In the immediate post-World War II days, the Soviet submarine force was numerically the strongest in the world, but suffered from a plethora of variant models, a few of them dating from World War I. In practical terms, it had 229 submarines, 86 of which were intended for coastal work. Intended primarily as defensive weapons, the smaller coastal submarines were also the type with which most Soviet submariner crews were familiar.
Yet Stalin’s dictum called for an oceangoing fleet, and while the Soviet Navy possessed 124 nominally oceangoing submarines, only six of these were the advanced ex-German Type VIIc and Type IXc boats. There were many submariners who were familiar with coastal operations, but the war had not provided extensive experience in long-range oceangoing operations.
The United States recognized the implicit threat of the Soviet submarine fleet and respected the Soviet ability to mass-produce weapons of high quality when it was moved to do so. The T-34 tank, the Ilyushin II-II Shturmovik attack plane, and the endless batteries of excellent artillery attested to Soviet scientific and industrial prowess. All were built in quantities unheard of in the West or in Germany (over 100,000 T-34 tanks, 33,000 Shturmoviks, and hundreds of thousands of artillery pieces and rocket batteries), and all were excellent at their assigned missions.
The initial estimates of Soviet submarine strength grew from a potential 300 oceangoing submarines in 1950 to as many as 2,000 submarines only a few years later. The rapidly expanding political and scientific successes of the Soviet Union made these estimates seem valid. Politically, the Soviet Union had extended its Iron Curtain all across middle and eastern Europe by 1948, engulfing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. In Asia, the Communist forces of Mao Zedong had come to the fore and would defeat the Nationalist Chinese in 1949. North Korea had fallen under Communist domination, and by 1950 Ho Chi Minh would proclaim the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to be the legal (and Communist) government of that country.
This was a time when the Soviet Union had succeeded in creating an atomic bomb by 1949 and a thermonuclear bomb by 1954 (admittedly with the help of a magnificent combination of spies and traitors). It had reverse-engineered interned Boeing B-29’s to create a fleet of Tupolev Tu-4 bombers with the capacity to make a one-way raid on the United States with nuclear weapons. Just as the United States had done, the Soviets had plunged into the science of missiles, building on German experience, and using German scientists and technicians.
The Soviet Union had also imported the most advanced German submarine technology on a wholesale basis, raiding captured German shipyards for completed vessels, components, tools, drawings, and, just as with the missile program, engineers and technicians.
All of this gave credence to the concerns of the United States, which had just proved the effectiveness of submarine warfare against the Japanese in the Pacific while learning at the same time how difficult anti- submarine warfare was against the Germans in the Atlantic. Given the drawdown of U.S. naval forces, particularly in the very small ships that would be required for anti-submarine warfare, the threat of 300 Soviet submarines (modern types, based on the German Type XXI [1]) was more than it could handle. A threat of 300 submarines at sea at one time (implying a total fleet of 1,200) was an impossible situation that could not be addressed by any foreseeable means other than nuclear retaliation.
There was also a nuclear threat. Soviet nuclear technology was right- fully presumed to be behind that of the United States, so it was assumed during the early 1950s that the Soviets might create a “nuclear torpedo,” essentially a remote-controlled 400-ton submarine that would carry an atom bomb and be positioned in some vital target such as the Suez Canal or New York Harbor, where it would be detonated. (It is a sad commentary on humanity’s moral, scientific, and political development that the world faces the same sort of threat today from terrorists outfitting ca11ister ships with primitive nuclear dirty bombs, probable derivatives of sophisticated Soviet suitcase-bomb technology.)
The U.S. Navy made anti-submarine warfare (ASW) a priority because of its estimate of the devastating effect the Type XXI boats would have if the Russians could mass-manufacture them. This estimate appeared in the then-classified (”SECRET”) Low Report of 1950, commissioned one year earlier by the American Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Forrest Sherman. The hundreds of Soviet coastal submarines did not factor into the decision at all save for the obvious basic capacity to build boats. Rather, a Soviet Union capable of mass-producing Type XXI clones with the potential of successfully challenging the best NATO ASW countermeasures proved more than sufficient to kick off United States naval interest in anti-submarine warfare at a new and aggressive level that has echoed down through the Cold War to the present day. For the same reason, in 1950, the U.S. Navy began work on the important and unique seafloor Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), an acoustic network designed to gather information on Soviet submarine characteristics and operations. Thus began a complex international underwater dance, in which the submarine and anti-submarine forces of the West would be pitted against those of the Soviet Union in unending simulated warfare. This hazardous exercise, conducted for more than fifty years and still ongoing, if at a reduced rate, implicitly carried with it the risk, at the least, of catastrophic nuclear accident, or, at the worst, of an unauthorized nuclear exchange.
