Sunday, January 15, 2023

Counterfactual/ Alt History: Could the U.S.S.R have successfully attacked the NATO/U.S.A. in the Cold War?

This post why does the dumpster always burn when I am away from keyboard on According to Hoyt contains a statement referencing this tweet: Was the USSR always a Potemkin state? . This lead me to wonder, how hollow was the U.S.S.R. and how unready/unprepared was NATO? What would that (thankfully avoided) situation look like? There are really two scenarios that I think of 

  1. A ground assault on the European members of NATO (mostly Germany moving into the Low Countries)
  2. A Nuclear exchange stemming out of some other ongoing issue (e.g. Cuban Missile Crisis) 

There is SOME information, but not a lot easily found. It also has the issue that it has the biases of the time, for example early analyses tend to treat the Soviet forces as overwhelming, something even analyses of the 1970s and 1980s readily admit the earlier failings. References I have found so far include

Of course none of these sources are perfect. FAS is notoriously alarmist in their stance and does use published sources which are almost all from various state sources and are potentially suspect. Rand is US funded, and of course the NSC of 1950 was itself part of the US executive. In addition the Soviet/Russian side of things is scarcer than hens teeth and what little I do find is far lest trustworthy than the Western stuff.

Looking at history as it spread out there seem to be a variety of obvious periods/flashpoints 

  1. Berlin Crisis/blockade 1948
  2. Korean war 1950-1953
  3. Bay of Pigs  (1961)
  4. Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
  5. Vietnam War era  ~1964-1975
  6. Yom Kippur War 1973
  7. Afghanistan invasion 1979
  8. Evolving Detente (1981-1989)
  9. Fall of the USSR/ First Iraq War
  10. Recent tensions 

I'm going to look at the first one here and then add more blogs over time, I suspect 2 will be another post, 3-5 will be another section 6  its own (or maybe roll in with the earlier stuff?), 7&8 another and 9&10 their own 

So looking at the Berlin Crisis (generally not going to quote sources for general info look at the list above) I think likely if the USSR wanted it could have taken Berlin. The question is what purpose would that serve? I suppose they could head further west into the BDR but that is fraught with all sorts of issues. For example they're at the end of a LONG supply line, even 2 1/2 years from the end of WWII I suspect their economy is still recovering and certain items they were getting Lend Lease they are no longer receiving. Also there is a suggestion in this source [3] that although they had an on paper advantage in divisions many of those were VERY understrength and ill supplied[3]. On top of that best estimates were their effectiveness was about 30-40% of equivalent US divisions. Also traditionally defense gives a 2-1 to 3-1 advantage. And their conquests in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia might get restive. Last of all there is the nuclear elephant in the room. in 1948 Joe 1 is a year in the future the USSR has no nuclear weapons at all

That said everything everything is NOT rosy for the US/Nato. US Forces are VERY limited especially in Berlin. Also the US Armies  performance in the start of the Korean war hints that Soviet hardware ( T-34 etc) and tactics would provide problems for the US troops. 

The Nuclear front is also interesting. This source [8]  suggests there exist as many as 50 weapons in the US Nuclear arsenal. However these are All Mk3 [9] variants essentially a slightly modified version of the Fat Man weapon used at Nagasaki. These took a specialized 39  man team 2 days to assemble. They are also rather dangerous objects once assembled, with no safing and even without the threat of nuclear explosion they are several thousand pounds of delicate explosive. In addition the primary delivery system for these was still the modified B-29s of the 509th Composite Group (plane code name Silverplate). Their range is limited sources say ~2800 NM for standard B-29, and that seems reasonable for the Silverplate variants given Tinian to Hiroshima was ~2600nm round trip. The aircraft would have to be staged in Britain or Europe, The range is barely enough to get from Northern Great Britain to Moscow or Leningrad. 

The Soviet PVO (Air Self Defense forces) flew Yak-9 (high performance prop)  and Mig-9 (early jet) interceptors. Those might provide an issue particularly the Yak-9, like many early jets the Mig-9 is rather short ranged and limited in high altitude performance. In addition what kind of warning system the USSR had at that time is unclear. Later in the crisis the B-36 and the B-50 (uprated B-29) start to come online so the delivery at least will be easier range wise.  There is some suggestion in [8] that there was concern in the USSR over a possible nuclear response. Given the USSR was working on a MK-3 monkey copy (Joe-1) and B-29 copy (TU-4) and had the US/UK labs well penetrated I am a little surprised that held much fear for them given the limitations they likely understood. However, I suspect as was usual in the USSR the tight security on things such as Joe-1 (and their penetration of Los Alamos) would have meant this information would not have been widely known outside of the highest levels.

All in all I think what prevented this going hot was not necessarily the nuclear threat but the need for the USSR to recover from a long hard fought war and to consolidate its conquests in the area that would later become the Warsaw pact. I think the blockade is all they intended, using it as essentially a warning shot across the bow and perhaps to some degree a bluff. Combine this with how penetrated the U.S. and UK state departments were and it does give the USSR breathing time to get their nuclear assets online.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

 

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