Originally Posted by Matt Wiser
The Soviet boomers off the East and West Coasts were assumed to have a first-strike role, as they were well within range of SAC bases from the coast to the Mississippi for the East Coast, and to the Rocky Mountains for the West Coast. In the book Hostile Waters, the K-219's skipper mentioned having King's Bay, Groton, Norfolk, Charleston, and Washington, D.C. as his targets. (three missiles per target) Other boats probably had the SAC bases (Loring, Pease, Plattsburgh, Griffiss, Warner Robins, Grisssom, among others) in the cross-hairs.
SOSUS is that good. And they practiced vectoring SSNs onto contacts. There was a covenant of death beneath the waves between SSNs and boomers. The boomer crews knew their job was to launch if so directed. The attack boats' job was to prevent that. And those on the Yankees knew that in a real war, their lives would be very short. Just long enough maybe to get one or two missiles off, before that Mark-48 or SUBROC arrived....Now, boomers in the Barents or White Seas, now, those were probably the missile subs mentioned as participating in TDM. For those boats, it's a fifteen to twenty minute time frame from turning the launch-enable key to impact. And once the missiles are detected, there's going to be one or two SSNs headed that way to kill them and prevent more launches.
It's not hubris: it's fact. Thanks to SOSUS and other means, we knew not just the class of boat, but the individual hull numbers, where they were headed, and where they patrolled. Even in T2K prior to Nov 1997, the ASW forces would still be on the job, looking for boomers-and killing them. And the USN and RN boomers would be out, waiting for their own launch orders, with no communications going out, and staying out probably longer than their usual patrols (70 days). They can stretch it out to 120 if needed.
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