Hot Suez 1956

Martes said:
Buzzing the carriers and threatening military action comes very close to "shoot its allies" already.
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And Ike regretted doing it and had to work to repair the damage it caused. Nuclear sharing in 1958 was in part to repair the damage done by the US at Suez.

The minute the US actually fires a shot NATO is dead and the US is immediately expelled from the UK and France.
 
Rule of cool said:
The minute the US actually fires a shot NATO is dead and the US is immediately expelled from the UK and France.
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I suppose everyone understood it. It was indeed a very narrow edge to walk for both sides. What I want is to explore possible escalation scenarios, where willingly or not, things go under the bus, and what the sides can do about it. The real participants likely should've done the same, to some extent.

"US actually fires a shot -> immediately expelled from the UK and France"

Doesn't really sound a working sequence, if you think of it. If Washington is the one deciding to go hot, the US forces in Europe would receive very different orders. BTW, does any one know what where their standing orders for such case historically? There should've been something.
 
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Rule of cool said:
Compared to what? Conquer Britain and France with a few air force units?
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Close the bases, entrench, threaten to use nukes, wait for reinforcements, at the very least.

There ought to be contingency plans. It all should be documented somewhere.

When Pentagon gave the orders to buzz the British carriers, some kind of orders to the American bases should've already been issued. Because one shot back - and the soil they are on turns hostile.
 
Martes said:
Close the bases, entrench, threaten to use nukes, wait for reinforcements, at the very least.

There ought to be contingency plans. It all should be documented somewhere.

When Pentagon gave the orders to buzz the British carriers, some kind of orders to the American bases should've already been issued. Because one shot back - and the soil they are on turns hostile.
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More likely that the US would want to contain the situation as much as possible, rather than start ww3 with its closest allies.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I suspect that those orders would still be classified.
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70 years on? Is there anything still classified from that period?

But if they are and if they actively don't want anybody to know what was there, it doesn't really bode well for the "US would want to contain the situation as much as possible" notion, does it now.
 
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Martes said:
70 years on? Is there anything still classified from that period?
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Generally not, but specific details can still be.


Martes said:
But if they are and if they actively don't want anybody to know what was there, it doesn't really bode well for the "US would want to contain the situation as much as possible" notion, does it now.
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I mean, the US still does store weapons there, so the procedures are going to be similar, if not minimally-changed to match modern threats.
 
I think it's very difficult to make an alternative history scenario here for one reason:
The British and French actions in the Suez Crisis were not an A or B choice with minor connection to their history before and after the event.

Let's set the end of WW2 as a point before the Suez Crisis. Though any point is equally valid.
Then set 2026 as the point after. Both are just comfortable illustrative points.

The trend between these points is the gradual reduction of British and French military power and overall influence.
If in 1956 it took the US to get UK and France to back down, in 2023 both nations were almost entirely passive as the Suez was yet again closed by Iran.
This time the American messaging was opposite to 1956 - Go protect your trade, your interests, your assets, rearm, deploy.

Egyptian attempts to blockade the Red Sea are not isolated to 1956. It happened in 1949, then 1956, 1967, and 1973.

Hypothetically, had Israel and Egypt not reached a peace accord, it could keep happening to this day.

The reality is therefore that UK+France had to maintain constant presence and such that is overwhelming against Egyptian and Iranian (and other hypotheticals) attempts at blocking transit, over the course of decades and to this day.
But even if they had gone all in and subdued Egypt then, future blockades would not be prevented or thwarted.
Nothing would change in the grand scheme of things.

The one factor that could make a difference is if UK+France went all in and later Israel would opt against its "Land For Peace" initiative.
It should be fairly obvious that the "Land For Peace" had given away nearly all of Israel's strategic depth and it could be reasonably argued that a peace deal is not worth this concession.
A conflict that sets Israel's western border to the west of the Suez Canal, up to Israel's advance late in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, would de facto allow western nations like UK and France to ensure safety in the Suez Canal at much lower expenditure and slimmer deployments, if at all.
At least until the threat emerges at the Horn of Africa, which it does not solve.
 
