The Cold War, 1980 - 1989 A Decade of Naval Confrontationwatermark.wargamevault.com/pdf_previews/121108-sample.pdf · The First Team Sierra strike on a Soviet surface battle group

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High Tide

The Cold War, 1980 - 1989A Decade of

Naval Confrontation

by Larry Bond, Chris Carlson, and Jay Wissmann

Foreword by Dr. John F. Lehman,Secretary of the Navy 1981 - 1987

Published by

The Admiralty Trilogy Group

Copyright © 2003, 2013, 2015 by the Admiralty Trilogy Group, LLC, Larry Bond, Chris Carlson, and Jay Wissmann

All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Made in the USA.No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

The designers of Harpoon Naval Review 2003 and Harpoon are prepared to answer questions about the game system. They can be reached in care ofhe Admiralty Trilogy Group at [email protected]. Visit their website at http://www.admiral-tytrilogy.com.

Harpoon is Larry Bond’s and Chris Carlson’s trademarked name for their modern naval wargame system. The Admiralty Trilogy is Larry Bond’s, Chris Carlson’s, Ed Kettler’s, and Mike Harris’ trademarked name for their Twentieth Century naval wargame system.

This version of High Tide has been updated to include all corrections from errata through 3 March 2004

Cover by Terry Leeds

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Table of Contents Page Table of Contents 2The Authors 4Acknowledgments 4Foreword by Dr. John F. Lehman - Clash of Titans 5

Stand-Alone Scenarios Tattletale Mod Kashin trailing a US CVBG in the Mediterranean on day one 9 The First Team Sierra strike on a Soviet surface battle group 13 The Hundred Fathom Curve Multi-Sub engagement involving a defecting SSBN 16 Sink Kiev! Surface and air attack on Kiev battle group 20 Incoming Mail SNA Attack on a NATO Convoy 25 Lone Wolf NATO diesel vs. a Soviet ASW group 27 The Night Before the Day After An attack sub hunts a boomer 28

High Tide Campaign Introduction 29 David and Goliath Surface engagement 31 Who’s Mining the Store (Baelt) Surface defensive mining mission 34 Red Beach Soviet amphibious assault 38 Dangerous Waters Sub attack on a Soviet battle group 44 The Russians are Coming Amphibious attack on Denmark 45 First Convoy Soviet air and sub attack on a convoy 50 Foxhunt Soviet ASW hunt for a Tomahawk SSN 52 Rough Neighborhood Soviet air and sub attack on a convoy 54 Surge into the Barents NATO sub attack on the Bastion 59 Kola Strike 1980/1988 Carrier raid on Northern Fleet naval bases 61 Northern Aid Troop convoy to Norway 64 Deep Strike I TLAM strike on SNA airfields 68 Combined Arms (Deep Strike II) F-111 strike on SNA airfields on the Kola 70 Heavy Escort Soviet air and sub attack on convoy 74 Mining Mission Submarine offensive mining mission 76 Cloak and Dagger US sub landing agents on the Soviet coast 80 Battle of the Norwegian Sea Multi-axis attack on US CVBG 81 Wolfpack Heavy Soviet sub attack on Invincible battle group 83 Higher Stakes Soviet submarine nuclear attack on convoy 87 Payback NATO TLAM-N strike on the White Sea 90 Sudden Death ASW defense of convoy using nuclear weapons 92 Epilogue 93

Additions and changes to the Harpoon4.1 Rules 3.34 Altitudes and Altitude Changes 94 4.9 SOSUS/IUSS strategic ASW sensors 94 4.10 Soviet RORSAT and EORSAT satellites 94 5.3.9 Electro-Optic Homing (EO) 94 6.8 Nuclear Weapons and their Effects 95

Sidebars The US Maritime Strategy 7 Dr. John F. Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981 -1987 11 Soviet Ship Classifications 15 From Fiction to the Gaming Table 19 RORSATs and EORSATs 22 Admiral of the Fleet Sergei N. Gorshkov 30 Admiral of the Fleet Vladimir Chernavin 33 The Soviet Navy at High Tide 36 Soviet Naval Doctrine in the 1980s 57 Naval Technology in the 1980s - The Digital Era 67 The State of the US Fleet in 1980 - A Personal Recollection 72 Incidents and Accidents in the 1980s 78 The Nuclear Scenarios 84 Nuclear Weapons at Sea 85 Weapons Systems of the 1980s 89

