The Submarine Gap
HARRIGAN, ANTHONY
U.S. needs more money and new equipment to develop an effective deterrent to the Soviet fleet and to close The Submarine Gap By Anthony Harrigan WHILE THE MISSILE gap has serious-minded citizens...
...What caused agitation in Washington was the configuration of the submarine as a ballistic missile carrier...
...In a single massive attack, the Soviet undersea fleet could strike at two-thirds of the productive capacity of the United States and one-half its population...
...One is ASROC, a long-range anti-submarine rocket now mounted on the USS Norfolk and the USS Perry, and the other a drone helicopter that can operate from the deck of a destroyer...
...We must be able to keep close tabs on millions of square miles of ocean, to a depth of nearly 1,000 feet, 'round the clock, seven days a week, in every area of the world where submarines could secretly position themselves for a surprise attack upon us or our allies...
...The near success of the Nazi submarine offensive was not lost on the rulers of the Soviet Union...
...Atlantic Fleet, has said that destroyers are the coordinating member of the anti-submarine warfare team...
...But the data-processing and presentation equipment, routine in many American business enterprises, has not yet been bought for the commands upon which national security depends...
...Their attitude is that if a convoy gets across the ocean, the enemy has lost a battle...
...Most Americans seem as oblivious of the danger to the United States from under the seas as they were of the missile threat before the first sputnik...
...The need, therefore, is for a major breakthrough in anti-submarine warfare...
...We cannot trade cities, industrial plants and strategic bases for submarines...
...The destroyers are chiefly World War II types...
...This is so because the first target of most enemy submarines in wartime would be the convoys...
...is transported in ships, and of 77 strategic raw materials, the U.S...
...The gravity of the submarine threat struck naval observers with new intensity last May when a Soviet submarine was photographed on the surface south of Iceland...
...The British, who know that convoys mean life itself for their island, regard escorting as an offensive operation...
...One estimate is that anti-submarine warfare (ASW) receives only 15 per cent of the Navy's budget, which is not due to lack of concern within the Navy itself, but lack of national interest in this phase of defense...
...West and Gulf coasts...
...New sonar developed in the last year gives astonishing ranges...
...Would the President order a nuclear attack on Russia...
...Indeed, except against missile submarines, whose targets are on land, the convoy escorts, not the hunter-killer task forces, are likely to have the best chances of killing submarines...
...With recent advances in detection have come two new weapons enabling surface ships to stand off great distances from a submarine and strike at it, even while moving in the opposite direction...
...while designed to give 160 destroyers new life, new detection and new capability, it is not sufficient to meet the Soviet under-seas challenge...
...Navy...
...As recent events in Argentina conclusively demonstrated, smaller powers friendly to the United States are utterly lacking in modern weapons with which to detect and destroy submarines...
...Such action, they say, is unlikely...
...Unfortunately, there seems to be a complete absence of a sense of urgency in this regard on the part of the President and his chief civilian advisers...
...In short, we must be able to place our weapons over every potentially hostile submarine, as the surest deterrent to hostility...
...If England is to be fed in wartime, U.S...
...rapidly creates strong new anti-submarine forces, or the Atlantic and Pacific become Russian lakes...
...No longer is there any question of the sub hunters' ability to detect and destroy submarines, providing they have the tools for the job...
...ships...
...has the ships to perform the convoy task without stripping its fleet around the globe...
...They are tragically short of the data-processing equipment so essential in an age of high-speed submarines...
...Most are armed with weapons of World War II vintage such as the "hedgehogs," a grenade-like device with a range of only 275 yards...
...The country hears about dramatic rocket weapons, spectacular developments in the anti-missile field and the epochal voyages of nuclear submarines, but anti-submarine warfare lacks a brilliant advocate like Vice Admiral Hyman Rickover...
...But the money for such a breakthrough is not forthcoming...
...One reason convoy protection is accorded little attention and less enthusiasm is that some Americans mistakenly view it as a defensive tactic...
...Naval commanders who have made a close study of the Soviet submarine fleet point to the likelihood of a conventional naval war, rather than a single colossal atomic war...
...the United States and its principal allies are separated by vast oceans that are the submarine's element...
...Therefore, conventional naval warfare featuring anti-submarine activity is a real possibility...
...Many ASW aircraft are overage...
...Of the more than 200 destroyers in the Navy, less than 25 have antisubmarine rocket weapons of any sort...
...needs more money and new equipment to develop an effective deterrent to the Soviet fleet and to close The Submarine Gap By Anthony Harrigan WHILE THE MISSILE gap has serious-minded citizens properly alarmed, scant attention is paid to the equally dangerous gap in the nation's submarine defenses...
