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49-571: (Redirected from Blue Fleet ) Blue Fleet may refer to: Blue Fleet, NATO naval forces in a 1957 NATO exercise named " Operation Strikeback " Blue fleet (Canada) , civilian vehicles held by the Canadian Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

98-685: 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 Island , on 25 September, Seawolf had remained submerged for 16 days, cruising

147-776: A large number of submarines (designated the "Orange Fleet"). Its other objective was to have the Blue Fleet execute carrier-based air strikes against "enemy" formations and emplacements along NATO's northern flank in Norway . Exercise Strikeback involved over 200 warships, 650 aircraft, and 75,000 personnel from the United States Navy , the Royal Navy , the Royal Canadian Navy , the French Navy ,

196-692: A massive nuclear strike, and the U.S. didn't follow through, then the Soviets would assume that the United States would never attack. This could have made the Soviet Union far more bold in its military ventures against U.S. allies and would probably have resulted in a full-scale nuclear war . Thomas Schelling 's deterrence theory discusses this more sharply: "signalling", or the use of threats to intentionally deter an enemy from an attack or to make demands. If signals weren't being properly addressed by

245-679: A much more credible second-strike capability for some technologically advanced nations. Still, if both sides of a conflict adopt the same stance of massive response, it may result in unlimited escalation (a "nuclear spasm"), each believing that the other will back down after the first round of retaliation. Both problems are not unique to massive retaliation, but to nuclear deterrence as a whole. In 1957, three years after his announcement of massive retaliation, Dulles compromised his doctrine. In recent years, he wrote in Foreign Affairs that there has been no alternative to massive retaliation but

294-497: A series of alliance-wide exercises, including Operation Strikeback, during the Fall of 1957. 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

343-539: 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: 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

392-550: 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

441-405: Is a preventive war, save that we have waited for an excuse, a provocation," and hence of time not entirely of our choosing. In theory, as the Soviet Union had no desire to provoke an all-out nuclear attack, the policy of massive response likely deterred any ambitions it would have had on Western Europe. Although the United States and NATO bloc would be hard-pressed in a conventional conflict with

490-447: 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

539-565: Is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty landpower of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him. With the establishment of NATO's Allied Command Atlantic (ACLANT) on 30 January 1952, the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) joined

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588-523: Is to make these relations more effective, less costly. This can be done by placing more reliance on deterrent power and less dependence on local defensive power... Local defense will always be important. But there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him. Dulles did not explicitly use

637-586: The Greenland - Iceland -UK gap ( GIUK gap "). Operating above the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian Sea , the Blue Fleet, which included the new aircraft carriers 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

686-560: The Royal Netherlands Navy , and the Royal Norwegian Navy . As the largest peacetime naval operation up to that time, military reporter Hanson W. Baldwin of The New York Times said Exercise Strikeback gathered "the strongest striking fleet assembled since World War II." Strikeback and the other concurrent NATO exercises held during the fall of 1957 would be the most ambitious military undertaking for

735-593: The United States Marine Corps participated in Operation Strikeback in September 1957 are listed below. [REDACTED]   This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships . Massive retaliation In the event of an attack from an aggressor, a state would massively retaliate by using a force disproportionate to the size of

784-523: 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

833-527: The Warsaw Pact forces if a conventional war were to occur, the massive response doctrine prevented the Soviets from advancing for fear that a nuclear attack would have been made upon the Soviet Union in response to a conventional attack. Aside from raising tensions in an already strained relationship with the Soviet bloc , massive retaliation had few practical effects at that time. Before the development of

882-440: 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

931-533: The American strategy of massive retaliation of the Eisenhower administration as set forth by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles : We need allies and collective security . Our purpose is to make these relations more effective, less costly. This can be done by placing more reliance on deterrent power and less dependence on local defensive power ... Local defense will always be important. But there

980-959: The Mediterranean Sea. The following is a partial listing of naval forces known to have participated in Operation Strikeback. United States Navy: Battleships: Cruisers: Destroyers: Destroyer escorts: Amphibious vessels: Royal Canadian Navy destroyers Nuclear submarines: Support vessels: Diesel-electric submarines: Underway Replenishment Group (URG): Fleet Support: The United States Navy deployed two patrol squadron from Fleet Air Wing Three (FAW-3) to participate in Operation Strikeback: Both squadrons flew Lockheed P2V-5F Neptune ASW patrol aircraft. The Royal Air Force assigned two squadrons from RAF Coastal Command to participate in Operation Strikeback. Both squadrons flew Avro Shackleton patrol bombers: The following units of