Big_Zukini said:
I think it's very difficult to make an alternative history scenario here for one reason:
The British and French actions in the Suez Crisis were not an A or B choice with minor connection to their history before and after the event.
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Yes... and no.

It is, of course, interesting to consider Churchill winning his last election, but it would be a different scenario altogether.

I my perception, 1956 point was a unique and truly last chance for both France and UK to save what remained of their dying empires. It's not the Red Sea as it is, it's power projection and global posture in relation to any crisis, anywhere. And Operation Musketeer was a first step in that direction, meaning they at some level realized this, and realized what is at stake.

Looking from a perspective of naval planning, British programmes pre-1956 were different in scope and scale (how practicable they were, it's completely another question) than afterwards, despite occasional attempt to get back. But then it was too late.

When, under US pressure, they backed off the other step, that was the end of the old European empires. It would've been a difficult and costly step, and the whole process required determination and persistence, yet it was still apparently possible, and that's what I intended to explore.
 
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Caryina2642 said:
Not really Churchill just needs to be in better health and not resign in 1955, for this to happen
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Ah, yes. Missed that somehow.

Then - what do we know about his latest attitude towards possible conflict of interest with the US?

Has he advised anything to Eden during the crisis?
 
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IRL. Lest not forget Churchill although Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, was very pro US. and was himself of mixed English and American parentage. He had a close relationship with Roosevelt (Atlantic Charter, Europe First) and worked well with Truman. Eisenhower however distrusted him and was seen as 'old guard' and a block to progressive conservatism. When the coalition of France, Britain, and Israel attacked Egypt. Concerned about the economic and political impacts of the invasion, Eisenhower prior warned the three states against any such action. When the attack subsequently took place, the US. used heavy financial and diplomatic pressures to force a withdrawal. In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower announced the Eisenhower Doctrine, under which any country in the Middle East could request American economic assistance or aid from American military forces.
 
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TsrJoe said:
When the coalition of France, Britain, and Israel attacked Egypt. Concerned about the economic and political impacts of the invasion, Eisenhower prior warned the three states against any such action. When the attack subsequently took place, the US. used heavy financial and diplomatic pressures to force a withdrawal. In the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower announced the Eisenhower Doctrine, under which any country in the Middle East could request American economic assistance or aid from American military forces.
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The American approach was misguided.
Egypt made the move to not only nationalize the canal, but to also blockade the Red Sea.
That is a hostile unilateral step. Basic geopolitics dictate that there is some response, otherwise a new status quo is formed.
This was a power struggle between the 1st and 2nd world, and ironically it was the British and French who responded. A "balanced approach", what we usually call "appeasement", would not yield good results. It never does.
And the US only saw Israel as a viable proxy against the USSR and its clients much later on, at the end of the Yom Kippur War, which was 2 Suez-related wars and almost 20 years later.
 
Big_Zukini said:
This was a power struggle between the 1st and 2nd world, and ironically it was the British and French who responded.
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Bluntly, it was an unforced error by the United States.

Between the 1954-1955 arms sales (it seems that Nasser wanted to buy from the US, but it wouldn't sell) and the Aswan Dam financing, there was the potential there for a US-aligned Egypt and a totally different geopolitical context when the canal is (probably inevitably) nationalised.
 
Yellow Palace said:
Bluntly, it was an unforced error by the United States.
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More like a stupid error by the US, economic threats on its 2 largest allies for interfering against a nation that was taking soviet aid, that was threating there national interests. Imagine if it was the other way around with the Panama Canal
 
C
Martes said:
70 years on? Is there anything still classified from that period?

But if they are and if they actively don't want anybody to know what was there, it doesn't really bode well for the "US would want to contain the situation as much as possible" notion, does it now.
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Considering that at the same time, such actions taken by the UK/France could be seen as aiding the Soviet union, there were definite plans by the security forces to stymy such conduct. No way could any government get away with something that could arguably be considered treason be allowed.

Heads would not only roll they would Rock and Roll.
 
