The successful raid on Soviet capital ships in Camh Ranh Bay dashed the hopes of the Soviet Union to open a second front in the Pacific Theatre, as their Vietnamese, North Korean and Chinese allies balked at spilling the blood of their countrymen to help the Soviets save face.

On Christmas day, a week after the sabotage operation in Camh Ranh, the Premier of the Soviet Union accepted a revised proposal from the NATO allies to cease hostilities, and withdraw permanently from Germany, Poland and the Baltic states. In exchange for this, and with a promise to conduct free and fair elections by the Spring of 1986, the Soviet Union was spared from occupation by allied forces.

The fact that World War 3 had come and gone in the space of months with the loss of millions of lives and the toppling of a superpower was a testament to the terrible power of modern machines of war. Ironically, the fact that nuclear weapons were not deployed by either side to sway the outcome, dish out revenge--or clutch a pyrrhic victory from the jaws of defeat at any cost--was also a product of the almost unimaginable power of nuclear weapons and the cementing of the theory of mutually assured destruction.

While the infantry took ground, the pilots dominated the skies and the surface navies projected sea power; the nuclear ballistic missile submarine forces of both superpowers, along with their hunter-killer protectors and predators, were the unseen Sword of Damocles' that underwrote the threat of mutually assured destruction should the conflict ever escalate to nuclear exchange. Some 45 years after the monicker was given to submarine forces, they truly embodied the meaning of The Silent Service.