A Tale Of Two Navies. Anthony Wells
Angeles–class attack submarine USS Greeneville (SSN 772) with the Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS)
USS Ray (SSN 653), USS Hawkbill (SSN 666), and USS Archerfish (SSN 678) at the geographic North Pole
Russian navy Komar-class patrol boat
USS America (CVA 66)
USS Saratoga (CVA 60)
USS Liberty (AGTR 5)
Soviet Sierra-class nuclear-powered attack submarine
Russian Oscar-class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine
Argentine cruiser Belgrano sinking after attack by HMS Conqueror
HMS Conqueror returns to Faslane, Scotland
USS Virginia (SSN 774) at Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde, Scotland, March 22, 2016
USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51)
Vice Admiral Herbert A. Browne, USN
Vice Admiral Dennis V. McGinn, USN
Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, USN
TABLE
TABLE 4-1. Black Sea Fleet Deployment of Surface Ships to the Mediterranean
CHRONOLOGY
Main Political and Naval Events during the June War 1967
I would like to thank my beloved wife, Dr. Carol Evans, for the painstaking creation of the index. In a book with such complex technical detail this was indeed a labor of love, combined with considerable resilience and great professionalism.
This book is about naval thinking: its impact at every level of naval activity and interaction with national defense in its many complexities. An attempt has been made to select themes that are relevant and most topical for current issues, providing a framework for thinking through where both navies need to go in the future and why. Perhaps most of all it seeks to encourage thoughtful discourse on how to steer a successful course through what is often a minefield of opponents, skeptics, fellow travelers, and those with ill-conceived agendas or who simply have little or no knowledge of both navies’ rich maritime heritage or of the basics of maritime strategy. The book wants to provide guidance and stimulation. It will attempt to answer key questions, as a Socratic response. Most of all it aims to encourage thoughtful dialogue with readers so that individually and collectively they may contribute to the debate and actions needed to keep both countries’ naval strategies deeply rooted and focused on well-reasoned fact, intellectual integrity, and rigor. The past fifty-five years provide us with bedrock experience that can help us shape the future.
The US Navy and the Royal Navy have a unique relationship within the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. The special relationship was forged during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At its heart lay special intelligence sharing at the most sensitive levels, much of it focused on naval matters. Parallel to and coupled with intelligence activities ran a continuous thread of maritime strategic planning and execution that bonded the two navies throughout World War II. This golden thread that contributed so significantly to ultimate victory in 1945 continued in the postwar period. By 1960, when this story begins, this special relationship and the destinies of the United States and Royal Navies had become entwined, and endured thereafter.
The fifty-five years from 1960 to 2015 have seen extraordinary challenges and changes for both navies. They have been as demanding as World War II and of comparable strategic significance. One critical factor lies at the root of the strategic underpinnings of the past fifty-five years: the combined and shared national self-interests of the United States and the United Kingdom in preserving and protecting the values and interests that sustained them during the darkest days of World War II and for which they fought. This story from 1960 to 2015 reflects those very self-same Anglo-American values, which have been preserved to this day. The United States and Royal Navies together represent the enduring values that unite both countries in common goals.
This book is not a formal history or an anthology and does not follow a strict chronology. It is more a discursive analysis of selected key themes across time, as well as of how the two navies interacted in distinctive ways. I aim to engage and challenge the reader’s own knowledge and experience in a Socratic way, so that the reader may form his or her own ideas and conclusions, as a result of what I hope are stimulating and illuminating observations. This book does not, therefore, aim to be definitive in any sense of the word but rather a discourse between the author and readers whereby they may collectively form clear and reliable ideas about not just what happened in this critical fifty-five years but also how it will shape all our thinking about the future. Professor Sir Michael Howard, the father of the Department of War Studies at King’s College, University of London, has stressed that the past is not necessarily always a true guide to the future, that lessons learned may not always be applied to future events or scenarios or for formulating plans, policies, or programs, and certainly not to grand strategy. However, he does conclude that understanding why things happen in military institutions and their ultimate engagement in war has value, that such knowledge and insight can help address a way forward. The past should not be prologue but instead used to anticipate change and formulate future endeavors based on a didactic interchange between the past, the present, and the foreseeable future. For example, both navies are currently involved in what is the most expensive defense program for each nation, the replacement of the submarine-based ballistic missile, the keystone of both countries’ nuclear deterrence strategy. The history of both navies’ nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine (SSBN) forces is a study in strategy in its own right. The Cold War era has transitioned to the post–Cold War period. Both navies now witness the growth of Chinese naval power and the reemergence of a Russian navy that looks a lot different from the one US Navy admirals visited in the heyday of post–Soviet Union perestroika in the 1990s. Given the massive investment and the opportunity-cost choices confronting both governments, what do the past fifty-five years tell us? What is the interaction between the US-UK SSBN forces’ strategic underpinnings, program elements (technical, operational, force structure, and financial) and other choices, and the past? The continuity of institutionalized naval thinking may be challenged in ways that were simply not present when President John Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold MacMillan signed the agreements that shared US submarine nuclear technology with the Royal Navy and led to the creation of the UK’s Polaris submarine force. Political will and funding interact with both navies’ concerns about lost programs and diminished force levels as a result of the inevitable high cost of SSBN replacement. Based on our knowledge and experience, what is the best outcome for both countries and their navies?
Bookshelves and e-systems are full of outstanding works on both the US Navy and Royal Navy during this period. This book will not attempt to replicate what is easily available elsewhere. For example, the technical details of both navies’ force structure down to the unit level, in extraordinary fine and accurate detail, can be found in works like Jane’s Fighting Ships and the myriad publications of the U.S. Naval