The Silent Deep

by James Jinks

  While the Victor was a relatively conservative design, a direct evolution of the first-generation Project 627, ‘November’ class, SSN, the Alfa marked a radical departure from previous Soviet submarines. Using a liquid-metal reactor plant instead of the PWR systems common to both US and RN submarines, the ‘Alfa’ was a small, high-speed ASW submarine designed to seek out and destroy Western missile and attack submarines. Highly automated, with a crew of just thirty, the Alfa had a streamlined, visually striking teardrop-shaped hull designed to maximize underwater speed; and fabricated not out of steel but titanium, which allowed the submarine to dive to depths of 1300 feet (400 metres) – well out of range of both UK and US torpedoes. The first of class was laid down in 1968, just as the ‘Victor’ class SSNs entered series production. The first Alfa, K-64, commissioned into the Soviet Navy in December 1971. However, severe production and engineering problems plagued K-64 and in 1972 the submarine suffered a major reactor incident when the liquid metal in the reactor’s primary coolant hardened. The submarine was taken out of service and cut in half and the next of class did not appear until 1977, with a further five completing between 1978 and 1981.182

  As both US and UK intelligence communities looked ahead to the mid-1980s and beyond they assessed that although the Soviet Navy was not expected to increase in numbers of ships and submarines, its potential for war and its political effect worldwide would increase significantly. Intelligence assessments indicated that the Soviets would develop a ballistic missile and a submarine to launch it with capabilities as close to those of the US Trident programme as they could achieve. Such a submarine, known as the ‘Typhoon’, would probably appear around 1980 and by 1990 constitute around 18 per cent of Soviet SSBNs. The ‘Yankee’ class, which would be twenty-five years old by 1990, was expected to be replaced by a new class of SSBN. The Soviets periodically updated the Delta design, evolving the basic Project 667B into the Project 667BD, ‘Delta II’ SSBN. Between 1967 and 1977, the Soviets produced 56 SSBNs: 34 ‘Yankee’ class; 18 ‘Delta I’ class; and 4 ‘Delta II’ class.183 In 1972, they also started work on the ‘penultimate manifestation’ of the ‘Delta’ design, the Project 667BDR ‘Delta III’: the first Soviet SSBN capable of carrying the first Soviet SLBM with Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV): the SS-N-18 Stingray as it was known in NATO. This powerful new missile was capable of delivering a single warhead to a target 4320 miles away; or three or seven MIRV warheads up to a range of 3500 nautical miles.184

  Assessments also indicated that by the end of the 1970s the Soviets intended to deploy a new class of nuclear-powered cruise-missile-firing submarine, equipped with new submerged-launched anti-ship missiles with a range of up to 100 miles. Assessments also indicated that by the mid- to late 1980s, due to the phasing out of the by then obsolete ‘Echo II’ and ‘Juliett’ class SSGNs, a further new class of SSGN could also enter service. The Navy expected these two classes to constitute around 35 per cent of the Soviet SSGN fleet by 1990.185 As for SSNs, assessments concluded that a new class of SSN, codenamed SSNX-1 with improved ASW capability, a reduction in self-noise, sonar improvements and a longer-range weapon system, could be expected to enter service in the early 1980s. Assessments also correctly concluded that at least one and probably more units of the ‘Alfa’ class were still under construction. An entirely new class of highly capable attack submarine, codenamed SSNX-2, was also expected to enter service by the end of the 1980s, and along with SSNX-1, both classes were expected to constitute up to 39 per cent of all Soviet SSNs by 1990.186

