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On 22 June 1941, the perfidious attack by Hitler Germany interrupted the peaceful labor of the Soviet people. A savage armed struggle, unprecedented in scale, had begun between the most reactionary Fascist state and the first Socialist country.
The war did not catch our fleets unawares, despite the fact that in the very first hours of it many naval bases were subjected to attacks by the enemy air force. The Soviet Navy did not lose a single warship or aircraft from the enemy’s initial blow. The Hitlerites also did not succeed in achieving another aim—the planting of influence mines in the areas of our bases to prevent combatants from putting to sea.
During World War II, the Soviet Navy sent more than 400,000 nonrated and rated men and officers to the ground fronts, including this detachment of Baltic Fleet sailors seen on their way to participate in the defense of Leningrad.
From the very first day of the war the Soviet Navy engaged in lone combat with the enemy naval forces which were supported by three air forces and which had considerable strategic advantages. In particular, they were able to maneuver forces from theater to theater and create a numerical superiority in areas where the more important missions were being carried out. For example, in the period of the most intense battles around Leningrad, the German command marshalled a major grouping of surface ships in the Baltic Sea to destroy our fleet. A similar grouping was subsequently also created in the North in order to cut our external sea communications. In the period of the battle for Odessa and Sevastopol, the Hitlerites transferred powerful groupings of bomber and torpedo aircraft from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. In addition, surface ships, submarines, and aircraft of Germany and also naval forces of her satellites were constantly active in all of our theaters.
62 U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1974
On the other hand, our Navy’s capabilities for intertheater maneuver were very limited. Thus, the Northern Sea Route permitted the transfer of units of naval forces from the Pacific Ocean to the North and back again, but first, this could only be done once a year, and second, it required about two to three months. Soon after the outbreak of war, intertheater movement using the inland waterways had to be curtailed due to the fact that the main canals turned out to be in the zone of the ground fronts. Even the transport of patrol boats and small submarines by railroad did not satisfy requirements.
The withdrawal of the Soviet Army toward the East made the conditions for basing our fleets worse. Thus, by the autumn of 1941, the Red Banner Baltic Fleet already was unable to base itself at points in the Leningrad—Kronstadt—Lavensaari region which were in range of enemy guns. The Black Sea Fleet had to move its bases to ports on the Caucasian coast, which were not equipped for this. Nevertheless, from the first to the last day of the war, all our fleets conducted active combat operations. Submarines put to sea to seek out and destroy enemy warships and transports. Aircraft and surface ships also continually sought out the enemy and destroyed him on the open seas, and in coastal waters and bases, and attacked shore objectives and airfields in enemy territory. The activity and the constant desire to seek the enemy out and attack him everywhere which was displayed at all command levels in all of our fleets—this is the best recommendation for the command personnel of the Soviet Navy and for their training and educational system.
The battle against sea communications required tremendous efforts. Throughout the entire war, submarines, aircraft, torpedo boats, destroyers, and coastal artillery destroyed enemy ships with troops and cargoes. These operations were conducted systematically, and, very likely, there was not a single day which did not bring success in the accomplishment of this mission. Even when in order to put to sea the Baltic Fleet submarines had to pass through the Gulf of Finland, which was literally saturated with mines and covered by several antisubmarine positions, the enemy constantly felt the force of attacks by our Navy. The Northern Fleet retained control over the solitary sea route by which the German troops in Norway and in Northern Finland were reinforced and by which nickel was exported from Petsamo. The men of the Black Sea Fleet also inflicted great losses against enemy sea communications.
The opposition to sea shipments considerably aided Soviet Army units on the ground fronts, since it hindered the enemy’s capability to significantly reinforce his groupings with manpower, or with fuel, ammu
nition, and foodstuffs which he needed. During the war Soviet navymen destroyed some 1,300 transports with a total displacement of 3,000,000 tons on the enemy sea routes and sunk more than 1,200 combatants and auxiliaries. It is quite natural that this had a great effect on the course of the armed struggle on the Soviet-German ground front, where the outcome of the war was decided.