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Appendix 1 - The Disposition of the Soviet Fleet in 1988 97Appendix 2 - Soviet Naval Strength in the 1980s 101Appendix 3 - Order of Battle of Soviet Naval Aviation in 1988 103Appendix 4 - Soviet Air Unit Organization 105Appendix 5 - Gaming the Kola’s Air Defenses 106

Bibliography 115

Harpoon4 blank game forms 117

Project 1143 Kiev class Aviation CruiserUS Navy

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The Designers Jay T. Wissmann, a one-time NROTC student, a one-time Army “Tread-Head,” and a full-time naval wargamer from the days of AH’s Jutland. After purchasing every Admi-ralty Trilogy product published, he decided to join the pro-duction end of things rather than just consume. He wrote or edited the scenarios and wrote some of the sidebars. Larry Bond is a writer and game designer. He as-sembled the Annexes, worked on the sidebars, rules expansions and the High Tide storyline. Chris Carlson is an accomplished naval analyst and game designer. He worked on the sidebars, rules expan-sions and the High Tide storyline. He also validated the Annexes.

Acknowledgments Thanks to A.D. Baker III, Dimitris Dranidis, Ragnar Emsoy, Peter Grining, Christoph Kluxen, Brooks “the knife” Rowlett, and Steve Thorne for the generous donation of their time and knowledge. Thanks to Chip Sayers for his research and prepara-tion of the ground combat Form 40s. And also to my wife Debbie, who put up with a house that “looked like a bomb went off” while I surrounded myself with research material.

Dedicated to those who kept the peace

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Clash of Titans

by Dr. John F. Lehman The decade of the 1970s was the low point in the fortunes of the United States as leader of the free world alliance in the Cold War. The Watergate scandal, defeat in Vietnam and a deep loss of confidence by our national leadership resulted by the end of the decade in a world in which the Soviet Union was ascendant and The United States seemed to be paralyzed by what President Carter called a national “malaise.” The size, capability and morale of American Armed forces had drastically declined.Ronald Reagan campaigned for President in 1980 promis-ing to rearm America and to return the Free World to an as-sertive foreign policy designed ultimately to prevail over the “Evil Empire.” Upon election he asked me to lead the Navy in carrying out its part in his new national security policy.

Our first priority was to reestablish the morale and self-confidence of the naval service, to make sure that every sailor understood that they had an elite and a historic mis-sion to make the Soviets understand that if they went to war we would sink them. The response to these efforts—and more importantly President Reagan’s constant reasser-tion of respect for the military—was almost instantaneous: recruiting and retention went from all time lows to all time highs in less than six months. The next priority was to rees-tablish a winning strategy. In testimony to Congress and in numerous articles and media appearances we laid out a clear strategy of maritime superiority fully integrated with actual war plans. Some commentators were shocked that an administration would actually use the word superiority—it had become politically incorrect because it was thought to be provocative to the Soviets. But the Reagan administration was not breaking new ground. Since the time of Theodore Roosevelt it had been naval and national orthodoxy that the United States must have a Navy superior not only to any other Navy but also to any potential combination of naval adversaries. The President gave a speech with resounding success outlining our maritime strategy on December 28, 1982. It read in part:

...although the Soviet Union is historically a land power, virtu-ally self-sufficient in mineral and energy resources and land-linked to Europe and the vast stretches of Asia, it has created a power-ful blue ocean Navy that cannot be justified by any legitimate defense need. It is a Navy built for offensive action, to cut free-world supply lines and render impossible the support by sea of free-world allies.

By contrast the United States is a naval power by ne-cessity, critically dependent on the transoceanic import of vital strategic materials. Over 90% of our commerce between conti-nents moves in ships. Freedom to use the seas is our nation’s lifeblood. For that reason our Navy is designed to keep the sea lanes open worldwide - a far greater task than closing those sea lanes at strategic choke points. Maritime superiority for us is a necessity. We must be able in time of emergency to venture in harm’s way, controlling air, surface, and subsurface areas to assure access to all the oceans of the world. Failure to do so will leave the credibility of our con-ventional defense forces in doubt.

