Operation Strikeback - Operational History

Operational History

As part of the response to a theoretical Soviet attack against NATO on all fronts, Operation Strikeback would test the capabilities of Allied naval forces (Blue Fleet) by tasking them to destroy the enemy navy (Orange Fleet) and its huge submarine fleet, protect transatlantic shipping, and undertake sustained carrier-based air strikes against the enemy positions.

Beginning on 3 September 1957, American and Canadian naval forces got underway to join British, French, Dutch, and Norwegian naval forces in eastern Atlantic and northern European waters under the overall command of Vice Admiral Robert B. Pirie, United States Navy, the Commander of the U.S. Second Fleet, acting as NATO's Commander Striking Fleet Atlantic (COMSTRIKFLTLANT). While en route, the U.S.-Canadian naval forces executed Operation Seaspray, a bilateral naval exercise to protect Blue Fleet’s vitally-important underway replenishment group (URG) from enemy submarine attacks. The nuclear submarine Nautilus and the conventional submarine Trigger completed operations in the Arctic and joined 34 other U.S. and allied submarines temporarily assigned to the Orange Fleet. USS Mount McKinley was based in Portsmouth Naval Base as the command communications base for the Orange forces controlling Comsuborangelant/Comphiborangelant for the duration of the Exercise.

Operation Strikeback itself began on 19 September 1957, involving over 200 warships, 650 aircraft, and 65,000 personnel. To provide a more realistic simulation of protecting transatlantic shipping, over 200 merchant marine vessels, including the ocean liners Queen Mary and Ile de France, also participated as duly-flagged target ships for the exercise. Blue Fleet hunter-killer (HUK) groups centered around the carriers Essex, Wasp, and Tarawa, as well as submarines and land-based anti-submarine patrol aircraft, executed Operation Fend Off/Operation Fishplay to identify, track, and contain the breakout of the enemy Orange Fleet’s submarine force along the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap (GIUK gap").

Operating above the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian Sea, the Blue Fleet, which included the new U.S. supercarriers Saratoga and Forrestal, launched carried-based air strikes against enemy positions in Norway. Time magazine provided the following contemporary coverage of Operation Strikeback:

From somewhere southeast of Greenland came the crackle of an urgent radio message: "Being fired on by Orange surface raider. Inchcliffe Castle." With that alert from a famed but fictitious merchant vessel, simulated hell broke loose in the North Atlantic. Out to punish the "aggressors," a six-nation Blue fleet totaling nearly 160 fighting ships began steaming toward Norway. In the Iceland-Faeroes gap, 36 Orange submarines, including the atom-powered Nautilus, lay in wait. The U.S. destroyer Charles R. Ware was "sunk"; a "torpedo" slowed down the carrier U.S.S. Intrepid, and H.M.S. Ark Royal had a hot time beating off the assaults of Britain-based Valiant jet bombers. But by early afternoon, Blue carrier planes got through to make dummy atom attacks on Norway's ports, bridges and airfields. Into the midst of this earnest make-believe strayed a Russian trawler - a real one. The Russian, being overtaken, had the right of way and held it, passing diagonally through the entire NATO fleet as the big ships refueled and moved beyond her.

Following the conclusion of Operation Strikeback, U.S. naval forces conducted Operation Pipedown, involving the protection of its underway replenishment group while en route back the United States.

SACLANT Admiral Jerauld Wright, United States Navy, described Operation Strikeback as being "remarkably successful" while also noting " there is considerable scarcity of both naval and air forces in the eastern Atlantic." Wright’s Eastern Atlantic allied commander, Vice Admiral Sir John Eccles, RN, also noted:

I am not in a position to criticize political decisions, but I say this as a professional man with over 40 years' experience — I cannot carry out my task as given to me at the moment without more forces. In recent years the submarine has, without any doubt at all, gone a very long way ahead of the devices with which we are presently equipped to sound and destroy it.

Particularly significant was the performance of nuclear-powered submarines with the U.S. Navy's first two such vessels, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) and USS Seawolf (SSN-575), participating in Operation Strikeback. According to naval analyst-historian Norman Friedman, Nautilus "presented a greater threat than all 21 snorkel submarines combined" during Operation Strikeback, making 16 successful attacks against various naval formations while maintaining effective on-station tactical and high-speed pursuit capabilities. Nautilus cruised 3,384 nautical miles (6,267 km) with an average speed of 14.4 knots (26.7 km/h). In addition to the Nautilus, the Seawolf departed New London on 3 September for Operation Strikeback. Before she surfaced off Newport, Rhode Isand, on 25 September, Seawolf had remained submerged for 16 days, cruising a total of 6,331 miles (10,189 km). Recognizing the need to meet this Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) challenge, the following actions were taken:

• Task Force Alfa was created by the U.S. Navy to develop improved ASW tactics and technology by integrating carrier-based ASW aircraft, land-based patrol aircraft, refitted destroyers, and hunter-killer submarines.
• NATO Undersea Research Centre was established by SACLANT on 2 May 1959 in La Spezia, Italy, to serve as a clearinghouse for NATO's anti-submarine efforts.

Operation Strikeback was the final deployment for the battleships Iowa and Wisconsin until their re-activation in the 1980s by the Reagan Administration. Finally, on the technical level, Operation Strikeback saw the first use of single sideband (SSB) voice communications for tactical operations by the United States Navy, and HMS Bulwark was the first Royal Navy carrier to use a magnetic loop communication system.

In addition to Operation Strikeback, which concentrated on its eastern Atlantic/northern European flank, NATO also conducted two other major military exercises in September 1957, Operation Counter Punch involving Allied Forces Central Europe on the European mainland and Operation Deep Water involving NATO's southern flank in the Mediterranean Sea.