I believe that was one of the original strategic missions for Soviet subs: firing nuclear torpedoes into NATO ports. The Type 53-68 nuclear torpedo is a straight-runner, with a 10-20 KT yield. It's getting into range of a port, with the ASW defenses usually present, that would be the problem.

The Mark 45 ASTOR nuclear torpedo for the USN was retired in 1977.

An alternative weapon would be standoff ASW rockets like the SS-N-15/16 or SUBROC/Sea Lance. They're meant to kill ballistic-missile subs at standoff range, especially if they're getting ready to fire. They don't move-and neither do ports. Simply fuze the nuclear depth charge to detonate shallow, and you do wreck the port and the ships in it.

"Stop the CivGov Hate!"

hey do we have a new catch phrase for the site?

Yeah, I was thinking such an attack would take place later in the war, when there were fewer ASW assets about.

I like that idea too. It just seems a lot cleaner if the goal is to kill ships in port without doing a heap of collateral damage.

thats why the attack on Casablanca was using a decent size nuke - the idea was to kill the port and the ships in it - not just kill the ships themselves - actually be a good way to go after French assets as well if you are just trying to damage for instance an oil terminal but not the city itself - i.e. sink the tankers in the port and damage the terminal and loading facilities but not take out the city and cause a ton of civilian casualties

Wonder, what do you consider to be a decent size nuke.

IIRC, there was mention in the Yugoslav material of some battle in the Med against the Italian and Greek navies, either trying to run supplies to Turkey or to reinforce the IV Corps.

(Sending IV Corps to Yugoslavia is one that doesn't make sense to me either, but if you like high level conspiracy....

• The Chief of Staff of someone high in CivGov's military is a MilGov sleeper.
• Said sleeper put in all the paperwork to get IV Corps and naval escort sent away from CivGov's northeast enclave, perhaps while his chief was elsewhere.
• The true purpose of IV Corps's mission is to weaken CivGov by removing ~30,000 trained troops and their equipment and sending them out of the country - if you like your MilGov evil).

There was a mention I remember reading in this forum of a major north Pacific naval battle, where the Soviets slammed 2-3 US CVBGs with nukes, creating the conditions to allow them to scamper across the Alaska invasion force. (I don't really buy it either, but we way as well dredge that up as a possibility and show the link). Or did I misremember that?

Uncle Ted

A decent size nuke is 200kt plus - if you look at nuclear torpedoes their yield is much less - thus if you want to sink ships and damage port facilities but not take out the whole port and city with it you would use a nuclear torpedo - but if you want to take out the port as a whole and sink as many ships as possible you use a much larger weapon

for instance the US Mark 45 torpedo only had an 11 kiloton warhead - still decent sized but hardly by itself big enough to take out a major port and the city surrounding it

What was Soviet doctrine as far as using nukes at sea?

It pretty well known now that they planned to start using nukes almost from the start of a war in Europe. Was the same true for their navy. I've always had the view that they would want to avoid crossing that threshold at sea. They would have lost those exchanges in effect, as their navy was tied pretty tightly to their bases and had little ability to "scatter" like the US had and US doctrine was to take out the bases with nukes if the Soviets started using their nukes against navy ships.

But enough to cause severe damage to the port i guess.

probably would depend where it went off and how big the harbor is - at very least it would be very bad news for any nearby ships or subs when it went off - and if it went off right next to loading terminal or docks you can pretty much kiss them goodbye