We are ... building a 600 ship fleet, including fifteen carrier battle groups.

That, in short, was our strategy. To accomplish it we needed to obtain from Congress a building program capable of producing 600 ships. The first priority if the Soviets attacked would be to establish early control of the sea bridge of the North Atlantic and then carry the offen-sive to the vulnerable northern approaches of the Soviet Union through the Norwegian Sea. Another high priority would be to establish immediate control of the Mediter-ranean to defend NATO’s southern flank and to carry the fight to the enemy through its southern flank. Additional critical tasks would be to insure control of the Persian Gulf and its strategic oil supplies, the Indian Ocean and its vital sea lanes, and the strategic straits of Sunda and Malacca in Southeast Asia; assure the successful defense of Japan and our allies in Southeast Asia; and to maintain control of the North Pacific, to protect Alaska and its vital oil supply as well as carry the fight to the Soviet Union’s thinly guarded eastern flanks.

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Equally important to these sea control tasks were the maintenance of the sea-based nuclear deterrent with the Trident and Poseidon submarines and ballistic missiles. And everything would have to be done simultaneously, not sequentially.

Derived from all these tasks, the full program that we sent to Congress included fifteen carrier battle groups, four battleship battle groups, 250 frigates, destroyers and cruisers, 100 attack submarines and 40 strategic subma-rines and amphibious ships sufficient to lift two full Marine amphibious brigades. A strong consensus emerged behind this program. By the time that I left the Navy Department in April 1987, we had 594 ships in commission and thirty under construction.

As important as the strategy and building program were to reversing our fortunes in the Cold War, the most important thing we could do was to deploy and operate the Navy in a way that would leave the Soviet Union with no doubt as to our seriousness of intent and our ability to defeat them if they were to risk war. We began at once by changing the nature of the annual NATO naval exercises, which for many years had been solely defensive in nature. The northern flank of NATO, Norway, Denmark, and neutral Sweden were the most exposed to Soviet military power and the most difficult to defend. Because of the defensive mindset that had dominated naval planning, for many years navies were prohibited from sending aircraft carriers into the Norwegian Sea for exercises. This prohi-bition was immediately dropped and in the annual NATO naval exercise in the autumn of 1981, we sent three aircraft carriers along with two British “jump jet” carriers into the Norwegian Sea practicing not only amphibious landings to defend Norway but offensive air strikes from aircraft carriers based in the Norwegian fjords into the vulnerable Soviet military targets on the Kola Peninsula. The Soviets were impressed. We repeated these exercises every year and did similar fleet exercises in the Northwest Pacific as well. I personally took part and made sure I met with the press in Norway or the UK to draw attention to our changed strategy. We were very much in the Soviets’ face, with the intention of forcing a major reassessment by them and hopefully a real crisis of self-confidence in their military high command.

* * * * *

By 1984 there was a fundamental shift in Soviet naval strategy. Instead of deploying their attack subs aggressively to both coasts of the United States, and conducting fleet exercises training to interdict the Atlantic sea bridge, they pulled their nuclear strategic missile submarines under the polar ice cap and used their fleet for defending those boats rather than practicing attacking NATO. The Soviets were back on their heels.

The End of the Cold War The purpose of the grand Reagan strategy—of which the 600 ship Navy and maritime supremacy were an important part—was to instill in Soviet decision makers the realization that American weakness in the 1970s was an aberration; they could never achieve the military advantage they had pursued in the preceding decade. Their vast mili-tary building program was like their vast, centrally controlled economy, an abject failure. Their support of Castro and revolution in Latin America and Africa had failed; their sup-port of terrorists in the Middle East had failed; their attempt to destabilize NATO had failed; their attempt to achieve strategic nuclear superiority had failed; and their attempt to achieve maritime supremacy had failed utterly.

I left the Reagan administration in 1987 to return to private life knowing that the objectives of maritime su-premacy had been achieved. I did not dream, however, that the grand strategy of which it was an element would bring about the actual collapse of the Soviet empire a few years later. Exactly how much had the 600 ship Navy contributed to that victory no one can say. But we can say with certainty that without it the Cold War would not have ended when, or in the way it did.

Dr. John F. LehmanNew York

November 2002

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