1029-654: The SAC bomber bases before the aircraft could take off to launch massive retaliation against the Soviet Union . Under the Kennedy Administration, the United States adopted a more flexible policy in an attempt to avert nuclear war if the Soviets did not cooperate with American demands. If the United States' only announced that its military reaction to any Soviet incursion (no matter how small) would be

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1078-482: The Soviet Union lacked second-strike capability throughout the 1950s. The concept of massive retaliation became U.S. policy with the approval of NSC 162/2 in October 1953 by Eisenhower. It stated that, in order to defend against Soviet aggression, the U.S. required "a strong military posture, with emphasis on the capability of inflicting massive retaliatory damage by offensive striking power." Massive retaliation

1127-425: The Soviet Union, or if the threats were not intimidating or coercing them to remove the missiles from Cuba, then the Soviet Union would simply not have believed that the U.S.'s policy of massive retaliation held any water. By having other, more flexible policies to deal with aggressive Soviet actions, the U.S. could opt out of a nuclear strike and take less damaging actions to rectify the problem without losing face in

1176-485: The Soviets did provoke the U.S. then they should launch a large strike at "a time and place of our choosing." This is "the massive retaliation theory as enunciated by ... Dulles." Similarly, Bernard Brodie noted that Dulles's doctrine "reflected a characteristically military dissatisfaction, one made familiar previously in the MacArthur hearings." It represented nothing new about the defense of America or Europe but it

1225-411: The U.S. into a state of attack. It was made clear by the end of Dulles's speech that he and many other government officials viewed the "reactive measures" as a tactic of the past that would do no good for the U.S. in the near future and that the dependence on those measures could actually lead to the destruction of the U.S. The primary goal of "massive retaliation" was a type of preventative measure that

1274-534: 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

1323-540: The US nuclear triad , the threat of massive retaliation was hard to make credible, and was inflexible in response to foreign policy issues, as everyday challenges of foreign policy could not have been dealt with using a massive nuclear strike. In fact, the Soviet Union took many minor military actions that would have necessitated the use of nuclear weapons under a strict reading of the massive retaliation doctrine. A massive retaliation doctrine, as with any nuclear strategy based on

1372-687: The alliance to date, involving more than 250,000 men, 300 ships, and 1,500 aircraft operating from Norway to Turkey. Faced with the overwhelming numerical superiority of Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact military forces, NATO embraced the concept of the nuclear umbrella to protect Western Europe from a Soviet ground invasion. This strategy was initially articulated in January 1954 by U.S. Army General and then- Supreme Allied Commander Europe Alfred Gruenther : We have ... an air-ground shield which, although still not strong enough, would force an enemy to concentrate prior to attack. In doing so,

1421-411: The attack. The aim of massive retaliation is to deter another state from attacking first. For such a strategy to work, it must be made public knowledge to all possible aggressors. The aggressor also must believe that the state announcing the policy has the ability to maintain second-strike capability in the event of an attack. It must also believe that the defending state is willing to go through with

1470-421: The concentrating force would be extremely vulnerable to losses from atomic weapon attacks ... We can now use atomic weapons against an aggressor, delivered not only by long-range aircraft, but also by the use of shorter range planes, and by 280 mm. artillery ... This air-ground team constitutes a very effective shield, and it would fight very well in case of attack. This strategic concept reflected

1519-606: 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

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1568-403: The deterrent threat, which would likely involve the use of nuclear weapons on a massive scale. Massive retaliation works on the same principles as mutual assured destruction (MAD), with the important caveat that even a minor conventional attack on a nuclear state could conceivably result in all-out nuclear retaliation. However, when massive retaliation became policy, there was no MAD yet since

1617-461: 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 , Commander, United States Second Fleet , acting as NATO's Commander Striking Fleet Atlantic. While en route,