According to incomplete data from the headquarters of the 17th German Army, during the evacuation of Fascist troops from the Crimea in the period from 3 to 13 May 1944 alone, the men of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed more than 42,000 officers and men.1 This was a considerable contribution by the Black Sea Fleet toward creating favorable conditions for the conduct of subsequent operations of our ground forces in the Southwestern sector.
The security of our own shipping occupied an important place in the combat operations of the fleets throughout the entire course of the war. These shipments acquired vast significance after the enemy cut the Murmansk railroad line. In the Black Sea they were vitally essential in the period of the defense of Odessa, Sevastopol, and of the Northern Caucasus, when conducting the Kerch-Feodosiya landing operation, in the Baltic during the defense and evacuation of Tallinn, Hanko, and the Moon Sound Islands, in reinforcing the groupings of our troops at the Oranienbaum beachhead, and in the subsequent liberation of the Baltic Republics.
Our fleets and flotillas executed extremely important missions in supporting troop shipments and shipments of national economic interest along water routes near the fronts, especially on Lake Ladoga when the difficult situation arose at Leningrad, and also along the Volga. In the war years more than 100 million tons of various types of goods, of which a considerable part were petroleum and petroleum products, were delivered along inland waterways. In addition, naval forces supported the shipment of 17 million tons of goods over external sea routes. Behind these figures are thousands of ship deployments and aircraft flights, hundreds of combat clashes with surface ships and submarines, the repulsing of enemy air attacks, and the surmounting of thick minefields.
However, the activity of our fleets was not limited to battling the enemy at sea, although the execution of this mission required great daily efforts by the forces. Our fleets had to simultaneously execute the important mission of cooperating with the coastal units of the Soviet Army defensively and offensively in support of the stability of the strategic flanks of a vast front
1The Second World War. 1939-1945, Voyenizdat, 1958, p. 567.
Navies in War and in Peace 63
stretching from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. And the more complex the situation became on land, the more crucial and active operations by the fleets became in carrying out this strategic mission and also in defending major coastal administrative and political centers, naval bases, and ports.
It is difficult to overestimate the role of the Black Sea Fleet in defending the more important ports and in giving stability to the southern flank of the ground front. The successful and prolonged resistance deep in the enemy’s rear by the Odessa defensive region, whose garrison included many navymen, was possible only owing to constant aid from the sea by warships and the uninterrupted delivery of everything necessary to the besieged city. The heroic defense of Odessa, by tying up the entire Romanian Army for more than two months, held up the progress of the southern flank of the "Southern” group of armies and disrupted the strategic plans of the Hitler command.
In September 1941, a real threat arose of an enemy breakthrough into the Crimea, and on 30 September the General Headquarters of the Supreme High Command issued a directive which stated its decision to evacuate the Odessa region and to reinforce the defense of the Crimean peninsula with its troops.
In carrying out the orders of the General Headquarters, the Black Sea Fleet delivered the troops defending Odessa to the Crimea without losses where they took part in the defense of Sevastopol.
The defense of Sevastopol tied up a 300,000-man enemy grouping for eight months and did not permit it to engage in the offensive in the south. Moreover, the retention of Sevastopol in our hands eliminated the possibility of the Fascists using the sea route to feed the southern group of armies and prevented them from breaking through to the ports of the Northern Caucasus.
In a telegram of 12 June 1942 the Supreme Commander in Chief gave the following appraisal of the actions of the forces defending Sevastopol: "The selfless struggle of the people of Sevastopol serves as an example of heroism for the entire Red Army and the Soviet people.”
