The year of living dangerously: 1983

[Skybird]

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/haupt...elt-am-Abgrund

This is the link for a German 45 docu on the year 1983 that I have seen this night. It was titled "Welt am Abgrund" and described the year 1983's extreme military crisis of which in this combination of links I never have thought before and that described events of which I never have heared. To sum it up: 1983 made the Kuba crisis look like a friendly picnic in the forest. And that is no joke - we are lucky that we are still here.

Presented by a well-known German historian, who has had several books and TV docus, mainly on the Nazi era, and basing on former American, German, British and Soviet militaries, spies and the CIA's chief historian confirming the claimed facts, the film describes several events from 1981 to 1983, an era of very strong American pressure and provocations against the USSR i order to test their military reaction times and patterns and to identitfy their radar stations. In 1981 a massive NATO fleet of 83 combat units and three carriers entered deep into the Northen Sea, and obviously penetrated much more into the Northern Norwegian Sea than was previously known - the units were not detected due to new active electronic countermeasures supressing Soviet radar. The fleet reached to striking distance of Murmansk before the Soviets knew it was there, and American Navy fighters started weeks of almost-hot dogfights with Soviet interceptors, sometimes offshore the coast around Murmansk. - The Soviets needed to understand this as a preparation for a preemptive attack - and they did.

1983 the US Navy again tested and provoced the Soviet air defence, this time in the area of Camchatka, whose defence perimeter was intruded by three carrier groups simultaneously, and again weeks anmd weeks of simulated attacks were flown, fdorcing the Soviets to fully acitvate their radar network and give away their station's locations and reaction patterns. It was in this setting that the Korean jumbo entered the airspace over Camchatka which just short time before was "raided" by American fighters and bombers, and the SAoviets still were at high alert due to the exchnage with the Americans, so they identified the civilian airliner as an American bomber, and shot it down. - Again, the Soviets necessarily had to take these events as a provocation and a preparation for an attack.

On 23. September was the day when mankind was more lucky than ever before. A new "Kosmos" spy satellite with defective software code misidentified the sunbeams of the raising sun at the Earth'S horizon as a missile launch in Montana, and triggered a major missile alert with the Soviet missile forces. Four more sunbeams triggered four more " missile" detections, and the Soviets were fully convinced that it was no test or false alarm, but this time it was real. Full alert was given, and by orders and regular routines this should have been the end of mankinds story. Just the Soviet officer who was in command decided to not obey the machine, and to judge that a strike with just 5 missiles, out of the3 blue, makes no sense, and he refused to press the button.

IN OTHER WORDS, IF THE SATELLITE WITH THE DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE WOULD HAVE REPORTED A STREAM OF DETECTED "MISSILES", THEN NOONE OF US WOULD BE HERE ANYMORE TO TELL THE STORY.

1983 was the year when the Marines were bombed in Beirut, with the result that the US military went on high alert around the globe. The Pershing-2s arrived in Germany, increasing the range of nuclear weapons on German soil from targets that still wre inside German borders, to ranges so that now Moscow could be struck, and this at a time when the Soviets already were turned into paranoids by the years of American provocations and serious incidents. And in this climate their intel then revealed to them that after the yearly autmun maneuvers of NATO, named REFORGER, all Western governments and the American president suddenly took a dive and disappeared in nuclear bunkers. This was called "Abel Archer", a test to exmaine the reaction patterns and mechnaism of NATO in case of a Nuclear war. Of course it was a maneuver, a cosim only, but after the past two years and Reagan have doomed the USSR to be the empire of evil, this last observation was too much: Moscow now was absolutely convinced that a NATO first strike was imminent.

It became worse when during Able Archer the firing codes for nuclear weapon stations around the world were transmitted, increasing the radio traffic which ELINT by the Sopviets of course detected. It was then when the Russians fully were in panic mode and knew that the worst nightmare of mankind, Armageddon, was inevitably coming.

And Western intel had no clue about the mood and fears and the alertness of the Soviets. Not good. They just started to note that the Warsaw Pact suddenly started to fully mobilise, for reasons "unknown".

This was the second time in 1983 when the fate of the world laid in the hand of just one single person, a British-Russian spy who worked for bpoth sides and whose latest orders for Moscow made him realising that Moscow was in panic and prepared for all-out war. He let the Brits know.

