Cold War Anti-Submarine Warfare

The huge Soviet submarine fleet was a defining naval element of the Cold War. This is the first full account of the Western - mainly US and British - struggle to master that massive force. That struggle largely defined Western navies during the Cold War. During that period, Western navies had to wrestle with many of the problems they now face, such as shrinking numbers and increasingly potent enemies. With the end of that war, anti-submarine warfare shifted dramatically, to the point that probably no one currently in the Navy recalls the past experience. Yet the past - the subject of this book -- is coming back, as the Chinese field a large and growing submarine force, and the Russians are trying to revive theirs. Although the technology is changing, the past revealed by this book is more and more relevant. This is the first book to describe the whole Cold War struggle against Soviet submarines from the points of view of shifting Western national and naval strategy, anti-submarine tactics, changing technology, and the changing character of both the Western and Soviet fleets, including the weapons they wielded. It is based largely on declassified U.S. and British documents (plus some French ones) and on Soviet accounts which appeared during the brief opening of Soviet naval publication after the Cold War.