A communication by the Soviet Information Bureau in connection with the evacuation of Sevastopol said: The military and political importance of the defense of Sevastopol in the Great Patriotic War is very great to the Soviet people. By tying up a large number of German and Romanian troops, the defenders of the city confused and shattered the plans of the German command. The iron tenacity of the people of Sevastopol was one of the most important causes for the failure of the notorious German 'Spring offensive.’ The Germans lost time and momentum, and suffered
great manpower losses. Sevastopol was evacuated by the Soviet troops, but the defense of Sevastopol will go down as one of the brightest pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. The utter courage, the fury in battle with the enemy, and the selflessness of the defenders of Sevastopol inspired the Soviet patriots on to further heroic feats in the struggle against the hated invaders.”2
The Fascist offensive in the Caucasus harbored the real threat that they would seize this most important region and alter the military-political situation in the Black Sea theater as related to the possible entry of Turkey (who was then biding her time) on the side of Hitler Germany. The Black Sea Fleet’s existence depended on our Army’s holding the Caucasian coast. Yet the stability of the ground forces defending the littoral areas of the Caucasus area, in turn, was also supported by naval operations. Through the combined efforts of the Army and Black Sea Fleet, the battle for the Caucasus was won.
In reviewing this battle, Marshal of the Soviet Union A. A. Grechko writes: "In the defensive stage of the battle for the Caucasus, of the nine defensive operations conducted by Soviet troops from July to December 1942, the Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Flotilla directly participated in six. . . . The Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Naval Flotilla, by acting closely in concert with ground troops, rendered them a great deal of aid in the defense against and defeat of the Hitlerites in the Caucasus. . . . The Black Sea Fleet and the Azov Flotilla also rendered considerable support to the ground forces in the offensive period. By landing landing parties of naval forces the troops were aided in breaking through the powerful permanent defense of the enemy. . . . The most important task handed the Black Sea Fleet in the period of the battle of the Caucasus was the reliable support of our sea communications along the Caucasian coast, and it was successfully carried out. The Caspian Flotilla . . . provided the defense of sea routes which were extremely important to the entire country. . . . The Black Sea Fleet and the Azov and Caspian Flotillas carried out their assigned missions in the battle for the Caucasus with honor.”3
In the period of the Hitler offensive against Leningrad, the Red Banner Baltic Fleet rendered Red Army units extremely great aid. In defending Liepaja, Tallinn, the Moon Sound Islands, and the Hanko naval base together with our ground troops, it tied up a 100,000-man grouping of enemy forces. The stability of the defense of Leningrad, especially at the beginning
2 PraiJj, 4 July, 1942.
3 A. A. Grechko. Rina za Kavkaz. (The Battle for the Caucasus), Voyenizdat, 1969, pp. 466-467.
64 U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1974
of its siege, was determined to a great degree by the vigorous actions of the Baltic Fleet forces. Throughout the war it retained the Oranienbaum beachhead and diverted major enemy forces toward itself. The Red Banner Baltic Fleet sent more than 83,000 nonrated and rated men, and officers to fight the enemy on land. At Leningrad there was not a single division in which a Baltic Fleet man was not fighting. The powerful guns of the Fleet served as a firm fire shield and the foundation of the defense of the close approaches to the heroic city. Its striking power was supplemented by the unprecedented support and irresistibility of naval infantry attacks.
Through attacks by its ships and planes on groupings of German Fascist troops pushing toward Murmansk, by landing landing parties and naval infantry operations, and by hindering the enemy’s shipping, the Northern Fleet played a decisive role in disrupting his offensive on the right flank of the Soviet-German front. And only because the Northern Fleet sent everything it had to the ground front to aid our troops, which amounted to a little more than one rifle division in strength, did they succeed in stopping the offensive of the German mountain corps on the approaches to Murmansk. More than 9,000 officers and men of the Northern Fleet were fighting on land at that time. The retention of the ice-free port of Murmansk and the Polyarnoye naval base was of extremely important operational-strategic significance: throughout the entire course of the war it permitted using the shortest sea route connecting the Soviet Union with its allies of that time, the successful execution of missions in defense of its communications, the disruption of the enemy’s shipping, and it permitted concerted actions with the ground troops defensively and later also offensively.
In the war years the Navy sent a total of more than 400,000 nonrated and rated men and officers to the ground fronts. More than 40 brigades of naval infantry and naval rifle brigades, six individual regiments, and a large number of individual battalions and detachments were formed from these men. These forces and units were distinguished by their exceptionally high combat qualities and therefore were employed by the Army command on the more important sectors of the front. Seven naval rifle brigades were in action in the most intense period of the battle for Moscow as a part of the troops of the Western Front.
