The British Carrier Strike Fleet. David Hobbs
From 1950 ‘W’ class submarines were being built in a number of yards across the Soviet Union; by the late 1950s more than 170 were in service. They were known to be supplemented by an improved ‘Z’ class with twenty in service by 1960. Again the Allies looked back to the threat posed by German U-boats and assumed that the Soviet Union planned to use this large force for an attack on Allied shipping. With the wisdom of hindsight it is now believed that, together with the Sverdlov class cruisers, the ‘W’ class submarines were intended more to protect the homeland against attack by the Allied carrier strike and amphibious forces that had so impressed the Soviet leadership in 1945 than to launch an attack on Western trade. Stalin had presumed that with nuclear weapons and such powerful, mobile forces at their disposal, Western leaders must be considering a pre-emptive attack on the Soviet Union before it recovered from the Second World War. Whatever their true purpose, the huge submarine-building programme produced boats that could have severed Europe’s ‘lifeline’ across the Atlantic in the event of open hostilities if they were not effectively countered.
The ‘W’ class had a dived displacement of 1180 tons and were armed with six 21in torpedo tubes.16 They had German-designed diesel engines and electric motors that gave a surface speed of 17 knots and a dived speed of 15 knots for short bursts. All of them were fitted with ‘snort’ (snorkel) masts that allowed them to run their diesels at periscope depth, either to charge their batteries or to achieve higher underwater speed than could be sustained on the electric motors alone. It was the high dived speed that worried the Admiralty since it created relatively broad limiting lines of submerged approach, inside which boats would be able to get into an attacking position on a convoy. The best anti-submarine vessels of the Second World War were the RN ‘Loch’ class but these ships had a maximum speed of only 18.5 knots and would be hard-pressed to get into an attacking position on a ‘W’ class boat, even with their ahead-throwing anti-submarine mortars. It is easy to see why the Type 15 and 16 destroyer conversions were given such high priority since they gave dedicated anti-submarine warfare vessels with a speed in excess of 30 knots. By the mid-1950s the new Type 12 anti-submarine frigates with their advanced sensors and weapons were given a high production priority despite the expense of their construction.
The Tupolev TU-16, codenamed ‘Badger’ by NATO,17 was used by both the Soviet Air Force and Navy. The Navy used the ‘Badger B’ variant which could carry up to 20,000lbs of free-falling weapons in an internal bomb bay over a radius of action of about 1000 miles. Of greater concern, it could also be armed with two KS-1 Komet air-to-surface missiles known to NATO as the AS-1 ‘Kennel’. These were carried on pylons under the outboard wings and were effectively small swept-wing aeroplanes using MiG-15 technology, powered by a small turbojet engine and armed with a 1000lb warhead. They can be thought of as early cruise missiles. The parent aircraft would fly at high level, up to 38,000ft, and search for target ships with radar. Once a target was located, the ‘Badger’ would home on it and launch one or both ‘Kennels’ at it at the weapon’s maximum range of 50nm. Initially the ‘Kennel’ would fly on the bearing of launch using an inertial navigation system. Its own radar searched ahead and once it had locked onto a radar echo it controlled the terminal attack phase until impact. The system was relatively crude in that neither the ‘Badger’ nor its missiles could positively identify a target; if they were hoping to hit a high-value unit within a task force they could only choose the largest radar echo and hope. To compensate for this shortcoming, Soviet Naval Air Force units practised attacks in regimental streams of twelve aircraft, all of which attacked on roughly the same bearing and fired their missiles together in salvoes intended to saturate the defences. ‘Badgers’ did not enter large-scale service until the second half of the 1950s and were one of the major reasons for developing the improved generation of fighters intended for service from 1957. The Sea Hawk/Sea Venom generation had only a marginal excess of speed over the ‘Badger’ and would have been hard-pressed to intercept them before weapon release. They would have been capable of engaging the missiles after launch but in the congested battle space of a regimental attack, success could not have been guaranteed without a large number of fighters. The ‘Badger’ itself had a maximum speed of 540 knots at low level, Mach 0.75 at 38,000ft and a maximum all-up weight of 170,000lbs.18
