The Silent Deep

by James Jinks

  Warspite remained under the Leningrad for the next few hours. All seemed well until the Soviet ship suddenly increased speed. Warspite’s crew then detected some Morse code letters on her own underwater telephone. ‘I didn’t know quite what to make of that at the time but thought it might be some kind of identification or interrogation message – perhaps they were expecting one of their own nuclear submarines,’ says Woodward. Rather than move away from the Leningrad he decided to wait and see. Half an hour later Warspite’s sonars indicated that one of the Leningrad’s escorts was off the starboard beam pinging away at Warspite. Woodward ordered full helm away and with 45 degrees of heel in the turn Warspite reversed course at 21 knots. The escort quickly lost contact and Warspite slipped away and continued to shadow the surface group. ‘I had no difficulty shadowing from about twelve miles away, watching Leningrad’s masts over the crystal-clear horizon, listening to and recording her big sonar banging away, very similar to my own, if I cared to use it’ recalled Woodward. ‘Things seemed fairly settled for a while, the Leningrad was doing about ten knots and making it easy for me to keep up at periscope depth.’157

  But then it all started to go wrong. An American Long-Range Maritime Patrol aircraft appeared and spotted Warspite’s search periscope. Mistaking Warspite for a Soviet submarine, the American aircraft started dropping smoke floats to mark the position of the submarine. An exasperated Woodward attempted to call the American pilot off on the radio but received no answer. But it was too late, the Leningrad decided to investigate what was happening and turned immediately towards Warspite. ‘We were getting excellent recordings of her big new sonar at work,’ said Woodward. ‘I let her get contact, indicated by a predictable change of operating mode, giving more useful intelligence on its performance, before going deep and evading at speed.’ Woodward moved Warspite astern of the Leningrad and continued to shadow from the other side, before breaking off and returning to Faslane with what was referred to as ‘the take’, all the intelligence collected on the Leningrad.158

  While Soviet cruise missile submarines and surface ships remained important intelligence targets, by the mid-1960s the West was increasingly concerned about the development of a new class of Soviet strategic missile submarine that appeared to be comparable to the US Polaris system. The Soviets had started work in this area in 1958 and by 1962 the Soviet Navy had approved the design of the Project 667A (‘Yankee I’) missile submarine, which carried sixteen R-27 (SS-N-6) ballistic missiles, each with a range of 3000 kilometres, capable of reaching targets in the eastern United States and Canada within minutes from launching positions in the Atlantic. Construction of the first Yankee I began in 1964 with the first of class entering service in 1967, eight years after the completion of the first US Polaris submarine.159 Thirty-four 667A submarines were eventually built.160 By 1969, twelve ‘Yankee I’ class submarines were in service with the Soviet Navy. Due to the relatively short range of the missiles (3000 kilometres) the Yankees had to deploy to patrol areas relatively close to the US coast. As the bulk of the Soviet strategic submarine force was based at Zapadnaja Litsa, a naval base 45 kilometres from the Norwegian border, the Yankees had to transit south, through the passages between Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Shetland Islands, to reach their patrol areas in the Atlantic off North America. While on transit the Yankees were vulnerable to detection in areas such as the Norwegian Sea.

  On a later occasion in the late 1960s, Woodward was ordered to take Warspite and intercept a newly refitted ‘Yankee’ class submarine that intelligence indicated was fitted with long missile tubes, capable of carrying missiles with increased range, thus allowing them to be fired further from the US mainland. Woodward was ordered to remain undetected and to measure the height of the Yankee’s missile tubes as accurately as possible. The patrol started badly. Shortly after departing Faslane one of Warspite’s ‘Submarine Sunk’ indicator buoys broke loose and repeatedly banged against the side of the hull, making a noise that could be heard for miles. The buoy eventually separated from Warspite and fortunately did not transmit the standard ‘Subsunk’ distress signal which would have alerted anyone within the area that a submarine had been lost. Then an electrical mechanic, conducting maintenance on one of Warspite’s masts, was injured when the mast was lowered onto his head. Fortunately a doctor had been embarked on the patrol and was able to stitch the mechanic’s scalp back together.161