Now you know why in that late time of 1983 Roinald Reagan suddenly was moving to his ranch and many pictures and TV spots showed him living a peaceful, relaxed. In his memoires, Reagan said that 1983 made him feel deeply depressed when he realsied how close to the final abyss the world has been in this crisis - which most people have not taken note of, and did not even be aware of. Reagan had ejected at high speed from Able Archer and by those news snippets wanted to send an emergency communication to the Soviets: look, I live here peacefully and treat my horses - is this what a presidnet looks like who is about to launch world war III...?

There was a single day in that crisis where the Soviet bombers around Berlin for the first and the only time ever throughout the cold war had all left their shelters, were aligned close to the runways, pilots in cockpit, engines running, and live nuclear weapons under their wings. They were ready to go to nuclear war at the snipping of two fingers. Compared to that, the Cuba crisis was tame, and never was that close to initial allout nuclear war, because the Americans also always have reserved the preemptiver use of nuclear weapons - and German towns and cities were no American towns and cities, were they... WWIII - alwaqys would have started with the complete obliteration of the 100-200 biggest German cities and their surroundings in the first 30 minutes - both from Soviet and American nukes.

Guys, we are lucky that we are still here. And all that just becasue of some lines of junk code - the satellite was not defective, the code just was written bad.

Think of these events and the psychological reactions they triggered, before next time you uncritically embrace the fututre of fully automatted war technology and plans. That is true for robots, that is true for Star wars defence initiatives and missile shields, SSBNs and satellite networks. Not only is there no freedom from remaining risk - but there also always is the unpredictability of human psychology, and simple old fashioned bad luck.

Depending on luck is no wise strategy.

[Onkel Neal]

Pretty interesting. I often wonder, even now that the Cold War tensions are behind us, what are the chances that something could still "go wrong" and trigger a nuclear event?

Of course, one part of the article is naively misleading: That us American are the only power to "always have reserved the preemptiver use of nuclear weapons". Pfft! As if. The Russians and any other nuclear power reserve the same option, they just say otherwise.

[Reece]

Certainly an eye opener, amazing how it can boil down to a decision of just one man, and if that person was not of sound mind...

A good read Skybird.

Originally Posted by Reece

amazing how it can boil down to a decision of just one man, and if that person was not of sound mind...

A common misconception....the two man rule goes all the way to the top.

The president, or his legal successor, and the Secratary of Defense or his legal successor must be in agreement to initiate the use of 'special weapons'.

[Reece]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

A common misconception....the two man rule goes all the way to the top.

The president, or his legal successor, and the Secratary of Defense or his legal successor must be in agreement to initiate the use of 'special weapons'.

What about other countries though, China, future DPRK?

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

A common misconception....the two man rule goes all the way to the top.

The president, or his legal successor, and the Secratary of Defense or his legal successor must be in agreement to initiate the use of 'special weapons'.

In the Soviet Union it was a three man rule. At least in the silos, two Rokeshki (SP?) and a Zampolit.

I think at the upper end it requires the President (General Secretary in Soviet days), Defense Minister, and Chief of the General Staff.

Since the OP article only dealt with one country I will only speak to that. And the misconception that only the president can initiate nuclear war. That isn't entirely accurate. That was my point.

Certainly other nations have controls.

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Reece

Certainly an eye opener, amazing how it can boil down to a decision of just one man, and if that person was not of sound mind...

A good read Skybird.

+1 I still think about the book "October Fury" with the Cuban Missle Crisis and how close we came to shooting there.

Basically, the Soviet subs were armed with 1 nuke torp and they were authorised to use it if they were attacked. They came very close to launching and the captain backed down at the last minute.

[nikimcbee]