  The Navy’s assessments cautiously concluded that the Soviet Navy would continue to lag behind Western sonar performance. Despite speculative assessments there was little technical evidence that suggested the Soviets had an effective noise reduction programme. Evaluations indicated that the new Soviet SSN classes would only have a noise signature that was comparable to the ‘Valiant’ class as it was in 1977. Indeed, the new ‘Alfas’ were reportedly ‘noisy as a freight train and could be detected thousands of miles away’.187 However, intelligence assessments acknowledged that it was ‘reasonable to assume that, given the inclination, the Soviets could possess the technical capability of achieving a steep noise reduction with their new submarine classes which could compare’ to future Royal Navy submarines.188 It was predicted that by 1985 the Soviets would be likely to achieve a small improvement in counter-detection ranges, which would have an important effect on Royal Navy submarine philosophy as its putative attacks depended heavily upon attaining tactical surprise for the subsequent launch of quiet but relatively slow torpedoes. Any extensive noise reduction programme was, however, expected to result in a weight penalty that would adversely affect the speed and depth of Soviet designs.189

  The Royal Navy remained cautious but confident that it would continue to enjoy superiority over Soviet submarines, but it acknowledged that:

  The general increase in Soviet ship or weapon effectiveness across a broad spectrum of activities will pose new problems to our forces. Improved sensors, either sonar or non acoustic systems, backed up by anti-submarine weapons with greater range and improved homing techniques will extend the area within which it is dangerous to approach the enemy, enhanced noise reduction will reduce our own detection capability, and anechoics and advanced decoys or countermeasures will degrade our own sensor and weapon effectiveness.190

  While the Royal Navy was still occupied with the Soviet threat, it became involved in the first of many operations in the South Atlantic, thousands of miles away from Cold War waters, against an entirely different enemy.

  7

  Hot War: The Falklands Conflict

  For my generation of submariners it was everything we would expect to have done, except it was the wrong enemy. My generation had been totally brought up on the Russians and the Soviets and it was quite extraordinary that my generation had spent all its submarine career, all thirty years of it, dealing with the Russians, but the only thing we’ve sunk is an Argentinian. I find that very ironic.

  Roger Lane-Nott, CO, HMS Splendid, 1979–83.1

  When the dust has settled on the Falkland Islands Campaign it will be seen that the single most significant Naval Event, after the arrival of the Task Group itself, was your sinking of the Cruiser BELGRANO. That action brought the Argentinian Navy up with a round turn and sent it scurrying to the Twelve Mile Limit, there to stay for the duration while we got on and fought the Air War. That cool and determined attack was typical of your whole patrol. Bon Voyage. Take a well earned break.

  Rear Admiral Woodward to HMS Conqueror, 16 June 1982.2

  OPERATION ‘JOURNEYMAN’

  In December 1976, the Royal Navy’s Antarctic ice patrol ship HMS Endurance discovered that an Argentinian detachment consisting of approximately twenty men, apparently in military uniforms and led by a major, had occupied and established a weather/scientific station on Southern Thule Island, a Falkland Islands Dependency. Amid protests from the Foreign Office, the Argentinian Foreign Minister told the British Government that the Argentinian detachment would leave the station at the onset of the Antarctic winter in March/April 1977. In June 1977, the British and Argentinian governments opened negotiations over the future of the Falkland Islands, with a first round of exploratory talks in Rome, followed by a second and third round of ministerial talks in November and December 1977 in New York.3 The then Foreign Secretary, David Owen, was concerned about the hard-line attitude adopted by the Argentinians over the future sovereignty of the Falkland Islands and the possibility that the final round of talks in December would either break down or end in deadlock. Owen asked the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Committee for an assessment of the possibility of direct Argentinian action against the Islands. Although the JIC assessed that a full-blown invasion of the islands was unlikely, it concluded that action against British shipping in the surrounding waters was a more likely response. The British Government eventually adopted a policy of ‘non-provocative preparedness’ and
towards the end of November 1977 dispatched a small naval Task Force to the South Atlantic to protect British shipping and against the eventuality of an Argentinian invasion. The Task Force consisted of two frigates, HMS Phoebe and HMS Alacrity, and two Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels, RFA Olwen and RFA Resurgent. This surface force would remain at a considerable distance from the Falkland Islands to avoid provoking the Argentinians and triggering a serious incident.4 An accompanying SSN would move in closer to the Falkland Islands, where it would remain hidden and be called on should it be required.5