  As Warspite moved towards its target, Woodward began to consider how he was going to measure the length of the submarine’s missile tubes. ‘I did know enough about the construction of our own Polaris submarines to realize that the tubes would extend from virtually the bottom of the keel to the top of the after deck – the tube length effectively defined that part of the design. If I could measure his draught accurately and then quickly after that get a photo of how much of his hull was above the water, we’d have as good an answer to our top intelligence target as anyone was likely to get without his tape measure.’ But he had no time to test the technique. ‘It had to be right first time.’162

  After locating the Soviet submarine, which was conveniently sitting on the surface, Woodward, peering through the thin Attack Periscope, slowly moved Warspite in directly astern of the target. At around 400 yards, he ordered an increase in depth to 80 feet in order to take Warspite underneath the Russian to conduct an underwater look. ‘We had some initial difficulty getting down in time but all went well,’ recalls Woodward. ‘There was no wake behind me to warn him of my arrival, he was still dead in the water, but rudders, after-planes overhead told me I’d got the run-in right and we took shots of his underwater fittings as we went along his whole length.’163

  Warspite returned to periscope depth. Woodward planned to calculate the height of the Yankee’s missile tubes by taking photographs through Warspite’s periscope, using the height of the Yankee’s fin as a yardstick. However, when Warspite moved in to take the first round of photographs Woodward discovered that the top window of Warspite’s periscope had become fouled and the initial photographs were blurred. In order to obtain better photographs Woodward was forced to leave the periscope up to dry in the sun as Warspite crossed the stern of the submarine. Vision and photograph quality improved steadily as Warspite proceeded to photograph the target’s starboard quarter, stern and port quarter. While this gave Woodward what he needed, it also gave the Soviet lookouts on the conning tower ample opportunity to spot Warspite’s exposed periscope. The first in the series of photographs from this particular stage of the operation shows a single figure on top of the fin. The last shows a group of individuals with binoculars, pointing directly at Warspite’s periscope.

  ‘Obviously, I had been counter-detected,’ said Woodward, ‘contrary to my prime patrol order. Not good. I thought I’d try to make the best of it by passing up his port side with two masts still up so that he could estimate my course … and, as I knew he would, report it as such. I then pulled the masts down, went deep, turned away 180 degrees, right round to the south … the direct opposite of what might be expected … I stayed deep for fifteen minutes and returned to periscope depth … I continued slowly south and over the next three days observed a large part of the Soviet Northern Fleet and Air Force conducting a totally ineffective ASW search for me in a huge expanding semi-circle twenty miles away … Much useful intelligence was gained both of the ICBM’s tube length as ordered and of Soviet Northern Fleet ASW operations as a bit of profit.’164

  Although Woodward achieved his primary intelligence objective, he had contravened his primary patrol directive by being counter-detected. ‘Plainly, I was going to be in trouble when I got home – you do not deliberately disobey clear orders and hope to get away with it.’ Rather than breaking off, he decided to continue the operation. ‘I was almost unconsciously even less careful to avoid counter-detection in subsequent encounters,’ he said. ‘I would stand to gain much valuable tactical intelligence from further counter-detections, deliberate or otherwise. So, in appro
ximate accordance with orders, I would continue to avoid counter-detection but not be too fussed if I failed.’165

  According to Middleton:

  There was always a running battle between the communications specialists and their sonar opposite numbers, the former wanting us to be at periscope depth with their aerials poking above the sea surface, the sonar boys wanting us to be deep with our ears flapping. Tempers sometimes ran hot in Sandy’s daily planning meeting. Occasionally we thought that the opposition had got a sniff of us, and moved delicately to avoid any questing Soviet, eager to flush us out. No more iceberg incidents, we determined!166

