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34 #232 if incomplete, description. The best reason for second thoughts actually came from the 1955 policy paper. In it, the army’s chief engineer stated: “A skillfully sited atomic mine would not only destroy facilities and installations over a large area, but would deny occupation of the area to an enemy for an appreciable time due to contamination.” In 1954, Britain still considered Germany to be an occupied nation; however, by 1958 it had become an ally. Sanguine destruction of facilities and installations and widespread atomic contamination was therefore no longer acceptable. The Ministry of Defense canceled Blue Peacock in February 1958. Newer, smaller atomic weapons replaced the Blue Danube. One of the Blue Peacock casings was tested to destruction, and the other idled quietly at an RAF base before being consigned to a historical collection at the end of the Cold War. Blue Peacock became just another curious footnote in history. Blue Peacock again gained attention in the spring of 2004, when documents relating to its development were included in an exhibition at the British National Archives. While other information about it had been released in 2002, the exhibit contained the first public mention of the avian heating system. The press release including that information was issued on April 1 st – April Fool’s Day. Yet the story was less an April Fool than an ironic coincidence. As the head of education and interpretation at the National Archives told the BBC: “The Civil Service does not make jokes.” —Mark N. Lardas naval mine Warfare During the Cold War Naval mine warfare between 1945 and 1990 was dominated by the two contending major naval powers, the Soviet Union and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). In both cases, World War II experience shaped their systems, both operationally and technologically. In World War II, German minefields had so constrained Soviet naval operations that afterward the Soviets seized and held large numbers of Ger- many’s mine warfare experts in order to exploit their knowledge. In fact, most Soviet mines and mine warfare tactics of the Cold War were direct derivatives of World War II German mines, mine warfare research, and tactics. More, the Soviets came to maintain the world’s largest mine warfare and mine countermeasures forces. NATO also took mine warfare seriously, but having enjoyed greater naval success against the Germans in World War II, showed less interest in studying or exploiting the defeated nation’s operations, research and systems. Nonetheless, NATO navies dedicated significant resources to mine countermeasures. Having relied predominantly on the British for mine countermeasure support in European waters, and having encountered relatively few mines in their campaigns against the Japanese in the Pacific, the US Navy took almost no interest at all. That would prove embarrassing on several occasions. Mines come in two primary categories: moored and bottom. They also come in two types determined by their method of detonation: contact or influence. A contact mine detonates when the target makes contact with it, while influence mines are detonated by the target’s influence on the maritime environment (for example, how it changes the magnetic field, water pressure or electrical potential, or the sound it puts into the water). Moored mines are tethered on a cable moored to a casing resting on or above the bottom. Bottom mines, as the name indicates, lie on the bottom. Moored mines can be either contact-detonated or influence-detonated, while bottom mines are always influence mines. The tactics used to counter mines differ according to the category and type used. In fact, the oldest (and long-considered obsolete) moored contact mine was the most common naval mine employed operationally during the Cold War. Naval mine warfare can also be broken into two categories, offensive and defensive. Offensive mine warfare consists of those operations conducted to attack the enemy’s maritime operations and interests. Normally that means they’re conducted in enemy waters or waters used by the enemy. Defensive mine warfare consists of operations under- taken to protect friendly forces, their activities and interests. In either case, mine warfare can consist of mine-laying or countermeasures (operations conducted to neutralize mines). Mine-laying is the simpler of the two operations. Virtually any platform (surface ship, submarine or aircraft) can lay mines. For example, when Iran laid mines in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s, they did so from a wide variety of innocuous surface craft, including dhows (small wooden cargo ships) indigenous to those waters. The Iranians’ purpose was to hide their involvement in a mining campaign the international community had condemned. Their responsibility could not be established conclusively until a US Navy vessel captured an Iranian supply ship delivering mines to one of the minelayers. That incident constituted the basis for one of the growing concerns of the late- and post-Cold War eras: terrorist use of mines to attack shipping. Where mine-laying is relatively simple and safe, mine countermeasures are complex and dangerous. Minesweeping is the oldest method, using ships that tow their countermeasures equipment through the area where mines are suspected or known to be. Minesweepers are constructed of non-ferrous materials (wood, reinforced fiberglass), use special propulsion systems, and are heavily sounddampened to reduce their “influence signatures,” all in order to prevent detonating any influence mines over which they might pass. Since they do precede their own “sweep gear,” however, they face a high risk of inadvertent detonation from the very mines they’re sweeping. (The US pioneered the use of helicopters for minesweeping during the late 1970s to provide its mine countermeasures forces greater mobility and speed.) Mine hunting is employed against bottom mines, and involves using precision sonar and other equipment. Before the late 1980s, divers would be sent to investigate and disarm suspected bottom mines. It was slow, difficult and dangerous work. As the Cold War ended, however, most Western mine hunting began to be done using underwater remotely piloted vehicles to approach and destroy suspected mines. The US also pioneered the use of highly trained dolphins for that mission.
