Allied Command Channel

The Command was established in 1952 to defend the sea areas and allied shipping around the English Channel.

In case of war with the Warsaw Pact, United States reinforcements, crucial to defeat a Soviet advance towards the Rhine, would have passed through the English Channel and disembarked mainly in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam.

Therefore, PLYMCHAN had a large number of anti-submarine warships at its disposal, which would operate where Channel and Atlantic Ocean intersect.

PLYMCHAN would have operated alongside the French Navy, which was not integrated into NATO's command structures.

BENECHAN's area of operation comprised a large portion of the southern part of the North Sea and would command the entire Belgian Naval Force as well as the Home Fleet of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

As ACCHAN's other two sub-commands PLYMCHAN (Plymouth Sub-Area Channel Command) and NORECHAN (The Nore Sub-Area Channel Command) defended the direct approaches to the Belgian and Dutch coast via the English channel and the North Sea and as BALTAP's German-Danish Allied Naval Forces Baltic Approaches Command (COMNAVBALTAP) kept the Soviet Baltic Fleet bottled up in the Baltic Sea, the main risk for allied shipping in the BENECHAN area of operations were air and submarine dropped naval mines.

As American reinforcements, crucial to defeat a Soviet advance towards the Rhine, would have disembarked mainly in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam, the Belgians fielded 10 inshore minesweeper to keep the Western Scheldt free of naval mines.

After the end of the Cold War BENECHAN became the Dutch-Belgian bi-national command Admiral Benelux in Den Helder.