If WW3 had happen would we have been able to keep the sea lanes open ?

[Hannibal]

In th Falkland war the British tried unsucessfully to sink a lone Argentine sub.What would hundreds of soviet Nuclear attack subs have done to the US merchant fleet?

[JasonC]

No comparison. We would have sunk half the Russian SSN force in the first month or so.

Sonar tech was an area where the US had and still has a very large lead, larger than our lead in aircraft tech actually. We had seabed floor warning nets, 50 much quieter attack subs, a large fleet of surface escorts with ASW helos, ASW patrol aircraft with unlimited sonabouys, etc. The Brits had very little of that (a handful of SSNs, a few surface escorts with ASW helos), looking for a single sub in a huge bit of ocean (not around a convoy or at a transit chokepoint either...)

[MikeyD]

I wonder how much harm the remaining half (quarter? eighth?) of the Russian sub force could've done regardless. Especially of they managed to launch a single nuclear tipped cruise missile into a carrier group, or if the U.S. started dropping nuclear depth charges out of frustration.

Control of the seas might be a moot point. The conflict had a VERY high likelyhood of quickly transitioning to theatre nuclear (depending on who started losing first), then an all-out nuclear exchange - basically dooming the entire planet. Its almost impossible to imagine now insane the scale of carnage WWIII was predicted to be. Literally tens of thousands of nuclear warheads exploding within hours of eachother. Entire regions turned into sheets of melted glass from redundant hydrogen bomb strikes. Every population center obliterated. The U.S. Strategic Command literally ran out of valuable Russian targets. Out of fear of a 'preemptive strike' on their missile siloes a dozen or more nukes from a variety of platforms might target a single bridge over a minor river.

[PLM2]

Please guys you're scaring the children

['Card]

I don't think it would have been inevitable that a mid-80's NATO versus Warsaw Pact version of WW3 would have gone nuclear. I can imagine a few scenarios where it probably wouldn't have happened.

Let's say, for example, that the Soviets roll into West Germany. If it's a surprise invasion, they breakthrough quickly, and get anywhere near France, then NATO starts popping nukes. If NATO stops the Soviets and counter-invades, then Russia starts popping nukes. But if NATO stops the Soviets in West Germany and then holds their ground, I don't think either side would have gone nuclear.

But back to the original question about sea lanes... to be honest, I don't think it would have mattered much simply because I don't think land warfare in Europe would have lasted long enough for it to become an issue. If it ended up being a protracted war somehow, then I think NATO could have kept shipping lanes open pretty well.

The Soviet surface fleet was never a real threat once it got outside of the protective umbrella of Soviet land-based airpower. They might have been able to make it hard to ship across the North Atlantic, but ports in France, Spain, Portugal and Italy would all have been open to NATO and so the North Atlantic wouldn't have been as critical as it was in WW2.

As for the Soviet sub fleet - they had a lot of attack subs, and the ones they had were pretty good, but they weren't really designed or intended to interdict shipping the way the U-boats were. The primary mission of attack subs on both sides was to hunt enemy Boomers (ballistic missile subs) or the enemy's surface fleet. I don't think it's likely that either side would have risked a multi-billion dollar submarine to take out some freighter that may well be full of toilet paper.

[SgtMuhammed]

You stop the supply of toilet paper and you have an effect on morale. If you kill the supplies then the best military in the world becomes as effective as a Boy Scout troop. The Uboats didn't only sink ships with advanced weaponry, lots of grain and butter found its way to the bottom of the sea.

Soviet and American subs were designed to kill targets, period. Anything that helps them against enemy boomers will help them against an enemy convoy. The F15 was specifically designed to shoot down enemy fighters but that didn't stop them from having it drop bombs.