In addition, some 100,000 naval infantrymen who remained within the fleets and flotillas carried out the land defense of the naval bases and islands and participated in amphibious landings which also rendered real aid to units of the Soviet Army.
After the Soviet Armed Forces had gained the stra
tegic initiative, cooperation with the coastal groupings of troops remained one of the basic missions of the Navy, although the content of the mission had significantly changed, the operational scales had increased, and the conditions for carrying them out had become even more complicated due to the losses of individual basing areas. Yet despite this, the fleets successfully handled all of the missions with which they were charged.
For the Red Banner Baltic Fleet this was expressed in the participation of the air force, the long-range artillery, and brigades of naval infantry in breaking through the blockade of Leningrad, in transporting troops to the Oranienbaum beachhead, in landing landing parties, in supporting our troops ashore with gunfire and air strikes, in increasing the scope of operations against sea communications, and in the destruction of the enemy troops being evacuated by sea from Liepaja, Memel (Klaipeda), Danzig (Gdansk), Swine- muende (Swinoujscie), and other ports.
By the Novorossiysk landing operation the Black Sea Fleet began the liquidation of the Taman beachhead of the enemy, supported the crossing in force of the Kerch Strait by our troops, and seized a beachhead in the Crimea. Follow-up operations by our Fleet hindered the evacuation of the German troops from the Crimea, and the landing of a landing party hastened the liberation of the southern regions of the country and also of Bulgaria and Rumania.
The Northern Fleet also played an important role in the defeat of the enemy on the extreme right flank and in the liberation of the Pechenga Oblast and of Northern Norway.
By using naval ships and merchant ships poorly suited for landing troops, the fleets landed more than 110 landing parties with a total strength of 250,000 men in the course of defensive and offensive operations in the coastal areas. At the same time active naval operations did not permit the enemy to land a single landing party on our shore, although he had specially designed landing ships at his disposal and had experience in the successful conduct of such operations in the Western European theater of military operations.
The Azov, Ladoga, Onega, White Sea, Volga, Danube, and other Flotillas which were created on the internal seas, large rivers, and lakes operated successfully. They rendered direct and important aid to the ground troops both defensively and offensively. The White Sea Flotilla, for example, executed missions associated with the use of the sea routes in the Arctic areas and the transit of combatants and convoys via the Northern Sea Route. The Caspian Flotilla reliably defended our main petroleum line in the Caspian Sea. The Ladoga Naval Flotilla supported the functioning
of the "Lifeline”, the solitary route connecting besieged Leningrad with the country. The Danube Flotilla covered more than 2,000 kilometers with intensive fighting along the Danube River and participated in the liberation of six European states from the Fascist yoke. Marshal of the Soviet Union V. Chuykov gives a vivid appraisal of the operations of the Volga Naval Flotilla in the battle of Stalingrad: "Let me briefly tell of the role of the navymen of the Flotilla and of their feats: if they had not been there, it is possible that the 62nd Army would have perished without ammunition and without food and would not have been able to carry out its mission.”4 Navymen of the Pinsk Naval Flotilla heroically fought alongside units of the Red Army in the most serious period of the Great Patriotic War. In bloody defensive battles on river banks its ships supported the ground forces and participated in the defense of Kiev. The Dnepr Flotilla, which was revived
1943, participated in the Berlin operation and concluded its combat path on the Spree River.
The short; but intensive combat operations of the
l chuykov. Nachaloputi (The Start of the My Route), Voyenizdat, 1962, p. 182.
Pacific Fleet and the Northern Pacific and Amur Naval Flotillas played an important role by their offensive operations in the rapid occupation of the southern part of Sakhalin Island, the Kurile Islands, and the ports of Korea, and in the rapid advance of Soviet troops into the depths of Manchuria. Owing to their swift landing operations the men of the Pacific Fleet severed the communications of the Japanese Kwantung Army with the home country and completed its full encirclement.