...personally believe that the Soviets will, before too long, put on display not one but several atomic-power submarines...
...Only this year is a large-scale modernization and rehabilitation program getting under way...
...The importance of such control is evident from the statistical facts that 99 per cent of all tonnage moving to and from the U.S...
...Anti-submarine forces are still almost completely dependent upon World War II ships and weapons...
...is not to be cut off from its allies, it must maintain control of the seas or else the NATO countries could be separated and separately destroyed...
...But there is no excuse for ignorance or indifference: The Soviet Union is the greatest submarine power in the world, with an undersea fleet of 450 in comparison with the 110 submarines in the U.S...
...But either the U.S...
...With this sort of weapon a destroyer, no matter how effective its sonar, must be virtually on top of a submarine to destroy it...
...The ballistic missile ports, clearly discernible in the superstructure, were an indication that the Soviets may be ahead of the United States in submarines of the Polaris type, and not far behind in nuclear-powered submarines...
...Elsewhere in the free world—in Latin America, for example—the Soviet submarine fleet could be used as a means of international blackmail...
...Whether new equipment and new ships will be ordered in sufficient quantity to provide an effective deterrent to the Soviet submarine fleet is a moot point...
...We can't do that today...
...Moreover, a variable depth sonar trailed from ships can now penetrate the thermal layer in the ocean, below which submarines were immune from older sonar devices...
...Anti-submarine warfare has a low priority in the national defense effort...
...But the task of countering the Soviet undersea fleet is far more difficult than the struggle against Hitler...
...Reports coming to a task-force commander from six destroyers, two killer subs and a squadron or more of helicopters and tracker planes, plus shore-based search aircraft, must be rapidly processed by automatic methods...
...Vice Admiral John S. Thach, recently named commander of the Anti-Submarine Force...
...But this kind of war is unthinkable against missile-launching submarines...
...destroyer forces must be large and modern enough to protect convoys crossing the Atlantic...
...No one would be able to determine whether the submarines heard on sonar were Russian or Chinese...
...In evaluating the Soviet submarine menace, the American public must bear in mind that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an oceanic league...
...The question now is whether the Administration has the will to invest in the necessary anti-submarine forces...
...Senator Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash...
...It is only reasonable to suppose the American people would prefer conventional war to an exchange of H-bombs...
...Numbers of surface sub-hunters are tremendously important...
...The destroyer is the ASW weapon with the widest range of capabilities, but like other elements charged with defense against the Soviet submarine menace, the destroyer forces in both Atlantic and Pacific Fleets are overage...
...Armed only with air-breathing missiles, Soviet submarines could rain destruction on the East...
...When Hitler launched his submarine campaign, which very nearly brought the free world to its knees, the German Navy had no more than 47 submarines...
...an advocate of greater preparedness for undersea warfare, said recently: "I ANTHONY HARRIGAN is on the editorial staff of the News and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina...
...Vice Admiral Edmund B. Taylor, commander of the Anti-Submarine Defense Force, U.S...
...If the U.S...
...Pacific Fleet, says that "we must have detection measured in miles instead of yards...
...Suppose, they say, that the Soviets were to send a large submarine force to Red China to bar U.S...
...The task facing ASW commanders is enormous...
...It is without the sensational attributes of the missile field...
...Even if they were in good mechanical order, which because of many years of high-speed steaming they are not, they would still be inadequate...
...Only two of these rockets are of the latest type which will fire a weapon thousands of yards...
...The aircraft carriers around which the hunter-killer task forces are built were constructed during World War II and are clearly outdated...
...As Vice Admiral W. G. Cooper pointed out recently: "We traded ships for submarines and we won because we could build ships faster than the enemy could replace the submarines we sank...
...Suppose these unidentified submarines were to sink U.S...
...While money has not been lavished on anti-submarine research, devoted officers and scientists have made some major advances in detection ranges and kill capabilities...
...The need, obviously, is for weapons that can strike at submarines equal to the distance at which they can be detected...
...ships from the Formosa Strait...
...At present, it is unlikely that the U.S...
...They speak of "punching a convoy through...
...is self-sufficient in only 11...
...We must have instant assurance that what we detect is really a submarine...
...Not only are destroyers needed to work with the hunter-killer task forces whose job it is to seek out and kill enemy submarines, but the work horses of the fleet have the all-important task of convoy escort...
...With this drone, a destroyer commander will be able to dispatch a homing torpedo or atomic depth bomb miles from his ship...
Vol. 43 • June 1960 • No. 26
