, nuclear-powered fleet escorts which followed were somewhat smaller, displacing between 8,200 and 10,000 tonnes, the reduction in size being achieved by halving the number of missiles carried and deleting the flag facilities. These nuclear-powered ships were paralleled by two classes, each nine strong, of conventionally powered ships.

The capability of the air-defence systems carried by these ships developed steadily over the years, culminating in the Aegis system.
^fn1
This versatile, sophisticated and very expensive radar/computer system was designed to integrate the management of a task group’s weapon systems,
with
the emphasis on air operations. Among many other attributes, it could control up to eighteen missiles simultaneously on a time-share switching system.

The original plan was to install Aegis in nuclear-powered cruisers, but after a long debate it was eventually decided to install it in the same hull as the Spruance-class destroyers. Twenty-seven of these fleet escorts were built under the designation Ticonderoga-class cruisers, joining the fleet between 1983 and 1994. Two Ticonderoga-class ships were used very successfully to control US aircraft in the Gulf of Sirte during the US air strikes on Libya in 1986. One of the class,
Vincennes
, subsequently achieved considerable notoriety when, while operating in the Persian Gulf in 1988, it shot down an Iranian civil airliner with heavy loss of life, mistaking it for a combat aircraft carrying out a diving attack.

The other type of fleet escort was optimized for anti-submarine warfare. The ships were, in effect, large destroyers, their size being dictated by the 30 knot, rough-seas requirement. Originally, these ships were required to make a contribution to the fleet air-defence umbrella and they therefore carried missiles, but, as the Soviet submarine capability grew and began to threaten even fast-moving surface task forces, these escorts became increasingly oriented towards ASW. Ninety of these ships were built over a period of forty years: Mitscher class (4,404 tonnes) – four (1953–4); Farragut class (5,124 tonnes) – ten (1959–61); Forrest Sherman class (4,460 tonnes) – eighteen (1955–9); Charles F. Adams class (4,106 tonnes) – twenty-three (1960–64); and, finally, the Spruance and Kidd classes.
^fn2

The Spruance and Kidd classes, which joined the fleet between 1975 and 1983, were large, displacing 8,350 tonnes, and all thirty-five were built at the same shipyard – a volume of business which no other country could match. As was usual with US warships throughout the Cold War, they came in for considerable criticism, being described as too large for their purpose, poorly armed and with inadequate sensors. The size was, once again, a consequence of the requirement to maintain a 30 knot speed in rough seas. Adverse comments on the armament and sensors arose from comparison with contemporary Soviet ships, which had decks bristling with weapons and masts covered with antennas. The facts were, however, that US sensor systems were far more sophisticated and capable than their Soviet counterparts and required many fewer antennas, while the missile magazines, which were below decks, held a greater number of missiles. The Spruance design predated the British experience in the Falklands War and, having carried out a detailed analysis of this experience, one of the many changes decided upon
by
the US navy was to add armour protection to these ships, lining all vital spaces with Kevlar.

Ocean Escorts

Like other NATO navies, the US navy was seriously concerned at the threat posed by Soviet submarines to convoys crossing the north Atlantic – a problem which was exacerbated by the fact that Soviet submarines grew in both numbers and capability as the Cold War progressed, becoming quieter and carrying greater numbers of more effective weapons. The most significant feature of these submarines’ design, however, was their underwater speed, which in the Alfa class, which entered service in the early 1970s, was in excess of 40 knots. During the Second World War the corvettes, frigates and destroyer-escorts used in the ASW role had a maximum speed of between 10 and 12 knots in a rough sea. Their quarry, the German U-boats, however, had a maximum submerged speed of about 6 knots, but spent most of the time at much lower speeds in order to conserve the charge in their batteries. As a result, the surface ships had an adequate margin of speed over the submarines.

The Soviet Whiskey-class diesel-electric submarines which entered service in the 1950s had a maximum submerged speed of 13 knots, but the nuclear-powered attack submarines raised this to 30 knots or more. As a result, the war-built destroyer-escorts, of which a huge number were in reserve, were simply of no use, since such small ships simply could not be designed to operate at the necessary speeds. The inevitable result was a move to much larger ASW ships, and great numbers of Second World War destroyers were either converted or, in cases where construction had been halted at the war’s end, were completed so as to meet the demand for ASW ships. Some forty ships fell into this category, and most of these were subsequently given a major upgrade in the 1970s.

The first post-war design for an ASW escort was the Dealey class, of which thirteen were built between 1954 and 1957. They displaced some 1,730 tonnes and were expensive to build, even though their construction had been simplified in order to make them easy to produce in large numbers in the event of a war. Both the Dealey class and a cheaper design (the Claud Jones class) were disliked by the navy, which was forced to produce a proper ocean-escort design. This led to a series of four classes, which were originally designated destroyer-escorts, although in 1975 this was changed to frigates. All of these were much larger than previous ASW escorts, displacing between 2,730 and 3,640 tonnes, and some were built in considerable numbers: Bronstein – two; Garcia – seventeen; Knox – forty-six; Perry – fifty-one.

All were criticized. The Bronstein class was considered to be too slow; the Garcia and Knox classes had only one propeller, limiting their
manoeuvrability
; the steam plant in the Knox class was too complicated and difficult to maintain, and all were considered to have insufficient weapons. Nevertheless, they gave valuable service and were effective ASW platforms. One feature of the last of these classes, the Perry, was its use of major items of equipment which originated in other NATO countries: the Mark 92 fire-control system was of Dutch (Signaal) origin, while the main gun was a 76 mm weapon designed by OTO Melara in Italy.

THE SOVIET NAVY

The Soviet navy’s first major post-war building programme included fourteen new Sverdlov-class cruisers, which began to enter service in 1951, causing considerable alarm in Western navies. They were fast, had a long range (9,000 nautical miles at 18 knots), and were well armed, with twelve 152 mm guns, twelve 100 mm anti-aircraft guns and ten torpedo tubes. They were considered to pose a major threat as ‘surface raiders’, following the pattern of German operations by ships such as
Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Graf Spee
and
Scheer
during the Second World War; these had caused considerable problems to the British, since they had required a large number of ships and aircraft to track down each of them. In addition to this, the Soviet cruisers were handsome, well-balanced ships and
looked
powerful – a factor of some significance, since it enabled them to create a major impression during numerous visits to foreign ports in the 1950s and 1960s.

Khrushchev cut back drastically on the surface fleet in his 1956 review, but allowed the navy to build four light cruisers (Kynda class) and twenty destroyers (Kashin class), which started to enter service in 1962. Both types created further alarm in the West. The main armament of the Kynda class comprised two quadruple SS-N-3 missile launchers, giving them a 250 nautical mile anti-ship capability, with one SA-N-1 anti-aircraft-missile launcher, guns and torpedoes for self-defence. The Kashin-class destroyers were the first major warships in any navy to be powered exclusively by gas turbines, and mounted a primary armament of two quadruple SA-N-1 anti-aircraft-missile launchers. Both Kyndas and Kashins also exhibited a Soviet trend that was to increase with time, mounting a plethora of antennas and sensors whose function and capability Western experts could for many years only guess at.