Thus, the Navy, throughout the entire war, successfully carried out the missions with which it was charged
66 U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1974
in accordance with the needs of the armed struggle in the main theater where its outcome was decided. The operational and strategic employment of naval forces was determined by the need to closely relate their operational plans to the plans of the Army, and above all to defeat the main forces of the enemy on land. The Soviet Navy made a significant contribution to achieving a victory over a strong enemy, providing stability to the strategic flanks of the ground front and comprehensive support of our troops defensively and offensively. In this most difficult of wars the Navy fully justified the hopes placed in it and the great trust of the Soviet people, and did its duty for the Motherland to the end.
The experience of the Great Patriotic War once more affirmed the correctness of the basic thesis of our military doctrine that victory over a strong enemy can be won only through the coordinated actions of all branches of the Armed Forces which have been developed in harmony, well trained, prudently deployed, and supported in every way.
From the very outbreak of war many major problems arose for our Navy on the technical and operational and tactical plane. It was necessary in the shortest possible time in the context of an intense armed struggle to eliminate defects in peacetime combat training which were revealed in the course of the struggle and to solve pressing problems connected with the conduct of combat operations under unforeseen conditions. And it must be acknowledged that the career personnel of our Navy rose to the occasion: optimal ways were found of employing forces in operations in concert with ground troops defensively and offensively. In the course of the war a Soviet school of amphibious operations was formed with a specific organization and operational methods for them. Submarine and air force tactics were developed which were modern for that period, and questions of the defense of bases from land, the organization of concerted actions and control of forces, and the support of their operations which arose in the course of the struggle were solved.
Soviet industry delivered a sufficient amount of combat and technical equipment for the needs of the Navy. The replacement of losses in ship inventory was very difficult in connection with our loss of a series of shipyards and with the changing over of considerable capacity of the shipbuilding industry to the construction of tanks and other armament for the Army. Therefore in the course of the war mainly small combatants and patrol boats were built. Despite these difficulties, during the Great Patriotic War the Navy received two light cruisers, 25 destroyers, escort ships, and minesweepers, 52 submarines, 15 large submarine chasers, and 873 different patrol boats from industry.
The quality of the Navy’s armament and combat and technical equipment improved. Radar appeared aboard combatants. New models of influence mine weaponry appeared. The Naval Air Force grew quantitatively and qualitatively; the number of torpedo-carrying aircraft more than tripled.
In the course of the war the Soviet Navy had to carry out two groups of missions concurrently: first, to battle a strong enemy at sea who was steadfastly striving to seize the initiative and destroy our naval forces, and second, to support the stability of the strategic flanks of the front and act in concert with the ground troops offensively and defensively. This employment of the naval forces in the war was the only correct employment because it was fully appropriate for the situation.
Due to the particular features of the context of the armed struggle with Hitler Germany, the main load lay on the shoulders of the Soviet Army. All other branches of the Armed Forces, including the Navy, acted in concert with the ground troops on whose operational success the outcome of the war depended. Our Navy carried out their own missions under more difficult conditions than the navies of other states, which, as a rule did not have to aid their troops in the coastal areas daily, and protect their bases and important coastal points from attacks by the enemy from the land side. Yet under these difficult conditions our Navy showed itself to be an active and powerful striking force capable of changing the situation both in the sea areas and in the coastal strip of operations of the ground troops.
From the very first hours of the war, the Navy, as was noted above, went over to resolute operations against the naval foe and conducted them uninterruptedly right up to the capitulation of Hitler Germany. These operations were the disruption of enemy sea communications, the delivery of strikes from the sea against naval bases, ports, and military-industrial objectives of the enemy, the destruction of his surface ships and submarines at sea, the blockading from the sea of areas which were more important to the enemy for combat operations, active mine-laying, and numerous landings of landing parties.