Task forces and convoy defences would have had the advantage of defence in depth in the open sea. Incoming bombers would have been detected first by airborne early warning aircraft, then by the long-range air-warning radars fitted in carriers and other large warships. First to engage would be the fighters vectored from their CAP stations who would try to break up or destroy the bomber stream; after missile launch warships would attempt to jam their radars or deceive them with chaff and then open fire with medium and then short-range guns inside 7000 yards. Ships fitted with Mark 6 directors and ammunition with variable-time (VT) fuzes would stand a good chance of shooting down the early subsonic missiles which flew on a steady course and speed; older ships with wartime HACS directors would not have been effective and there was no money to upgrade the hundreds of destroyers and frigates laid up in reserve with more modern systems. In the mid-1950s Western intelligence agencies believed that the Soviet Union was developing several larger bombers capable of long-range open-ocean surveillance. One of these emerged as the Tupolev TU-20 ‘Bear’, a large bomber which was unusual in having swept wings and four turbo-prop engines. It had a wingspan of 163ft, a maximum all-up weight of 370,000lbs and a radius of action of about 3000 miles.19 The ‘D’ variant was developed for the Soviet Navy in the early 1960s and is still in service more than sixty years later.
NATO Exercises
I do not intend to describe every exercise or every British aircraft carrier’s participation in them but the following examples give a good idea of RN strike fleet operations in support of NATO during this period.
Exercise ‘Castanets’ in June 1952 involved the warships and aircraft of nine member nations and covered a large area of the North Atlantic. Indomitable served as flagship of Rear Admiral Caspar John CB, Flag Officer Heavy Squadron, Home Fleet.20 She had 820 and 826 (Firefly AS 6s) and 809 (Sea Hornet NF21s) NAS embarked plus the first RN Westland Dragonfly HAR 1 detachment to act as a ship’s SAR Flight. She was joined by HMCS Magnificent with 871 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 881 (Avenger TBM-3s) NAS embarked and between them the two ships formed a carrier task group. The emphasis in this group was anti-submarine and night fighter operations in defence of a convoy. The two carriers sustained operations around the clock, aided by the short summer nights but the weather was often unpleasant and favoured the enemy. The convoy phase was followed by a simulated offensive against a known submarine transit area. Sono-buoys were deployed effectively and co-operation with surface ships in accordance with the new NATO doctrine resulted in several ‘attacks’ on submarines that were assessed as ‘kills’ by the exercise umpires. This phase reflected well on the aircrew of Indomitable since they had only one opportunity to practice against a live submarine before the exercise. ‘Castanets’ also involved command and control, live firing and tactical phases in which Captain W J W Woods DSO* RN of Indomitable strove to get his whole ship’s company involved. He was pleased to note in his ROP that the first submarine sighting of the exercise was made by Boy Signalman Wilmhouse who had only been on board for two weeks. The starboard forward 4.5in battery earned a high reputation by shooting down a towed drogue target off Portland with their first salvo during the live weapon training period.
Eagle, fresh from sea trials, working up exercises and deck landing trials with new types of aircraft took part in ‘Castanets’ as a strike carrier with 800 and 803 (Attacker FB 1s), 827 (Firebrand TF 5s) and 814 (Firefly AS 6s) NAS embarked. Successful strikes were flown against a number of targets and, as the largest carrier ever built for the RN at the time, she attracted a number of visitors who wanted to see the ship in operation. The most significant ‘bag’ on a single day included the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretary of State for Air, the Minister of Supply and the Flag Officer Air (Home).
Exercise ‘Mainbrace’ in September 1952 was the largest peacetime naval exercise ever held and the fact that it was held so soon after ‘Castanets’ underlines NATO concern that a high degree of readiness needed to be demonstrated to counter a potential Soviet attack on Western Europe. Overall command was exercised by Admiral McCormick USN, Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic. The