Caryina2642 said:
More like a stupid error by the US, economic threats on its 2 largest allies for interfering against a nation that was taking soviet aid, that was threating there national interests. Imagine if it was the other way around with the Panama Canal
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By the time of the invasion the US had only bad options. Letting the invasion go ahead would result in serious embarrasment as the UK and France make a right mess of Egypt - they were hoping for a 'palace coup' against Nasser which would probably not occur - as well as the likelihood of (at a minimum) increased Soviet influence in the Middle East, if not outright Soviet intervention. Added to which is that an invasion with US tacit approval would give the Soviet Union a freer hand in Hungary.

Also, and disregarding the Cold War angle, the US also had a longstanding goal of weakening European colonial interests. Taking the UK and France down a peg or two while 'encouraging' them to focus more on European security and allowing American companies into greater self-determination of their colonies was no bad thing.
Martes said:
Oh, how would I like to see those plans. )
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In broad handfuls, the plans for securing nuclear weapons will amount to 'Delay as long as possible and wait for the cavalry. If the cavalry doesn't arrive in time, destroy the weapons.'

Precise details of how to delay, what 'in time' looks like, and how to destroy the weapons will of course be classified. But that's the general shape of things.
 
If Eden hadn't of been cranked up on uppers and downers then the whole episode need not have happened (France may have gone it alone in cahoots with Israel, but so be it).
Plus Eden was stuck in some weird time warp, believing that he was living in 1938 again - he wasn't.
 
Hood said:
Plus Eden was stuck in some weird time warp, believing that he was living in 1938 again - he wasn't.
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Martes said:
1956 point was a unique and truly last chance for both France and UK to save what remained of their dying empires. It's not the Red Sea as it is, it's power projection and global posture in relation to any crisis, anywhere.
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Yellow Palace said:
US also had a longstanding goal of weakening European colonial interests.
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We are looking for ways to save the empire (and the navy with it), not to resign from it voluntarily and hand the wheel to the Americans. That was done IRL anyway.
 
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Martes said:
We are looking for ways to save the empire (and the navy with it), not to resign from it voluntarily and hand the wheel to the Americans. That was done IRL anyway.
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That wasn't the question though - the question was what would happen if the Anglo-French forces attempted to engage the US. Which would be 'lots of people die, the empires crumble even faster'.

Saving the Empire(s) is almost certainly impossible - the economic and political environment that created them no longer existed, and the European imperial powers were massively overmatched militarily and diplomatically by the land empires superpowers, both of which were ideologically committed to ending European colonial empires.

The UK finding a way to preserve a global presence, along with both the economy and the military power to support it is probably possible, but the route to get there isn't through a humiliation at the hands of one or both superpowers.
 
Thinking about it, from 1954 to 1962 France used a shit ton of US planes for COIN in Algeria - T-6, T-28, P-47, Skyraider. Had Suez soured the relationship with Uncle Sam, I suppose France could have kissed those COIN planes goodbye, also their spares.

148 T-28A airframes modified in France (1959) to make the T-28S Fennec COIN model
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France could certainly build their own CAS / COIN planes and actually had a long list of prototypes and also converted types like the SIPA and Morane Saulnier trainers. But all this was found to be far more expensive than second-hand, plentiful WWII and Korea US airplane.
 
Yellow Palace said:
That wasn't the question though - the question was what would happen if the Anglo-French forces attempted to engage the US.
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It did imply "how (and was there a way) to do it successfully". :)

Yellow Palace said:
the route to get there isn't through a humiliation at the hands of one or both superpowers.
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That's what was there IRL, the humiliation part.

My point was that during Suez UK+France had - possibly - a chance to salvage their situation by themselves. Maybe. Post-Suez it could be done only by submitting to the other side.
 
