later as an industrial nation.
Furthermore, the Royal Navy had not just been the protector of these trading, and indeed survival, interests, but the main military instrument for British foreign policy, through forward presence and operations to support political-economic interests. The United Kingdom’s involvement in major land campaigns had historically been with “citizen armies,” not large, regular, and permanently maintained ones. The latter was true of Henry V’s army at Agincourt, that of John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, at the battle of Blenheim, and that of Sir Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsular War during the Napoleonic era. It was just as true of General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army at El Alamain and General William Slim’s Fourteenth Army at Kohima. All were citizen armies recruited and trained for the duration of conflict by a much smaller cadre of peacetime professionals. The Royal Navy was different—it was a large and permanent body of highly trained and experienced professional officers and men, sailors in the widest sense. When Denis Healey made the monumental decision not to replace the Royal Navy carrier fleet he was, in essence, disavowing centuries of well-conceived and well-executed British maritime strategy. It was indeed ironic that in the 1960s, while distinguished academics like Professor Bryan Ranft were teaching maritime strategy and naval history at the Royal Naval College Greenwich and in the war and staff colleges, the central staffs of the Ministry of Defense were systematically disestablishing centuries of successful exercise of both.
By contrast, the US Navy went in a diametrically opposed direction in the 1960s, in spite of the political-military organizational changes. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 showed how a president who had served in the Navy during World War II could use naval power to avert a national crisis. The blockade of Soviet naval delivery of a panoply of nuclear missile capabilities into Cuba was one of diplomacy underscored by heavy-duty naval force—the power and strength of the US Navy to stop Soviet operations at sea in their tracks. Without the perception and physical reality of that power, backed by the avowed intent of the president to use it if need be, the outcome would undoubtedly have been very different. Furthermore, President Kennedy was able to offset the somewhat frightening countervailing recommendations of such members of his military staff as General Curtis LeMay of the Air Force by the use of naval power. As a naval man, Kennedy kept his hands firmly on the tiller; without the power of the US fleet he might not have been able to bring Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the negotiating table or keep at bay the extreme hawks within his own military establishment. The use of nuclear weapons in 1962 by the United States may seem in retrospect not just outrageous but somewhat unbelievable; however, the fact is that it was an option, one that had advocates, who pointed to certain circumstances moving out of control against US interests. President Kennedy remained cool, calm, and collected, in spite of intense pressure and used his Navy with great skill.
The Cuban Missile Crisis encapsulated US naval strategy in the 1960s. Resources were never a serious issue. The Navy received what it wanted for its well-documented requirements in support of its well-articulated maritime strategy. This book will later immerse readers in the more detailed aspects of the implementation of US naval strategy in the 1960s and beyond and of the role the changing face of the Royal Navy played in the emerging North Atlantic Cold War campaign. In addition to actual operations, and certainly US Navy combat operations in the Vietnam War and those of the Royal Navy in East Malaysia, there were some aspects that were not given analytical prominence at the time but have significance for contemporary events and certainly future naval operations.
A US Navy helicopter observes a Soviet submarine during Cuban quarantine operations. US NAVY
One such consideration comprised basing and base facilities. The Royal Navy had historically enjoyed a chain of naval bases and other related facilities, such as wireless stations and, in the days of steam, coaling stations. Their names reel off the tongue without effort—Hong Kong, Singapore, Gan in the Maldive Islands, Trincomalee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Masirah near the entrance to the Persian Gulf, Aden, Bahrain, Diego Garcia, Mombasa, Mauritius, Simonstown, Gibraltar, Malta, Bermuda, bases on Canada’s eastern seaboard, a whole group of West Indies facilities, and the Falkland Islands (Port Stanley) in the South Atlantic. This was an impressive logistics chain, one that spanned the globe and involved reciprocity with Australia and New Zealand for port access. Without fixed bases and refueling, victualing, and maintenance facilities a navy faces serious problems unless it uses nuclear power and has a replenishment-at-sea capability that can be sustained in a transoceanic environment without recourse to land bases. Crews need rest and recreation, and port visits have always played a major role in diplomatic and trade relations. Access to port facilities on a guaranteed and regular basis is a must for a global navy.
Such facilities, or lack thereof, dramatically affect transit time, time on station, rearming, and crew morale. These are critical factors. Even a nuclear-powered attack submarine en route from Pearl Harbor to the South China Sea has to spend a long time in transit, and although its nuclear reactor will provide nonstop fuel, electricity, and fresh air and water, the crew’s stamina is a major factor, as are such considerations as rearming in the event of hostilities, and routine and emergency maintenance. When the United Kingdom withdrew primarily to the North Atlantic, with occasional forays to other parts, sadly, it disengaged from its historical bases without due diligence as to what the future might hold. Decolonization and independence for countries where these bases existed did not necessarily preclude future usage, but once the knots were cut it would become increasingly difficult to reengage and proportionately important for a major ally, such as the United States, to engage in lieu.
Fortunately, time and international realignments have favored the United States. Outside the NATO theater the US Navy has established good relations in places such as Singapore and Bahrain, taking up the slack from the Royal Navy. The United Kingdom wisely granted to the United States base rights on Diego Garcia, a pivotal Indian Ocean location. Because Naples in Italy and Rota in Spain remain available the British closure of Malta has not affected US operations in the Mediterranean; though there were early fears that potential belligerents might seek access, none of their attempts have amounted to date to anything significant. Base relations become really important in the forging of navy alliances on a basis of mutual cooperation. This was never more true than during the Cold War, with northern European and Mediterranean port visits. Today the burgeoning relations in Asia between the US Navy and the Royal Malaysian Navy and with those of Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan all speak to one fact—that underpinning joint operations and exercises are port visits and the facilities that go with port visits. These make up the cement in the building blocks of naval cooperation in Asia today.
Rearming, refueling, and victualing at sea are major seamanship skills—they are acquired by practice and require the best technology to meet the needs of challenging and dangerous conditions. The US and Royal Navies are past masters of these skills. Both navies developed substantial fleet-replenishment capabilities—indeed, constituting a navy within a navy without which the fighting forces would not be able to function. Even nuclear-powered aircraft carriers need to replenish aviation fuel, rearm with munitions, and resupply. These tasks should be borne in mind in the chapters ahead. Without the “fleet train,” as the British dubbed the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (its replenishment ships) and its American counterpart, the US and Royal Navies could not have achieved entire success in the Cold War. Conversely, the Soviet Union was at an enormous disadvantage because of its slowness in developing and mastering at-sea replenishment. The great work of the American Marvin Miller (1923–2009) at the US Naval Station, Port Hueneme, California, in the development of advanced underway-replenishment systems and technologies was never equaled by the Soviet navy.
Strategic technology exchange and intelligence cooperation and sharing between the US Navy and the Royal Navy became third and fourth critical dimensions in the 1960s. We will look at these dimensions in more detail in later chapters. Suffice
