GIUK gap

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Location of the GIUK gap

As giuk gap is in the military naval language, especially of NATO , an imaginary line between G rönland , I sland and the north end of the United Kingdom ( UK called). GIUK is an acronym for these land masses. This gap is located at the transition between the European Arctic Ocean , the Greenland Sea and the northern Atlantic Ocean .

Strategic importance

The gap forms a strategic bottleneck whose control ensures access to the Atlantic. The GIUK gap, however, is not an original invention of the Cold War ; rather, the Royal Navy has paid particular attention to this strategic fact throughout its existence. This explains the concentration of the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow ( Orkney ). The importance of the GIUK line in the strategic concept of the Royal Navy is also demonstrated by the fact that during the Second World War the breakthrough of German capital ships on this line - if not stopped - could be followed up as a contact. Such a breakthrough attempt took place in 1941 within the framework of the Rhine Exercise Company , during which there was a battle between several German and British combat ships in the Denmark Strait .

In a war against NATO, the Warsaw Pact fleets would have had to pass the GIUK line if they had wanted to interrupt the SLOC ( S ea L ines O f C ommunication) , the supply routes between the United States and Canada on the one hand and Europe on the other . Conversely, the line marked an entrance from the North Atlantic into the European Arctic Ocean and was therefore important for the Soviet Navy to protect its submarine bases in particular on the Kola Peninsula . During the Cold War, the GIUK line was monitored by NATO, among other things, by two stationary radar systems on Iceland and air patrols of the US Navy as well as at depth by the stationary sonar system SOSUS , which was supposed to track down opposing submarines and enable tracking. For example, in June 1962, SOSUS located a Soviet submarine from Cape Hatteras for the first time in the passage of the GIUK line.

In the course of the reconstruction of the Russian Navy , the GIUK gap is once again gaining high strategic importance, as reports on Russian naval maneuvers showed in 2019.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Joseph A. Crookston: Marine Corps Roles And Missions: A Case For Specialization. In: GlobalSecurity.org. May 6, 1987, accessed November 15, 2008 .
  2. ^ Joseph F. Bouchard: Guarding the Cold War Ramparts. Federation of American Scientists (FAS), 1999, accessed October 22, 2008 .
  3. ↑ Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). In: GlobalSecurity.org. Retrieved October 26, 2008 .
  4. ↑ Thomas Nilsen: Russian subs honing stealth skills in major North Atlantic drill, says Norwegian intel. In: thebarentsobserver.com. The Independent Barents Observer AS, October 29, 2019, accessed December 19, 2019 .