Yellow Palace said:
Saving the Empire(s) is almost certainly impossible - the economic and political environment that created them no longer existed, and the European imperial powers were massively overmatched militarily and diplomatically by the land empires superpowers, both of which were ideologically committed to ending European colonial empires.
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This is true, once railways gave huge continents the means to exploit their interiors the day of the middle sized power with an empire were numbered. The Question of the World Wars was basically if there were going to be 2 or 3 continental superpowers, and their submarines showed the great vulnerability of the empire as a too great a proportion of power.

Yellow Palace said:
The UK finding a way to preserve a global presence, along with both the economy and the military power to support it is probably possible, but the route to get there isn't through a humiliation at the hands of one or both superpowers.
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This is also true, hence the constant stream of threads about British gear looking for the neat trick to keep her elevated position in the world.
 
And that some want those scenarios to be technically feasible doesn't make things easier. :)

But let's get back to the original topic.

As I see it, we discuss two things - policy decisions and military options.

The policy decision - Operation Musketeer - has already been taken. It was a first step towards reasserting imperial power, and military planning had, from professional standpoint, to go at least one step further.

Military options in this case tend to include rather crazy scenarios and no less crazy possible solutions, that the military nevertheless is prepared to carry out - quite like Thatcher was presented with a plan of a blockade of Argentine's coast and, if I am not mistaken, possibilities of nuclear strikes. It was then her, again, policy decision not to act on those options.

What I therefore would want to know, what were and what could've been options that the Admiralty, RAF and other branches of British armed forces have in fact presented to Eden when America began to stir into direction of direct confrontation, and what they could present as possibilities of counter-action. Same goes for France, but I know much less about their inner workings, alas.
 
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M: maybe we have taken this as far as we need. In 1956 UK still had conscription, so Ministers could not send young men in harm's way without solid consensus from mothers. They accepted Korea as necessary to stop USSR+PRC way over there before they tried again, closer to home/our cousins in Oz. A nutter in a sandpit...no, but Ministers expected it all to be over quite painlessly. Escalating to shoot at Americans...! No!
 
Martes said:
What I therefore would want to know, what were and what could've been options that the Admiralty, RAF and other branches of British armed forces have in fact presented to Eden when America began to stir into direction of direct confrontation, and what they could present as possibilities of counter-action.
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I suggest you head to the National Archives at Kew - no less than 365 files there on Operational Musketeer are open, including teleprinter messages, operational orders and planning from all three Services, even studies of implications of going ahead with the operation.
Only one file is showing as retained - and that pertains to Egyptian subversive activities in Libya.

Plus there are plenty of academic books on the subject.
Plus there is this US account: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/21078-doc-5-cna-suez-1956
PDF pages 76 onwards are probably the most relevant to this topic.
From this it seems that the Sixth Fleet itself was doing its own job, perhaps unintentionally hampering Anglo-French operations but also caught up without clear orders about what to do, attempting to deter everyone. Dulles and Burke were more gung-ho in their assessment that they could start a shooting war against the British/French and Israeli forces but there was little rational thought behind that.

All the political players on all sides acted irrationally throughout the whole affair and it's perhaps a miracle that things didn't get out of hand.

A hot US/UK/French confrontation would not have saved any face on influence but rather would have destroyed NATO, cooperation in intelligence and in the eyes of the unaligned world they would have all looked like chumps. I don't even want the think about the implications for West Germany and the other European nations who might have turned their back on the US with Soviet soft and hard power expansionism reigning unchecked.
 
alertken said:
Escalating to shoot at Americans...! No!
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Hood said:
Dulles and Burke were more gung-ho in their assessment that they could start a shooting war against the British/French
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It appears to be not exactly solely British choice here.

Hood said:
All the political players on all sides acted irrationally throughout the whole affair and it's perhaps a miracle that things didn't get out of hand.
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And it's the ways it could get out of hand that are the topic of the thread.

Hood said:
A hot US/UK/French confrontation would not have saved any face on influence but rather would have destroyed NATO
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I may be mistaken, but I have a distinct feeling that NATO was much less revered in 1956 than it cemented afterwards (maybe in part precisely thanks to it's survival of the crisis) or in hindsight.

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Thank you for the links, but if anybody has any additional information, it would be of course welcome.
 
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