The method of mine countermeasures used in any one place is always determined by the type of mine encountered. Moored mines can be swept by gear towed behind minesweepers. Once such mines’ mooring cables are cut, they float to the surface where they can be destroyed by gunfire. Bottom influence mines, however, particularly those that try to defeat influence sweeping through the use of a counter-countermeasure, are more difficult to defeat. Influence sweeping requires the sweeper to tow a system behind it that simulates the various influences ships impart on their environment. The intent is to detonate the mines at a safe distance behind the sweeper. Without foreknowledge of the mines’ type (magnetic, magneticacoustic, pressure, etc), the commander must simulate all the influences the mines may be targeting. By the 1970s, some mines could also be set for specific target types (for example, cruisers or aircraft carriers instead of destroyers), further complicating the mine countermeasure problem. Mines with counter-countermeasures allowed a pre-set number of targets to pass before detonating. Others had pre-set activation and deactivation dates, either to ensure safe passage during set periods, establish a “sanitation date,” or just to further complicate the mine countermeasures problem. Defeating those mines necessitated extensive sweeping for several weeks just to provide a probability, not certainty, of safe passage. Worse, since pressure mines relied on the level of pressure engendered by a ship’s passage through the water, phenomena that varied according to a ship’s size and speed, they could not be fooled by simulation devices. They could only be detonated through the use of a specially designed ship of the size and type that generated both the required “pressure wave” and had the reinforced hull and systems to survive the blast. Ultimately, the problems of defeating pressure mines led to the development of mine hunting. Mine hunting is even slower than minesweeping and was, in its early days, far more dangerous. Though sonar and other sensors can detect bottom mines, those systems also detect a large number of non-mine objects with similar shapes and dimensions. Further, tides, marine life and bottom materials tend to obscure mines over time. Hence every suspected mine has to be investigated individually. Some mines have anti-diver devices, either attached or placed nearby, which detonate when any small metallic object remains near it for a set time. All the dangers involved led Western nations to develop and rely increasingly on methods that didn’t require divers. The American use of dolphins in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf was a controversial solution. Most Western nations relied on remote underwater robotic systems as the Cold War drew to an end, as does the US today. Mine warfare figured prominently in four of the hot wars that occurred during the Cold War: Korea, Vietnam, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and the Iraq-Iran War. Ironically, World War I-era moored contact mines dominated the minefields of all but the second of those conflicts. The US Navy was also embarrassed by its lack of mine countermeasures forces in three of those wars, and only avoided such embarrassment again in Vietnam because the North Vietnamese didn’t employ mines to any significant degree. The US encountered few mines during the early naval operations of the Korean War. Expecting a short war and seeing little risk of US involvement, North Korea saw little need for protective minefields when its troops invaded South Korea in 1950. Then Gen. MacArthur’s landing at Inchon changed Pyongyang’s strategic thinking. China’s leaders were also aware of the US Navy’s amphibious capabilities, and they therefore emphasized the use of mines in coastal defense operations. The two allies laid thousands of Soviet-supplied naval mines off North Korea’s coast in 1950-51, placing the largest concentrations around the country’s eastern ports. With almost all of America’s mine countermeasures units having been decommissioned after World War II, the USN had to reactivate Imperial Japanese Navy mine sweeping units, including their crews, to sweep the thousands of moored contact mines encountered off Wonsan and Hangnam harbors. That embarrassment rejuvenated America’s mine warfare consciousness and efforts in the 1950s, but those new forces were placed in reserve by the early 1960s. The 1967 Arab-Israeli War saw the next significant employment of naval mines when Egypt closed the Suez Canal and the Israeli port of Eilat by laying thousands of mines in and around their approaches. The Egyptians sprinkled bottom influence magnetic mines among the moored contact mines in their minefields. Though the minefields didn’t affect operations by the Israeli Navy’s smaller combatants, it prevented their destroyers and transports from using those waters. It also deterred merchant shipping from entering Eilat. Fortunately for Israel, the fields off Eilat contained a manageable number of mines. The moored contact mines were cleared in a few days, but it took several months of mine hunting by divers to clear away the bottom influence mines. It was the US that employed naval mines in the largest numbers and to the greatest effect during the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong occasionally used floating mines in South Vietnam’s rivers, and the North Vietnamese employed a few moored contract mines on an ad hoc basis. The US, however, used aircraft-dropped mines to close North Vietnam’s Haiphong Harbor and other ports to shipping. Equipped with a variety of sensor and counter systems, those mines proved far beyond North Vietnam’s ability to sweep, closing the ports completely to shipping. The impact of those closures contributed to bringing North Vietnam to the negotiating table, and the agreement that ended that war included a requirement for the US to clear the minefields, a process that took over two months. A few months later, those same USN mine countermeasures units joined with Egyptian forces to conduct the mine clearing effort that allowed the Suez Canal to be reopened after eight years of closure. As the 1980s approached, however, the US refocused its naval forces on open ocean operations and left mine countermeasures to its allies. Iran employed mines surreptitiously during its war with Iraq in the 1980s. Since laying mines in international waters violated international law, Iran conducted its operations covertly, using nominally civilian surface craft to lay moored contact mines in the Persian Gulf’s shipping lanes. strategy & tactics 35
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