The losses of the enemy fleet attest to the high intensity of the war at sea which demanded thousands of combat warship cruises and aircraft sorties, and the conduct of numerous naval battles and operations. This struggle, continuing from day to day, in itself demanded extremely great efforts by the forces, but, indeed, in addition to this, the Navy still, had to constantly participate in the direct support of the ground troops, which aided the achievement of victory on the Soviet-German front. Moreover, in delivering strikes
In 1944, Admiral Gorshkov assumed command of the newly formed Danube Flotilla, which included the Azov Flotilla he had commanded after the victory of Stalingrad. He and the men he is seen inspecting in these photographs distinguished themselves in the landing on Kerch Peninsula and helped liberate the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
! against bases and sea communications and against | enemy ship groupings, the Soviet Navy rendered sup- I port to the navies of our former allies, i.e., it made I a weighty contribution to the general efforts of the anti-Hitler coalition in combatting the enemy’s Navy I in the oceanic theaters. Due to the activity of the Soviet Navy, the German command was forced not only to retain significant forces of its own Navy allocated to * battling the Soviet Navy, but also to systematically i reinforce them with ships and aircraft from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean and North Seas. Even
in the most intense periods of the "Battle for the Atlantic,” in 1941-1944, of the 141 submarines fit for combat operations, 29 were kept in the Black, Baltic, and Barents Seas.5
The German command, not considering the "Battle for the Atlantic” the main area in the Second World War, concentrated almost all of its forces, including considerable naval forces, on the Soviet-German Front.
Proof of this is Hitler’s statement in January 1943: "We must dearly understand that this submarine warfare will be useless if we are unable to defeat Russia in the East.”6
Only owing to the Soviet Armed Forces, which themselves tied down the largest and best part of the armed forces of Hitler Germany, were the U.S.A. and England able to win the "Battle for the Atlantic,” and also to construct a new giant merchant fleet, which was twice as large as the tonnage lost on the sea lanes, and to create vast forces to combat the German submarines, i.e., 133 convoy aircraft carriers, 1,500 destroyers, frigates, and corvettes, 1,900 submarine chasers, 1,000 minesweepers, and several thousand aircraft.7
Thus, the Soviet Navy played an important role in the Great Patriotic War and, consequently, in the Second World War as a whole. Its dogged, resolute opposition to the powerful naval foe and the retention of the initiative at sea in combat operations throughout the entire war created conditions which ruled out the employment by the enemy of such forms of armed combat as landing and antilanding operations. The German Fascist Navy was limited in the employment of sea communications, even at the moment of hottest
8S. Morrison. The Battle for the Atlantic Won. Voycni/dat, 1959, p. 80.
7 Potapov, I. N. Razvitiye voymno-monkikb flotov v posltttrymnyy period (The development of navies in the postwar period), Voyenizdat, 1971, pp. 23-31.
battles on the decisive ground fronts, and was unable to support its own troops in situations which were critical for them. This was highly inspirational aid to the Soviet Army’s troops, who were freed from the need to defend the long coastal expanse, and, because of this, were able to strengthen the force of their attacks in the main and decisive areas.
Another and no less important mission and a task which, in essence, became the main component part of the Navy’s effort, was its direct participation in the defense and liberation of the coastal cities, ports, and naval bases, its constant support by its own forces of coastal units of ground troops defensively and offensively, and also the active participation of naval personnel in the decisive battles on the ground fronts. This
The Soviet Navy, having stood up to a strong enemy in a savage struggle, and having fulfilled all missions assigned to it, emerged from the war strengthened and hardened, firmly maintaining its superiority in all naval theaters in the arena of the struggle. By their steadfastness in carrying out the assigned mission, by massive heroism of the personnel, and by fearless and unwavering belief in victory, the navymen demonstrated in the flames of the war their fidelity to their people, and an infinite devotion to the Communist Party and to the cause of Communism.
Commentary
By Arleigh Burke
After graduation from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1923, Admiral Burke served five years in the USS Arizona. He then attended the Navy PCi School and the University of Michigan, earning an MS degree. After various staff tours, he served as XO of the destroyer Craven from 1937 to 1939 and then commanded, for a year, the USS Mugford. During World War II he commanded, successively, DesDivs 43 and 44, and then in 1943, DcsRon 23. In 1944 he became C/S and aide to ComCarDivThrec, later TF 38. During the Korean conflict, while commanding CruDivFivc in 1931, he also served as a member of the Military Armistice Commission From December 1931 until 1934 he directed the CNO’s Strategic Plans Division and then commanded CruDivSix (1934) and Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet (1955). From August 1955 until his retirement in August 1961, he served an unprecedented three terms as CNO.
