Readiness to Defend Ourselves – 1949–59

‘That is not to say that we can relax our readiness to defend ourselves. Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves.’ Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, US Navy, 1950.

The end of World War II marked the end of any spirit of co-operation between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the western Allies. Perhaps this was inevitable given the ideological gulf between Stalinist communism on one hand and capitalist democracy on the other, but it was also because of the underlying mutual suspicion that each party had aggressive designs on the other. Furthermore, the United States of America (USA) was armed with nuclear weapons whereas the USSR possessed no such arsenal and therefore felt particularly vulnerable to US power. Having lost more than 25 million people killed during the Great Patriotic War (World War II), the Soviet leadership was determined to secure its borders once and for all. Soviet occupation of eastern and central European countries and the establishment of client governments in them also created an effective buffer zone between the West and the territory of the USSR. From the western perspective, the Soviet control of central Europe implied aggressive intentions towards western Europe, so both sides watched each other with suspicion as political and military tension steadily increased.

The tension erupted into a crisis on 1 June 1948 when the western Allies announced the intention to form a new state in West Germany: on 23 June, the Soviets responded by closing land access to West Berlin, hoping to discourage the formation of the new state and perhaps in the hope that the western outpost deep within East Germany would capitulate. However, the Soviets had miscalculated the resolve of the western governments who bypassed the blockade by launching a massive airlift that kept the city supplied with food and essentials from 26 June 1948 through to 12 May 1949. The Soviet action also spurred the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the following year. Comprising the original signatories of the 1948 Brussels Treaty – Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and the United Kingdom (UK) – along with the USA, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, NATO was formed as a defensive alliance primarily to protect its members from Soviet expansion into western Europe. Most importantly, NATO was not simply a loose alliance, but an integrated military structure within which the armed forces of each member country were part of a unified command structure.

With a ventrally mounted APS-20 search radar, the TBM-3W Avenger was half of the carrier-borne Anti- Submarine Warfare team. The TBM-3S strike aircraft made up the other half. (US Navy)

The formation of NATO on 4 April 1949 emphasized not only the contrast between Western and Eastern ideologies, but also the geographic differences between the two spheres of interest. Whereas the Soviet Union and many of its European satellites were entirely land-based, NATO was, as indicated by its name, centred around a vast tract of sea: the Atlantic Ocean. True, the line of demarcation between the two sides, and the potential battlefield for World War III, lay across mainland Europe, but the NATO forces based there were totally reliant on being reinforced and resupplied from the far side of the ocean.

This geographic difference between East and West also influenced the balance of forces on each side. In the late 1940s, the military power of the Soviet Union was concentrated in its huge land armies, while the Soviet Navy of the time comprised only small coastal forces. Conversely, the Atlantic Ocean, so fundamentally important to NATO, was home to the two most powerful navies in the world – the US Navy (USN) and the British Royal Navy (RN). Reflecting the importance of the sea lanes to the alliance, one of the principal NATO commands, the Allied Command Atlantic (ACLANT), was established in 1952, and was responsible for the security of the North Atlantic from the North Pole to the Tropic of Cancer. The post of commander-in-chief (C-in-C) would always be held by a USN admiral with the headquarters located at Norfolk, Virginia. The first Supreme Allied Commander (SACLANT) was Admiral Lynde D. McCormick. In addition to ACLANT, NATO land and sea forces in the Mediterranean came under the control of Allied Forces South (AFSOUTH) which was also commanded by a USN admiral. A subordinate command, Allied Forces Mediterranean (AFMED) was based on Malta with a British commander to control all NATO maritime forces in the Mediterranean. However, the US government declined to place the 6th Fleet under non-US command, and insisted that US naval forces in the Mediterranean came under the command of Strike Force South (STRIKFORSOUTH) that reported directly to the US commander of AFSOUTH (COMAFSOUTH).

Having fought in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean during World War II, the RN and USN still had much experience in theatres where the Soviets had yet to venture. Both navies were well versed both in antisubmarine warfare (ASW) and in aircraft carrier operations. During World War II, aircraft carriers had been used in three roles: firstly, in commanding the sea by neutralizing enemy surface forces, secondly as a strike force to support coastal or amphibious operations and thirdly for ASW. The USN had perfected the first two roles in the Pacific during World War II, where it had fought an enemy that had significant air power but had little submarine strength. As a result, USN doctrine viewed the aircraft carrier primarily as an instrument of power projection and offensive strike. Indeed, the ability of the USN, demonstrated in 1948, to launch nuclear-armed aircraft from its carriers underlined the importance of the type in the nuclear age. The USN also considered that Soviet air power was the most serious threat to NATO in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean and that carrier-borne fighters were needed as a counter. Conversely, the RN, in common with the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), believed that the most important aspect of naval warfare during World War II had been ASW operations against German U-boats the North Atlantic. The British and Canadians therefore saw ASW as being the pre-eminent role for the aircraft carrier.

You can read more in Over Cold War Seas: NATO and Soviet Naval Aviation, 1949–89 by Michael Napier.