The Soviet naval high command could look to the mighty Soviet industry to fulfill its quotas and generate as many submarines as Stalin and his successors required. The submarines, however apportioned among the Baltic, Black Sea, Northern, and Pacific Fleets, would require a tremendous construction program, followed by even more difficult to sustain logistic and maintenance programs. Each of these programs- construction, logistics, and training-would vie with the actual operation of the submarines for qualified personnel, and each would demand massive and continuing training efforts. (This was perhaps doubly difficult for the Soviet Union, for the technical training had to be supplemented by political training to ensure that the Soviet Navy adhered to the official Communist political line.) The heart of the Soviet naval command’s problem was to find men for the challenging task of commanding and operating the submarines as they were built.
Of course, Soviet society was very different from that of the United States. All Soviet citizens were expected to be preoccupied with societal goals, and those in the workplace, particularly in the military services, were considered public figures in a sense, and therefore accountable for their actions. Stalinist philosophy, which prevailed for many years after his death, regarded the individual as a servant of the state. But in the post-Stalin period a new sense of self-worth appeared among Soviet citizens, one based on an inherent flaw in the Soviet system. People found that hard work for official goals was not nearly so rewarding as using a public position for personal interests. Life was so difficult that they began to devote more and more time to improving their lives by means regarded as illegal by the state. They were, in effect, imposing a limited market economy on the Soviet Union by private means. This naturally resulted in a decline in the growth rate of the Soviet economy, a slackening of its technological progress, and a decrease in the standards of quality of both goods and services.
Essentially, corruption made it impossible for the “good Soviet citizen” to do as well as the citizen who carried on some form of illegal activity, be it bribing officials, pilfering state goods or materials, entering into private commercial transactions, or doing services such as repairing a toilet in an apartment for pay, rather than doing an assigned job. Stealing from the state was so common that in 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev mentioned it in his report to the twenty-seventh party congress. Given the depressing conditions under which most citizens lived-two families crammed into a tiny apartment, food stores poorly stocked with inferior goods, a waiting time of years for a refrigerator or telephone service-it is not surprising that those who “got ahead” by such illegal means were more highly regarded than people who conscientiously fulfilled their prescribed Soviet duties.
In a country whose economy was based on agriculture and heavy industry, fewer and fewer people wished to take part in either, although it was extremely difficult to change social status or careers. Obtaining a higher education became a primary goal in order to achieve party membership and a slight advance in social status.
Oddly enough, social factors such as these worked to the advantage of the Soviet Navy in personnel matters, but to its terrible disadvantage in achieving the level of quality necessary in its ships, particularly its submarines. In personnel matters, the navy, as services do the world over, “looked after its own.” Sons of naval officers were given the opportunity to enter the appropriate schools, such as the Nakhimov secondary school in Leningrad. There they received their last two years of secondary education, and, if qualified, were able to go on to higher naval schools where they could specialize. For example, those who were interested in submarines (or were perceived by their instructors as good submarine material) were assigned to the Higher Naval School in Leningrad. A naval career was prestigious; those who became naval officers formed an elite group that enjoyed privileges beyond the ken of ordinary Soviet citizens.
A committee chaired by Rear Admiral Francis Low of the wartime American Tenth Fleet anti-submarine intelligence group studied the potential Russian maritime challenge in 1949 at the behest of then Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Forrest Sherman. His group defined a Soviet submarine fleet modeled on captured German Type XXI U-boat technology as the most dangerous maritime threat to American shores The Low Committee Report appeared in a classified form in 1950 and helped drive the priorities of American submariners over the next half century. During that same period, the Russian submarine community fulfilled Low’s greatest fears, growing in numbers, professionalism, technical sophistication, and experience.
The long construction run of the Whiskey class [2] since 1951, this boat formed part of an effort to supply the navy with sound, flexible, long-range submarines that would make them competitive in the grand undersea contest. One hundred and thirty-eight more of this class would join the fleet before its retirement in 1955.
[1] Like so many German “miracle weapons,” the Type XXI came too little and too late to affect the war. It did sire a revolution in submarine design, however. It was 251 feet long, displaced 1,819 tons submerged, and had a surface speed of 15.7 knots and a submerged speed of 17.2 knots, thanks to its two huge for the time 2,500-shp electric motors. Streamlined, it was also designed for mass production by the use of large numbers of subcontractors.
[2] The term Whiskey class derives from the NATO code name. Called Project 613 in the Soviet Navy, some 236 Whiskey class submarines were built. With a 249-foot length and 1,350-ton submerged displacement, they had a top speed of 18.5 knots on the surface and 7 knots submerged. The maximum diving depth was 560 feet.