Like all the articles in this revealing series, this discussion of the role of the Soviet Navy in World War II asserts that the interests of the State require a strong, effective Navy. Indirectly he acknowledges that the Soviet Navy during that difficult war was primarily a coastal defense force whose main missions were to protect the seaward flanks of the Soviet Army and to transport supplies on internal waterways for the Army, and that mostly under Army direction.
What he says is true enough. The Soviet Navy did supply to the Army over 400,000 men to fight as naval infantry. Another 100,000 naval infantrymen defended naval installations and conducted some amphibious landings under naval command. Most of this article is devoted to the tremendous support the
Navies in War and in Peace 69
Soviet Navy gave to the ground forces and to the excellent cooperation among the Soviet services. This was the Soviet Navy’s then-assigned mission, and he lauds the "doctrine of coordinated action of all branches of the Armed Forces” and of employing Naval Forces "in operations in concert with ground troops defensively and offensively.”
In no place in this article is Admiral Gorshkov critical of the type of navy the Soviets had or the manner in which it was employed during World War II. He applauds what was done and the way it was done without intimating in any way that the Soviet Navy might have contributed much more to the defeat of their enemies had the Navy operated more at sea on the offensive and so perhaps prevented their enemies from advancing as far as they did.
Yet, after the war the Soviets studied carefully operations of both their allies and their enemies to determine the causes of success or failure of those operations. The study of this war, as well as other wars, caused them to realize that naval power was essential for a major power to be successful in war. Although in this article Admiral Gorshkov merely mentions the activities of the fleets of the United States and Britain in keeping control of the sea—thereby able to support the Soviets with supplies as well as keep the major portions of the enemies’ naval forces quite well occupied—the Soviets concluded that their Navy needed to be re-oriented toward a high seas fleet. They had learned the hard way the limitations of a coastal defense fleet, and they embarked on an extensive naval building program of World War II-type ships. But after they developed that fleet, they still operated in waters close to their own shores and did not get the much-needed experience in operating for long periods at sea. They developed guided missiles and, when nuclear power came along, they increased their already heavy emphasis on submarines. Technically, they were doing pretty well, but it was not until the missile crises in 1962 that they fully comprehended what it took to control the sea, or to deny its use to the enemy. From that experience they learned that the first essential element of an effective navy is an officer corps experienced at sea and skillful in the operations of their ships and weapons systems, plus the equally important element of having ships that could perform their tasks wherever those tasks had to be performed. By 1966 it was apparent that the Soviets were starting to operate on the high seas, and now, today, it is apparent that they are trying to build ships, aircraft, and equipment that can be effective in war and influential in peace.
So, although it is evident that the type, composition, and operational procedures of the Soviet Navy
have changed radically from those in existence during World War II, and while it is equally evident that these changes have come about largely from experience in that war, Admiral Gorshkov does not even allude to it. That is significant in itself and bears out the contention of other commentators that Admiral Gorshkov is having some difficulty in obtaining approval of the Soviet hierarchy for the building, support, and operation of the Navy he envisages and, hence, has written his extensive series in a manner which will generate as little antagonism as possible. What is past is finished and cannot be changed, so he is starting from where he is now to try to convince his associates that his proposals are sound and needed by the U.S.S.R.
Throughout the series Admiral Gorshkov has used every opportunity to recount the excellent performance of duty of Soviet Navy men on every occasion. He recites the personal characteristics that enabled men in the past to perform extraordinarily well. He emphasizes the utter courage, initiative, aggressiveness, tremendous effort, stamina, willingness to bear hardship, persistence, selflessness, heroic defense, iron tenacity, fury in battle, cooperation, obedience, devotion to duty, skill, and all the other qualities that every combat unit must instill in its personnel if that unit is to perform at maximum effectiveness. He is building pride of past performance in his naval people and he is doing it extremely well.