Soviet Naval Power in the Pacific 9781685852290

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Soviet Naval Power in the Pacific

Soviet Naval Power in the Pacific Derek da Cunha

Lynne Rienner Publishers

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Boulder & London

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

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Singapore

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BASE INFRASTRUCTURE

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Bases of the First Rank: Fleet Command Posts Two installations qualify as Pacific fleet bases of the first rank. Vladivostok is one, located at the southern end of the Primorski Kray (Maritime Territory). Petropavlovsk, on the southeastern seaboard of the Kamchatka peninsula, is the other. The importance ascribed to these two bases lies in their central naval command-and-control functions. Vladivostok is the Pacific fleet's sole peacetime headquarters, responsible for Pacific and Indian Ocean operations. In wartime, however, its status would be altered through a partial devolution of its command-and-control functions to Petropavlovsk. This sharing of operational control is partly due to the fact that both bases act as home port for an inordinately large proportion of fleet units, which would operate in quite separate zones. Among other things, Vladivostok is the primary home port for surface combatants, while Petropavlovsk is host to most of the fleet's strategic and general-purpose submarines. In wartime, attempting to control Petropavlovsk-based units from Vladivostok would be exceedingly difficult, as they are separated by 1,350 sea miles; and communications between them would be vulnerable to disruption. Capabilities for primary fleet directive functions at Petropavlovsk may have been established as early as the mid-1970s. In 1976, a Western report cited "intelligence sources in Tokyo" claiming that the "Soviet Pacific Fleet ha[d] moved its command from Vladivostok to Petropavlovsk." 2 Hindsight has proven that report inaccurate, but only in its suggestion that Pacific fleet command functions were completely removed from Vladivostok. What the sources probably observed in 1976 was the setting up of a parallel command center at Petropavlovsk for shared control of naval operations in wartime, with Vladivostok retaining its position as the Pacific fleet's sole peacetime general headquarters. Petropavlovsk. Of the two major Pacific fleet bases, Petropavlovsk, with a population of 245 thousand, is the older, and arguably the more important (see Map 4.1). It was founded in 1740 by the Russian explorer V. I. Bering and initially grew as a commercial coastal settlement before St. Petersburg recognized its value in facilitating Russia's aggrandizement into the Pacific. In 1849 the Russian Eastern Admiralty Office was transferred from Okhotsk to Petropavlovsk where "an arsenal and yard" were built. 3 On two occasions in Russian military history the port figured with some prominence. The first was in August-September 1854, during the Crimean War, when the repulse of a combined Anglo-French assault on Petropavlovsk provided Russia with one of its few military successes of the war. 4 World War II provided the other occasion; the port formed the initial springboard for the Soviet seaborne invasion of the Japanese-held Kurile Islands in 1945.5 Geographically, Petropavlovsk has both strengths and weaknesses; from the perspective of naval operations, the former appear to outweigh the latter

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DEREK D A C U N H A

LOCATION MAP

1

Bering Sea Petropavlo'vsk

PACIFIC OCEAN

^PHILIPPINES

Site of air-search and tracking radars

To Ust- Bol'sheretsk

Petropaylovsk

Coastal defence emplacements

Two main anchorages*

'nskaya

Bay

¿¿Standing US attack^ ^submarine patrol area; >One or two Los Angele SSNs normally on patr