"This book is a very detailed account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as told by both the Russian submariners tasked to get through to Cuba and the American destroyers bent on stopping them. In 1962, the decision was made to station both land-based nuclear missiles and nuclear-armed bomber, as well as SSB submarines armed with nuclear missiles in Cuba. The land-based portion, dubbed Operation Anadyr, would use cargo ships to deploy the land based missiles, bomber and troops. The Naval operation, Kama, was to be initiated by four Soviet Project 641 Foxtrot diesel attack submarines, sailing from the Kola peninsula bound for Cuba. These would act as an advanced guard, to be followed by seven Project 629 Golf class ballistic missile submarines, each carrying three nuclear-tipped missiles. The plan was for these submarines to be based out of Cuba, where they could threaten the southern U.S. Just prior to departure, each of the Foxtrot submarines received, in addition to their normal torpedo loads, one 10 kiloton T-5 nuclear torpedo. Admiral Gorshkov's orders were; "You will use these weapons if American forces attack you submerged or force your units to the surface and the attack...." The fate of the world was thereby placed in the hands of four Russian submarine commanders. The book skillfully weaves the ensuing tale, alternating the Soviet submariner's stories with the American destroyer's ASW pursuits as the crisis progresses. A showdown in which USS Blandy drops small charges to force one of the submarines, B-130, to surface, leads to frustration for the submarine captain. He therefore orders loading and flooding, in preparation for firing, of the torpedo tube with the T-5 nuclear warhead. Fortunately, cooler heads prevail upon the captain to back down. Although overall a good read, I had a few minor quibbles. The author uses interviews to reconstruct conversations, and the places them in quotes. In fact it is highly unlikely that those represent the actual words spoken, as quotes imply. He also has two Russian attaches taking the train to Boston in order to observe the submarines at the New London sub base when the train stops in New London. In fact, Electric Boat is visible across the river, but the submarine base and piers are not at all visible from the train. The closest approach of the train is on the bridge over the Thames River, still some distance, with the sub base some 3 miles away. Nonetheless, this book lends new insights into just how close the world really came to disaster during that alarming time in history. The author was on board one of the American destroyers, USS Blandy, assigned to the USS Essex task force group, and thus tells tale that from a first hand perspective. Thomas J. Dougherty
"I bought this book because I was offended by the hype on the dust cover, which presented it as another Kennedy Court History in which the Cuban Missile Crisis is made to sound even more scary than it really was. It was a pleasant surprise to read a balanced account of Soviet submarine operations during the Crisis, which refutes many of the exaggerated claims still being made about the possibility of unauthorized use of tactical nukes. We learn that Soviet nuclear torpedoes were escorted by armed KGB officers who actually slept on top of the weapons, and the Rules of Engagement were so onerous that a sub would have to be actually sinking before one could be fired. Just to be safe, the sub crews were given no training on the nukes and were kept ignorant of their capabilities. This isn't too surprising when one considers that a military coup was always the secret nightmare of communist governments. If the tactical nukes assigned to Soviet Army units in Cuba were under similar restrictions, it is hard to see how they could ever have been fired––the nightmare scenario still being cited by Robert MacNamara to justify the Kennedys' secret treaty with Khrushchev. Another revelation is the very poor mechanical performance of the Soviet subs which suffered an appalling series of engine breakdowns. From the limited details given in this book, it appears that many of these failures were due to mistakes by poorly trained engineering personnel. (Fatigue due to the intense tropical heat and humidity may be a factor also.) Since these subs had specially selected crews and were just out of refit, the mind boggles at what the average Soviet diesel boat must have been like in 1962. Had Khrushchev actually proceeded with his plan to base Golf-class missile subs permanently in Cuba, the result could only have been utter disaster. The more we learn about the Soviet side of the Missile Crisis, the more it looks like the most badly planned and implemented military operation of all time." Jeffrey F. Bell

[Bilge_Rat]

Skybird, the video appears to be only in German so I could not look at it in its entirity, but the US was not the only one to blame for rising tensions in the early 80s.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, forced Poland to impose martial law and crush the "Solidarity" movement in 1981, shot down flight KAL 007 in sept. 1983 killing 269 civilians.

The rise in military spending in the USA was more of a reaction to Soviet moves than the other way around. Since Reagan's diary has come out, we now know that he was personally opposed to nuclear weapons.


On another note, I am not convinced the early 80s were worse than the 50s and 60s in terms of coming close to the brink.

In the 1962 Cuban crisis, the USSR sent 4 diesel submarines to Cuba, each armed with nuclear torpedoes. The Captain of each could order their use on his own and each was given only the vaguest of ROE, basically "use you best judgement". At least two of the subs were intercepted on the high seas as part of the blockade and were forced to surface after lengthy hunts by US ASW TFs. Thankfully, none of the Soviet skippers was a hot head...

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Skybird, the video appears to be only in German so I could not look at it in its entirity

You mean it is locked, or that the language is German? The first would be bad, the second is correct.

but the US was not the only one to blame for rising tensions in the early 80sThe Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, forced Poland to impose martial law and crush the "Solidarity" movement in 1981, shot down flight KAL 007 in sept. 1983 killing 269 civilians.