1666-613: The enemy." There was no point to talking about "negotiating a settlement in the midst of the war," and there was no alternative, therefore, to hitting "the Russians as hard as we could." President John F. Kennedy abandoned the policy of massive retaliation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in favor of flexible response . The Soviet nuclear MRBMs in Cuba had very short flight time to their U.S. targets and could have crippled

1715-474: The massive retaliation tactic by powerful government officials such as Dulles and Eisenhower was to provide a military tactic that would sustain peace and prevail against communism. Two members of the RAND Corporation criticized the doctrine as too aggressive and identical to the first strike. Herman Kahn stressed that many military planners adhering to the "splendid first strike" believed that if

1764-484: The new response could be confined to limited targets. Historian of the Cold War, Marc Trachtenberg , finds that since the very announcement, Dulles was moving toward the flexible response. Nevertheless, Eisenhower continued to dismiss the idea of restraint in general war throughout his term. In 1959, he said: "Once we become involved in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, we could not stop until we had finished off

1813-614: The previously-created Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) as one of the alliance's two principal parts of the NATO Military Command Structure . In addition, Allied Command Channel was established on 21 February 1952 to control the English Channel and North Sea area and deny it to the enemy, protect the sea lanes of communication, and Support operations conducted by SACEUR and SACLANT. The following key NATO military commands were involved in

1862-597: The principle of mutually assured destruction and as an extension the second-strike capability needed to form a retaliatory attack, encouraged the opponent to perform a massive counterforce first strike . This, if successful, would cripple the defending state's retaliatory capacity and render a massive retaliation strategy useless. Subsequent developments such as thermonuclear warhead miniaturization, accurate silo-based ICBMs , accurate submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), stealth technology applied to cruise missiles , and GPS munitions guidance have resulted in

1911-486: 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 "[that] there

1960-413: The term "massive retaliation" has an aggressive tone and caused much negative feedback from the public, which deemed it as a controversial subject. Dulles's speech in 1954 spawned the phrase and concept of massive retaliation, which would back up any conventional defense against conventional attacks with a possible massive retaliatory attack involving nuclear weapons. One of the primary ideas that makes up

2009-409: The term "massive retaliation" is to make known to the enemy that the degree of retaliation is not confined by the magnitude of the attack. This would feasibly strike fear into the opposing side preventing any further or future attacks from happening. The U.S. has always been a national power and the idea of what a full blow retaliation attack could do to an opposing country has kept many hesitant to prod

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2058-506: The title Blue fleet . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_fleet&oldid=627865842 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Operation Strikeback Exercise Strikeback aka Operation Strikeback

2107-401: The words "massive retaliation"; instead, he spoke about relation as a much less threatening term. In his speech, Dulles also stated that "local defense must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power". It is in that quote that the idea of massive retaliation being articulated is seen, but the use of the specific words are absent. Dulles never used the exact words because

2156-417: 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

2205-539: Was a major naval exercise of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that took place over a ten-day period in September 1957. As part of a series of exercises to simulate an all-out Soviet attack on NATO , Exercise Strikeback was tasked with two objectives. Its initial objective was the deployment of NATO's naval forces (designated the "Blue Fleet") against other NATO forces attempting to simulate an "enemy" navy that featured

2254-600: 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

2303-495: Was part of Eisenhower's broader New Look national security policy, which attempted to balance a healthy economy with military strength. Military expenditures could be greatly reduced by relying more on atomic weapons as a substitute for conventional military strength. The idea of massive retaliation sparked public controversy in a speech by Eisenhower administration Secretary of State John Foster Dulles , on January 12, 1954: We need allies and collective security . Our purpose

2352-421: Was seen as a necessary step to prevent the U.S. from getting into any more wars that would cost American lives. Dulles's speech aroused feelings of anger and skepticism from Americans listening from home. Since World War II had recently ended, many Americans were still fearful of the possibility of a nuclear war, and this caused skepticism in a tactic that could provoke another war. The ultimate goal of introducing

2401-579: Was startling because it seemed to reject restraint symbolized by Korea for areas of not vital interests. In the event of a similar Korean incident, the Dulles's doctrine implied much more than bombing the North Korean armies with thermonuclear weapons. We seem to be resolved to launch "a full-fledged strategic nuclear bombing attack on China!" And "we should probably have to include the Soviet Union as well." The Dulles Doctrine, Brodie concludes, "of course,

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