  In November 1977, HMS Dreadnought, under the command of Commander Hugh Michell, was ordered to interrupt a planned eight-month deployment to Australia and divert to Gibraltar. Arriving at 1200 on 23 November, Michell received orders to embark stores for seventy-five days and to deploy a full ‘war load’ of torpedoes. In order to accommodate the extra stores and weapons, Dreadnought’s crew was forced to offload large amounts of the extra naval stores and personal gear that they had previously stowed for their Australian deployment. The second and third decks of the submarine were crammed with extra stores – tins layered on top of tins – a process known as ‘false decking’, and the twenty bunks in the upper level of the Dreadnought’s fore-ends, which were usually allocated to ratings, were stripped out in order to accommodate the thirteen extra Mark 8 torpedoes. This had severe consequences for Dreadnought’s company as it limited the number of available bunks to just 90 and Michell was forced to reduce his normal sea-going complement from 113 to just 99. Dreadnought was provisioned with so many extra stores and torpedoes that a check-trim dive of the submarine, carried out shortly after it left Gibraltar, revealed that it was impossible to achieve a state of neutral buoyancy at periscope depth, as the submarine was 4000 gallons too heavy. This left little if any flexibility for any ocean density changes that Dreadnought might encounter while sailing to the South Atlantic.

  Seventy-two hours after arriving in Gibraltar, Dreadnought departed for the South Atlantic to begin what would amount to nine weeks of covert surveillance off the seaward approaches to the Falkland Islands, while HMS Endurance and an accompanying RFA, Cherryleaf, remained in Port Stanley and the two frigates and two Royal Fleet Auxiliaries remained in a holding area 1000 miles to the northeast of the Islands.6 There is still a considerable debate about whether the deployment of the Task Force was an exercise in deterrence or merely a precautionary measure. David Owen, Foreign Secretary at the time, later claimed that Dreadnought was operating under specific Rules of Engagement that stated: ‘if Argentine ships came within 50 miles of the Falkland Islands and were believed to have displayed hostile intent, the submarine was to open fire’.7 Other accounts have argued that Michell was under orders to find an Argentinian vessel and deliberately expose Dreadnought in order to demonstrate to the Argentinians that a Royal Navy submarine was in the area and intended to defend the Islands.8

  In fact, Dreadnought was under very clear orders ‘to establish a presence in the area of the Falkland Islands and their Dependencies to protect British lives and property by deterring or countering Argentine aggression’. Dreadnought was issued with Rules of Engagement that were based on the minimal use of force and in the event of deteriorating relations between the UK and Argentina any vessels approaching the Islands were to ‘be asked to identify themselves and to state their intentions’.9 Dreadnought’s First Lieutenant, Martin Macpherson, is also ‘absolutely categorically certain that we were not told to expose ourselves’. When Dreadnought arrived 4–5 miles off Port Stanley on 12 December, Michell ensured that the submarine remained at periscope depth, prosecuting and evaluating any nearby contact that approached the islands. There was no Argentinian naval activity or local fishing boat sightings and over a five-day period Dreadnought only detected a total of nine ships. There was ‘nothing untoward at all’, recalls Macpherson, ‘by itself it was a deadly dull patrol’.10 The submarine was detected, but not by the Argentinians. During a practice covert panoramic photograph sweep on the RFA Cherryleaf, Dreadnought was sighted by the well-trained lookouts who had just completed an intense anti-submarine exercise off Portland. Around forty hours later, a signal arrived from Northwood asking: ‘Was this you?’ ‘We’d clearly caused a bit of a stir,’ recalls Macpherson.11

