NATO: Operation Mainbrace

The enemy armies from the east have overrun the plains of Western Germany and are pouring into Denmark. General Ridgway’s armies are holding along the Kiel Canal, but the enemy has already penetrated northern Norway and is threatening to send an amphibious landing force around the North Cape.

This is the fictitious situation set for Operation Mainbrace, NATO’s first big naval exercise. Mainbrace was conceived last year by General Eisenhower to convince NATO’s Scandinavian members (Norway and Denmark) that their lands can be defended in the event of war with Russia. One morning last week, 85 men-of-war (including the U.S. carriers Midway, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wasp, the Royal Navy carrier Eagle and battleship Vanguard) steamed in stately grey lines out of the Firth of Clyde. On the F.D.R.’s bridge, Skipper George W. Anderson made an announcement: “Any man who spots a periscope before it attacks gets special liberty to London.”

When the fleet reached open waters, it formed quickly into battle array. British ships went one way, U.S. ships the other, until the two had formed into separate task forces like two huge targets on the water, the carriers in the bull’s-eyes of each. Side by side the two forces steamed along, code flags dipping and bobbing, signal lights blinking. One problem of the exercise was to develop a “joint language of command” understandable by both tars and bluejackets. On Mainbrace, U.S. signalmen no longer reported signal pennants “two-blocked” when they are hauled to the end of the yard. Instead they used the British term “close-up.” In return, the Royal Navy has agreed to spell words like “harbour” without the u.

The first clash with the “enemy” (ten submarines and one cruiser) brought on an intra-fleet rhubarb. A Russian sub (H.M.S. Taciturn) got through the destroyer screen and promptly claimed hits on four carriers, but the umpires (on the surface ships) ruled her sunk. Such differences will be resolved when the two-week exercise is finished and the commanders gather in Oslo for a review. Meanwhile, “sunken” carriers and subs fight on.

Other unrealities characterize Main-brace. Neither side, for instance, has made any effort to simulate atomic attack. Nevertheless, the exercise will provide practical experience for NATO’s men and officers in combined operations, help its navies to standardize their systems of gunnery, supply, refueling.

As the operation continues, carrier planes will strike at Bodo in northern Norway to drive the enemy back. Then the fleet will turn south to hit the aggressors near the Kiel Canal, while U.S. marines establish a beachhead in Denmark. By the time the two-week exercise is done, the imaginary enemy will inevitably have been defeated. The real one will have had, at least, a good show of strength.