  Eventually Warspite came across another Soviet SSBN and spent two days following it and collecting intelligence about its behaviour. ‘We established a clear pattern of his manoeuvres and I was close to breaking off at about 0300 one morning,’ continued Woodward. ‘However, I decided to hang on a bit longer since I had become interested in his behaviour, particularly how he cleared his stern arcs (blind to his sonar and why I usually kept astern of him) by doing substantial course changes every few hours. My normal response to his turn was to point directly at him and go as slowly and quietly as possible, waiting for him to resume his original course. This had happened about four times already without incident and I was perhaps becoming a bit complacent. In war, we could have sunk him at any time over the previous two days. But this is peacetime, so I turned over command to my First Lieutenant to snatch a quick nap – I hadn’t had all that much sleep since arriving in area.’167

  Twenty-two minutes later, Warspite’s First Lieutenant, John Coward, knocked on Woodward’s cabin door and said, ‘Captain, I think you should see this.’168

  ‘I got to the periscope in about ten seconds flat and looked astern to see an array of submarine masts close behind us, leaning over slightly as he followed us in a sharp turn to starboard,’ said Woodward. ‘He was actually turning inside us as well, which was further bad news and presented a risk of collision if he got it wrong – which seemed all too possible. I pulled our masts down, reversed our helm and increased to my self-imposed maximum speed of sixteen knots on a not quite straight course to get away from him.’169

  Woodward was confident that Warspite had a speed advantage over the Soviet submarine, and although the Russian had a firm, solid active sonar contact, Woodward reckoned he knew quite a bit about how Soviet sonars behaved because ‘they had reportedly copied it from our own, courtesy of some traitors at our Research Establishment at Portland some years before. From my own experience,’ he said, ‘I probably knew more about what it could and could not do than he did.’ In order to find out, he came up with a plan: ‘I believed that while he could hold me on his active sonar out to about four miles in the water conditions prevailing if he kept his speed below eight knots, if I ducked beneath the layer at about that range he would lose all contact immediately unless he too ducked beneath the layer. If he did that, I would know soon enough to go back above the layer again and stay out of contact from him. I calculated that if I made sixteen knots and he only eight, I could open the range to four miles within half an hour, go deep below the layer, turn ninety degrees off track and lose him.’170

  After half an hour Warspite turned 135 degrees and pointed straight at the Russian. The crew waited and watched on passive sonar as the Soviet submarine went by. ‘As soon as [I was] satisfied that he was not using his active sonar in the search mode towards me, I returned to periscope depth to try and monitor his enemy report,’ Woodward went on. ‘He obliged, reporting losing contact exactly where I had predicted and gone deep at a range of four miles and giving my earlier course and speed while he trundled on up that course, pinging away to no effect. Disappointing for him, satisfactory for me and allowing me to potter off and think about it all.’171

  Subsequent analysis revealed that the Soviet submarine had probably begun to suspect the presence of Warspite up to twenty-four hours earlier. He had developed the habit, unnoticed by Warspite at the time, of taking a single high-powered sonar ping back down his course when he cleared his stern arcs. ‘As it was,’ concluded Woodward, ‘I think he must have got a sniff there was someone lurking behind him and that last time he turned to clear his stern arcs, instead of turning some ninety odd degrees to clear his arcs and then resuming his original course, he had pointed straight back towards us and held that new course until we nearly met – physically.’172

  Two days later, Warspite came across a Soviet torpedo-firing exercise and Woodward once again moved his submarine in to observe: ‘Suddenly, there were two torpedoes in the water and to my slight alarm as we watched their bearing on sonar, coming directly my way … they were most probably “practice” torpedoes without warheads, but they might just not be. I had detected no TRV [Torpedo Recovery Vessel] and the possibility that they are not practice torpedoes due to be recovered at the end of their run had suddenly become a bit more real. Could I have got this badly wrong? Should I evade them, making a lot of unavoidable noise in the process, or should I cross my fingers, wait and see and trust meanwhile that they were only “practice”? As I had neither the speed nor the countermeasures to have much chance of getting clear of them, the only sensible thing was to point between them and trust that firstly they were indeed “practice” weapons and secondly that neither of them would physically hit us. As the torpedoes approached, it became apparent that at least they were not active homers or I would have been hearing their transmissions. And if they were passive homers, I had remained quiet enough for them not to pick me up. Fingers began to come uncrossed, but not until they went safely past me either side. Little intelligence gained but I know to be careful next time.’ Warspite returned to Faslane with a vast amount of technical and operational intelligence on Soviet submarines, surface ships and weapons systems.173

