Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea by john lehman

Author:john lehman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

A RCTIC O PERATIONS

From February 23 to March 12, we carried out Operation Anchor Express, a more ambitious cold weather winter exercise to reinforce northern Norway. It included 20,000 men from eight NATO countries. The Fourth Marine Amphibious Brigade (MAB) participated in the amphibious landing phase. Elements of the Fourth MAB took USAF C-141s, deploying directly to Evenes, an airfield in northern Norway. Equipment from Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point, North Carolina, was loaded onto a roll-on/roll-off ship and transported to Bogen Bay, twenty miles from Evenes. Concurrently, fixed-wing squadrons were deployed to Bodø air station, about ninety air miles south of Evenes. Forces that needed to pick up prepositioned weapons and supplies were flown into Trondheim, then moved with Norwegian assistance up to Bodø, to Bogen Bay, to Evenes, and to the deployed troops.

The northern strategy carried with it an enormous new level of difficulty in operating. At sea there were howling gales, fog, snow, ice, and huge waves. Ashore it was the same minus the waves and plus the mountains. Lubricants, hydraulics, electronics, and humans all required specialized modifications and protections. To deal with these challenges, we established the Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station 180 miles north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. It was the largest navy ice camp ever.

We had 189 scientists and engineers representing thirty-nine research and development programs. It also included three submarines operating under the ice. They went on to surface together at the North Pole on May 6, 1986. We launched, tracked, and recovered torpedoes, tested P-3 aircraft-to-submerged submarine communications, and did other projects unique to Arctic operations. Occasionally Soviet Bear bombers flew over the camp to keep tabs on us. I went up to spend a few days at the camp and boarded one of the attack subs that broke through the ice near the camp to pick me up and spend some time operating under the ice. Later, on the flight back to Washington, I approved a new U.S. Navy Arctic Service Ribbon.

In March, we focused on integrating the antisubmarine warfare (ASW) forces of all the NATO navies with a large U.S.-led exercise in the Norwegian Sea lasting about two weeks. The operation was commanded from Northwood, the Royal Navy headquarters in the UK. The operation used combined arms ASW including attack submarines, maritime patrol aircraft, surface ships, and other classified sensors. This was quite a precedent at Northwood, with big staffs involved from each of the NATO participants.

One of our top strategists, Naval Reserve Cmdr. John Hanley, was brought back to active duty for the exercise and recalls:

Either our [secrecy] was good or the Soviets thought their submarine deployment schedules inviolate, but they did provide target services on two occasions during [the operation]. . . . Sharing long-range contact data from surface ships and submarines with towed arrays and using negative [Bayesian] search techniques to vector [aircraft] to targets and high probability areas for finding simulated Soviet submarines, including their new, quiet Oscar-class nuclear [antiship missile attack subs], the detection rates exceeded the availability of [aircraft] to prosecute targets.

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