GIUK gap

As GIUK gap is in the military naval language, especially NATO, called an imaginary line between Greenland, Iceland and the northern end of the United Kingdom. It is located at the transition between the European North Sea, the Greenland Sea and the northern Atlantic Ocean.

History

The gap provides a strategic bottleneck, the control of which ensures access to the Atlantic. However, the GIUK gap is not an original invention of the Cold War, but the Royal Navy time of its existence, has paid special attention to this strategic fact. This explains the concentration of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow ( Orkney ). The importance of GIUK line in the Royal Navy's strategic concept is the fact that during the Second World War, the respective breakthrough German capital ships of this line - if not stopped - but this could be so pursued as a contact.

Would have had to pass the GIUK - line in a war against NATO if they the SLOC ( Sea Lines Of Communication), the supply routes between the United States and Canada on the one hand and Europe on the other hand, would want to interrupt the fleets of the Warsaw Pact. Conversely, marked the line access of the North Atlantic in the Norwegian Sea and was for the Soviet navy to protect particularly its submarine bases on the Kola Peninsula of importance. During the Cold War, the GIUK line was monitored by NATO, among others, by two stationary radar systems in Iceland and air patrols of the U.S. Navy and at depth by the stationary sonar SOSUS, should track the enemy submarines and enable tracking. Thus was first located by Cape Hatteras in June of 1962, the SOSUS a Soviet submarine during the passage of GIUK line.

Of a similar nature in the military importance were the so-called Fulda Gap in North East Hesse and the BALTAPs ( Baltic Approaches), so the approaches to the Baltic Sea.