  Herbert, Hervey and Woodward were the first commanding officers in the Royal Navy to take what was then the most advanced of Her Majesty’s warships into the frontline of the deep Cold War. Just as other COs had done with conventional submarines in the 1950s, under minimal supervision, they operated with a degree of unparalleled independence and flexibility which had much in common with that given to their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors, who often took risky and sometimes controversial decisions, independent of any senior authority, while operating on the far side of the world. The advent of nuclear-powered submarines raised the Submarine Service to a central position within the Royal Navy.

  6

  ‘No Refuge in the Depths’: The Cold War in the 1970s

  Why did we need covert surveillance operations in the Cold War? We had to demonstrate that we could prevent the Soviets breaking out into the Atlantic from their Northern Fleet bases. Could we and our allies have stopped them? Answer, probably not. There were just too many of them, even if our weapons had been effective against their very-deep-diving hulls and high speeds. But at least we could have given them a bloody nose, and at a higher level they knew it.

  Captain Richard Sharpe, Royal Navy, 2010.1

  We are going to have relatively few SSNs. We have got to use our SSNs in the most cost effective way – and that is to put them on the tails of the most threatening of the enemy submarines. If we can achieve this it is probably the best way of protecting our forces. If all of them can be attacked approaching our forces, we should achieve our objective.

  Captain Peter Herbert, Royal Navy, 1973.2

  THE DECADE OF THE PASSIVE

  Throughout the 1970s new doctrines and tactics, combined with steady material advances in sonar, communications, navigation and weapons systems, transformed the Submarine Service and moved it to the front line of a largely unnoticed and unacknowledged undersea confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union. Thanks to a steady combination of construction, machinery and operating techniques, the Royal Navy’s nuclear and conventional submarines, designed for maximum silence and stealth, exploited a crucial sonar advantage over the Soviet Navy and, alongside the United States Nav
y’s submarine force, conducted a major surveillance effort against the Soviet Union, identifying likely deployment routes and tracking, trailing and shadowing Soviet nuclear submarines, with the ultimate aim of attacking and destroying them on the outbreak of war. Throughout the 1970s, surveillance and shadowing of Soviet forces became part of an acceptable deterrent posture.

  In April and May 1970, some 200 ships, submarines and land-based aircraft of the Soviet Navy conducted Exercise ‘Okean’ (Ocean), the largest naval exercise to be held by any navy since the Second World War. Conducted simultaneously in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Barents, Norwegian, Baltic, Mediterranean, and Philippine Seas, the exercise involved the rapid deployment of forces, anti-submarine warfare exercises, a simulated anti-carrier exercise followed by amphibious landings. During the anti-carrier phase, simulated air strikes flown against Soviet task groups in the Atlantic and Pacific struck the simulated US Carrier Groups in the North Atlantic and North Pacific within a few minutes of each other, a remarkable achievement of planning and execution.3 According to the then Soviet Minister of Defence, Marshal Andrei Grechko, ‘The Okean maneuvers were evidence of the increased naval might of our socialist state, an index of the fact that our Navy has become so great and so strong that it is capable of executing missions in defense of our state interests over the broad expanses of the world.’4 But Exercise ‘Okean’ also revealed some troubling realities about the Soviet nuclear-submarine fleet. On 8 April 1970, a ‘November’ class submarine participating in ‘Okean’, the K-8, suffered engineering problems when a spark ignited a fire in the flammable chemicals of its air regeneration system, while submerged at a depth of 395 feet in the Atlantic, off Cape Finisterre, Spain. The submarine was able to reach the surface, where smoke and carbon dioxide forced most of the crew onto the deck. On 12 April, after drifting for three days and being battered by strong gales, the K-8 sank with the loss of fifty-two of her men, including the Commanding Officer.5