The final section of the Soviet naval staff paper reviewed the situation in the Red Sea, Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. In comparing the naval and air forces, it assessed the available weapon systems on both sides as approximately equivalent. The Soviet naval object was to support Soviet foreign policy, in exerting pressure on the United States forces in the area, and assisting the fraternal United Arab Republic forces to deny full control of the Persian Gulf to Iran. The course of action recommended was to reinforce the Soviet naval air squadron re- established at Aden with an additional squadron of
When the Soviet naval staff paper was taken by the Main Military Council, together with several other important papers, the Conclusions and Recommendations were approved.
APPENDIX 3: NATO Naval Command Structure
It was natural in 1951 to create first an Allied Command Europe, in order to establish US forces on the ground, where they would discourage the Soviet Union from any further westward advance. It was also natural to create an Allied Command Atlantic, in order to ensure the reinforcement and re-supply of the US ground forces. It was inevitable, also, that both supreme commanders should be US officers. It was, perhaps, equally natural, and inevitable, that Great Britain, especially with Winston Churchill once again returned to power as Prime Minister, was not ready to subordinate the Royal Navy entirely to an American admiral with his headquarters on the far side of the Atlantic. Not until it had been agreed, therefore, to set up an Allied Commander-in-Chief, Channel, with supreme commander status, and a British admiral in the post, would Churchill agree to the activation of SACLANT. The Channel command was confined to the southern North Sea and the English Channel; and it was hoped that the worst possibilities of operational misunderstanding, at the command boundaries, would be eliminated by ensuring that the same British officers who exercised certain British national commands, and appropriate subordinate commands in Allied Command Atlantic (ACLANT), would also hold the subordinate posts in the Channel Command. The wartime mission of SACLANT would be to maintain intact the communication lines of the Atlantic Ocean, to conduct conventional and nuclear operations against enemy naval bases and airfields, and to support operations carried out by SACEUR, while the Commander-in-Chief, Channel (CINCHAN) was ‘to control and protect merchant shipping, to endeavour to establish and maintain control of the area, and to support operations in adjacent commands’.
Since 1951, a number of important developments had taken place, both political and strategic. Although no single one might have justified a change in the command structure, their cumulative effect would do so. The developments were these: the post-war recovery of Western Europe, despite severe economic setbacks, which had transformed the relationship with the USA from dependence to interdependence; the advent of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which had relegated the US Strike Fleet from being the primary naval strategic force, and only secondarily a general-purpose force, to being primarily a general-purpose force, with a nuclear strike capability; the rapid increase in the number of nuclear-powered general-purpose submarines in both the Soviet and the US Navies; the continued failure of scientific research and technological development to provide an effective means of detecting and accurately locating submerged submarines (while this failure preserved the second-strike capability of the SSBN forces, and hence contributed to the maintenance of strategic nuclear stability, it augmented the threat of submarine attack on shipping and surface warships, already far more serious than in the worst period of the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War); the discovery and exploitation of oil and natural gas in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea; the withdrawal of British naval forces from permanent stations outside the NATO area, and full dependence upon NATO for national security; the closer political association of the Western European members of NATO, and their desire to have a greater say in the conduct of the affairs of the Alliance,
Thus, while the basic requirement remained, that the NATO ground forces in Western Europe should be reinforced and supplied across the Atlantic, almost every other condition which governed the original NATO command structure had altered. What was, in effect, a continuation of the Second World War-winning set-up would no longer serve. A flexible response strategy meant nothing if it did not mean the demonstration, in peacetime, of both the determination and the capability to engage major enemy forces by land, sea and air, if put to the test. Given the speed of movement and scale of attack which had to be expected, as well as the range of tactical missiles, the whole land and sea area of the north-west European Continental Shelf would have to be regarded, from the outset, as part of the central front battlefield. True, the nature of the operations thereon would be three- dimensional; and the area would retain its character as the terminal and
To abolish CINCHAN, and incorporate his command in ACLANT, would merely invite that well-known over- centralization syndrome known as ‘apoplexy at the centre and paralysis at the extremities’. To subordinate CINCHAN to SACEUR, with whatever title, would cause the latter to be continually looking over his shoulder. There remained a third alternative, namely to create, out of CINCHAN, a new Supreme Allied Command, which would comprise the existing Channel Command, and part of the existing Eastern Atlantic Command, adjusted so as to be approximately contiguous with the United Kingdom Air Defence Region. The new command, which it was decided to call the Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (JACWA), would be a joint sea-air command, held by the British Naval and Air Commander-in-Chief. The British Flag Officer Submarines, and a US flag officer, would be deputies, and the chief of staff a NATO admiral of another nationality. The EASTLANT-Channel naval-air headquarters became the home of JACWA, and fairly soon the structure of subordinate commands, based upon retention of national command, but flexibility of operational command and, to an even greater extent, of operational control, was in being and working well.
The Commanders-in-Chief of JACWA discovered first that, whether they liked it or not, they would become, early on in a typical ‘invasion from the East’ situation, engaged in a battle for the Baltic Exits; they might also find themselves arranging for the withdrawal from West Germany and the Netherlands of warships and submarines nearing completion, or refitting, lest they should fall into enemy hands. In fact, had they not existed at the outbreak of the Third World War, Cs-in-C JACWA would have had to be created. Their task included the entire planning and operational responsibilities which had fallen to the Admiralty during both the previous world wars, in its capacity as a command post for operations in home waters and the North Atlantic. It was still in his capacity as C-in-C Fleet, however, and not as Naval C-in-C JACWA, that the British admiral set in train the NORSECA plan (see above).
APPENDIX 4: The Home Front
