On Thursday 10 April at 6pm, Dr Adam Coombs will consider how the Third Battle of the Atlantic was fought from the air. This lecture will be hosted virtually via Crowdcast.

Early North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) planning for a potential war with the Soviet Union envisioned the Alliance fighting a third iteration of the Battle of the Atlantic. This time around, instead of hunting German U-boats, they would be protecting convoys from Soviet submarines. As the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War demonstrated, surface anti-submarine warfare (ASW) ships alone could not ensure victory. Rather, air power, in the form of maritime air assets (long-range land-based aircraft such as the Avro Shackleton, Canadair CP-107 Argus, Lockheed P-2 Neptune and Bréguet 1150 Atlantic) would be central to NATO’s strategic thinking and operational planning. However, the introduction of first, nuclear propulsion for submarines and then ballistic missile launch capabilities in the late 1950s, swiftly shifted NATO’s strategic planning. By the 1960s many in the Alliance proposed abandoning maritime air completely while others argued for an enhanced role for air power at the expense of carrier based naval aviation.

This lecture will examine firstly how NATO envisioned the role of Maritime air in refighting the Battle of the Atlantic and secondly, how alliance members sought to implement NATO’s planning within their own strategic thinking and forces. Rather than focusing on the United States Air Force (USAF) and Navy (USN), whose actions have been widely discussed, the presentation will cover the experience of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in the development of maritime air doctrine and in procuring and operating ASW aircraft. Both air forces have a long history of cooperation and their experience with maritime aviation further demonstrate how this relationship continued throughout the Cold War. Finally, the lecture will discuss the subsequent debates over the role of maritime air in the age of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and how these questions remain relevant to the global security situation of the present day.

Adam Coombs is the Air Force historian at the Directorate of History and Heritage (DHH) in the Canadian Department of National Defence. Prior to joining DHH, he worked as a government records archivist for five years at Library and Archives Canada. He holds a PhD in history from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (2021). He is responsible for the Maritime Air section of Volume four of the Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force. In addition to work on Cold War era aviation, Adam has also lectured and published on the RCAF in the Arctic, ice hockey, First World War aviation and commemoration. He lives and works in Ottawa, ON. Canada.

Virtual Lecture: Fighting the Third Battle of the Atlantic from the Air