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Regulus I Cruise Missile

A Regulus I cruise missile onboard the USS Macon (CA-132) during operations in the Mediterranean Sea in 1956, the year before the ship visited Copenhagen. The Regulus I carried a 40 kiloton W5 warhead or, from 1958, a 2 megaton W27 warhead. The visit of the USS Macon in 1957 was the first time naval nuclear weapons entered a Danish port.    U.S. Navy

The first nuclear visit took place only a new months after Danish prime minister H. C. Hansen declared that Denmark would not accept nuclear weapons on its territory. The warship was the USS Macon (CA-132), a cruiser equipped with the Regulus nuclear cruise missile. The Danish policy statement at the time did not explicitly mention nuclear weapons on visiting warships, but is though to have been a general ban against nuclear weapons on all parts of the territory - including harbors and territorial waters. The USS Macon signaled the coming on a new era of widespread deployment of nuclear weapons on warships. While sailing from Scotland enroute to Denmark, the ship briefly sailed north into the Norwegian Sea north of the Arctic Circle where it conducted a simulated attack with a nuclear-armed Regulus missile. A week later the USS Macon arrived in Copenhagen for a ten-day courtesy visit.

The ASROC (anti-submarine rocket) and the Terrier anti-aircraft missile were by far the two most frequent visitors to Denmark, reflecting the extraordinarily widespread deployment of these systems in the U.S. Navy during the Cold War. Anti-submarine aircraft carriers with nuclear depth charges visited until 1972 but discontinued after that as U.S. Navy began phasing out these smaller carriers (the United Kingdom retained its anti-submarine aircraft carriers and continued nuclear port visits to Denmark until 1990). The ASTOR nuclear torpedo visited onboard a limited number of submarines until the weapon system was retired in 1978. The Tomahawk cruise missile arrived in 1985 onboard the USS Iowa (BB-61) but at that time only in a conventional version. The first nuclear Tomahawk arrived in 1988 onboard the USS Spruance.

The nuclear "fingerprint" on the individual ships vary, but except for the amphibious landing ships and fuel ships, all the warships listed in the table below underwent extensive nuclear weapons training and passed vigorous inspections to become certified to carry and launch nuclear weapons. Bringing a nuclear-capable ship up to the proficiency required to be allowed to actually carry the nuclear weapons was an expensive and time consuming process that was normally only spend on ships that were assigned missions with nuclear weapons in accordance with the war plans. According to retired U.S. navy officials that were in charge of planning nuclear operations or commanded nuclear-armed ships themselves, warships were rarely brought through the nuclear certification process unless they also carried the nuclear weapons.

USS Intrepid (CVS-11)

The USS Intrepid (CVS-11) underway. The visit of the nuclear-armed anti-submarine aircraft carrier is one of the best documented cases of a U.S. Navy ship bringing nuclear weapons into a Danish port in violation of Danish non-nuclear policy.       U.S. Navy

Of the many ships listed in the table, one of the most solid cases of documented violation of Denmark's nuclear prohibition probably is the visits by the USS Intrepid (CVS-11) to Copenhagen in 1971 and 1972. Not only is the nuclear fingerprint extensive, but the documents show without doubt how the ship offloaded nuclear weapons following the trip to Northern Europe and Denmark. This case is particularly troublesome for the Danish government and the current official assessment of the integrity of Denmark's non-nuclear policy, because it occurred after 1968, the year that recent Danish governments insist that the United States began to abide by Denmark's non-nuclear policy. (Detailed description of the USS Intrepid case)

The research also cleared a few port visits of bringing nuclear weapons in. One of these was the USS Iowa (BB-61) which visited Copenhagen and Århus in 1985. The visits triggered widespread protests in Denmark against the ship's alleged nuclear armament. Although the ship did carry conventional Tomahawks at the time of the visits, however, the available documents reveal that integration of the nuclear version had not been completed and the USS Iowa had not been certified to carry nuclear weapons. Immediately upon arriving back in the United States, however, preparations began for nuclear certification, and in October 1986 the USS Iowa conducted its first test launch of a nuclear Tomahawk. The ship returned to Denmark with nuclear weapons in 1989.

Amphibious ships are listed in the table with "(transport)" capability because they had a capability to transport nuclear weapons but are are not thought to have done so in peacetime under normal circumstances. In some cases, however, individual amphibious ships with nuclear transport capability underwent inspections and passed nuclear certification around the time of deploying to the North Atlantic. This suggests that their deployment may have involved nuclear operations. One example of this is the USS Austin (LPD-4) which prior to its deployment for the Teamwork 76 exercise in the North Atlantic in 1976 (and port visits to Denmark and Norway) underwent three nuclear weapons inspections. The last inspection, a Nuclear Weapons Acceptance Inspection (NWAI), was held six months prior to it departure from Norfolk, Virginia.

Another example is USS Guadalcanal (LPD-7) which in the fall of 1976 arrived in Esbjerg for operations Teamwork 76 and Bonded Item 76. Prior to the visit the ship passed a Nuclear Weapons Acceptance Inspection (NWAI) in September 1975, and only two months after returning to the United States the USS Guadalcanal passed a Navy Technical Proficiency Inspection commenced (NTPI) where it "demonstrated her ability to safely conduct all evolutions concerned with nuclear weapons." Again in 1982, in preparation for operation Northern Wedding 82 and Bold Guard 82, the ship received another nuclear weapons inspector visit and conducted nuclear weapons training before dropping anchor off Oksbøl on the Danish west coast.

As the U.S. Navy began a unilateral withdrawal of the Terrier and ASROC weapon systems in the late 1980s, the number of nuclear-capable warships arriving in Danish ports declined rapidly. For example, when the USS Mahan (DDG-42) visited Copenhagen in August 1989, the ship had been denuclearized. Then, in October 1991, U.S. President George Bush announced his decision to withdraw all remaining non-strategic naval nuclear weapons from ships and submarines. The presidential initiative ended the deployment of nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles on escort ships and gravity bombs on aircraft carriers. The offload was completed in July 1992 but for the next two years the ships retained a capability to reload the weapons if ordered to do so. Yet in September 1994, the Clinton administration's Nuclear Posture Review decided to remove the capability to carry nuclear weapons from all surface ships.

» Profiles of selected nuclear-capable warships visiting Denmark.
» The 1988 "Port Visit Election."

 

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