Note that neither me nor the docu nor the people interviewed in it were about a simple "me good you bad" scheme or anti-americanism. But Reagan has set up incrediobnle military pressure and tension at that time, and none of the example you mention above were to be perceived by the US as such a direct, imminent miliutary threat to the Us itself as were the two fleet and very huge fleet maneuvers close to two of the most vital military inst5allations of the Soviets. Without wanting to read something into itthink that the US shares at least a certain moral responiosbility for having triggered and created the events which led to the Soviets mistaking the Korean airliner with just another american combat plane - a B-52 for example.

The rise in military spending in the USA was more of a reaction to Soviet moves than the other way around. Since Reagan's diary has come out, we now know that he was personally opposed to nuclear weapons.

It was McNamara and the Kennedy amdinistration that accelerated the arms race with first massive boost of SLBM and later ICBM. This was to "out-threat" the Soviets on the nuclear terrain as well as their numerical tank superiority in Europe. The Soviets reacted to that boost in American nukes with for example the SS-20. To which the US then reacted with the Pershing-II and nuclear Cruise Missiles. None of the two sides is free of guilt in having helped the nuclear arms race. But I tend to think that it was the US really igniting the nuclear arms race.

On Reagan, they mentioned his memoires in that docu, if I remember correctly quoting it witha hint on that Reagan already felt sad after 1981, but was really depressed after he had seen "The DFay After", and even more after the drama in 1983. It chnaged him. And maybe withoiut this depressive state he was in he would not have been rerady to shake hands with the later representative of the empire of evil - Gorbatchev. They also said that this is the only time in his memoires were Reagan mentioned his depressive mood, or wrote passages in an obviously tone of sadness and pessimism. The docu made it look as if 1983 rfeally did not pass Reagan without leaving deep traces.

On another note, I am not convinced the early 80s were worse than the 50s and 60s in terms of coming close to the brink.

In the 1962 Cuban crisis, the USSR sent 4 diesel submarines to Cuba, each armed with nuclear torpedoes. The Captain of each could order their use on his own and each was given only the vaguest of ROE, basically "use you best judgement". At least two of the subs were intercepted on the high seas as part of the blockade and were forced to surface after lengthy hunts by US ASW TFs. Thankfully, none of the Soviet skippers was a hot head...

Comparing it with the reported level or readiness to strike German cities with nukes and the general alrm of Soviet air forces in Germany that were readied on the runway and had nuclear arms, I think the crisis in late 1983 was much more immediate and threatening. If the blockade runners at Cuba would not have stopped and gunfire had been used on them, or a sub would have launched a missile, there would have been still an opportunity to rethink the situation and to communicate. But Russian airplanes five flightminutes from Berlin - after the first German city would hjave been nuked, the mechnaism of the warmchine in East and West would have completely taken over.

Do not misatake me, I have said myself in an old thread that I think during Cuba things were pout of control and we were just lucvky. It was close. But 1983 - was even closer, I got the impression. Some of the militaries they interviewed in that docu, also indicated that.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Skybird

It was McNamara and the Kennedy amdinistration that accelerated the arms race with first massive boost of SLBM and later ICBM. This was to "out-threat" the Soviets on the nuclear terrain as well as their numerical tank superiority in Europe. The Soviets reacted to that boost in American nukes with for example the SS-20. To which the US then reacted with the Pershing-II and nuclear Cruise Missiles. None of the two sides is free of guilt in having helped the nuclear arms race. But I tend to think that it was the US really igniting the nuclear arms race.

The US started development on Polaris one year before the 1st Zulu class SSB was fielded. Polaris and their USN SSBNs was deployed in 1960 3 years after the Soviets had a SLBM and the same year the Soviets deployed their 1st SSBN.

Actually the Soviet had the initial lead in SLBM development, but we caught up and surpassed them with in three years.

[CaptainHaplo]

Just goes to show God looks out for us - even those of yall who don't believe in him....

[Skybird]

Considering that man is made in His image, and looking at how messed up we are and mess up things around us, I only can hope there is some Über-Deity that looks after God.

Or in other words: when I don'T tell you there is a banana skin that I have placed myself there, and then offering you a hand for helping you back on your feet after you slipped on it, is not really a form of kindness, is it?

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

Just goes to show God looks out for us - even those of yall who don't believe in him....

but he gave men free will

So I prefer to raise my glass to Mr Petrov!