  Questions have also been raised about whether or not the Argentinians were directly or indirectly informed about the presence of the Task Force. Clive Whitmore, Margaret Thatcher’s Principal Private Secretary, said: ‘Argentina did not know of this action at the time.’12 However, when the former Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, appeared before the post-Falklands Franks Committee in 1982, he was unable to say whether the existence of the Task Force was conveyed to the Argentinians or not: ‘I do not know and therefore I think we should presume that it was not conveyed to them, although I do not know. I don’t know, that is the simple answer,’ he insisted. But he did admit that ‘my own belief is that they did know’.13 Callaghan expanded on this point in his 1987 memoirs by recalling a discussion he had with the then Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Maurice Oldfield:

  I told Maurice Oldfield of our plans to send a naval task force to stand off the Falklands at a discreet distance, but I did not make a direct request to him to inform the Argentineans [sic] of our purpose. We discussed the future prospects against the background of possible hostile action by Argentina, and I am clear that he understood that I would not be unhappy if the news of our deployment reached the Argentinean Armed Forces. I did not question Maurice Oldfield subsequently about what action he had taken so that remains speculative.14

  In his memoirs, Lord Owen did ‘not believe that Maurice Oldfield … would have disclosed the naval deployment as a result of a discussion with the Prime Minister, at least not without talking to me first’. He did admit that ‘in some delicate areas’ Oldfield would have been ‘entitled to respond only to the Prime Minister’ but did ‘not believe this was one of them’.15

  According to the official historian of the Falklands conflict, Sir Lawrence Freedman, ‘there were no indications at the time to suggest that “C” did anything as a result of this conversation or that Argentina was aware of this deployment or allowed it to affect its behaviour’.16 However, there is some evidence to suggest that Oldfield did, in fact, take matters further. Had MI6 wanted to inform the Argentinians that a naval Task Force – in particular an SSN – was operating close to the Falklands, one of the most appropriate and credible means of doing so would have been through Navy-to-Navy channels. The British Naval Attaché in Argentina at the time was a Royal Navy officer named Daniel Leggat. Leggat allegedly discreetly informed his Argentinian counterpart about the presence of the Task Force. Interviews conducted in 1992 for a television programme told of a 1977 conversation between Admiral Juan José Lombardo, Commander at the time of the Argentinian Navy’s submarine force, and Admiral Jorge Anaya, the then Fleet Commander of the Argentinian Navy, in which Anaya asked Lombardo if Argentina’s new German-built diesel submarines could find and attack a British SSN, to which Lombardo replied ‘No.’17

  Whatever the truth, Owen was ‘very grateful to the Royal Navy for mounting this operation so quickly’.18 The negotiations with the Argentinians continued and the Callaghan Government successfully ‘avoided any immediate risk of dangerous confrontation with the Argentines’.19 Dreadnought returned to Faslane in March 1978 with a vast amount of information about the communication and oceanographic conditions in the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, which in almost every respect were different to those in the North Atlantic. Her crew were ordered not to reveal where they had been. When the officers walked into the Wardroom at Faslane they were met by a jubilant group of wives wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ‘HMS Dreadnought Magical Mystery Tours’.20 Negotiations between Argentina and the United Kingdom continued over the next two years as the two governments attempted to find a solution that met the concerns of both the Argentinians and the islanders, the most promising of which involved a proposal t
o transfer sovereignty to Argentina, which would then lease the Falkland Islands back to the United Kingdom. However, support for lease-back faltered. In June 1981, as part of its Defence Review, the Thatcher Government announced that the Royal Navy’s Antarctic patrol ship, HMS Endurance, the most important symbol of the UK’s commitment to the Falkland Islands, was to be withdrawn from service. In December 1981, a new junta took power in Argentina led by the commander of the army, General Leopoldo Galtieri. On 18 March 1982, a party of Argentinian scrap metal dealers landed on another Falklands dependency, South Georgia, where they raised the Argentinian flag and damaged property belonging to the British Antarctic Survey. Six days later, on 24 March, a detachment of Argentinian Marines landed on South Georgia and the Argentinian junta secretly advanced plans for a full-scale invasion of the Falkland Islands.