I have blogged about some close calls where we almost destroyed our civilization with nuclear weapons. Since the 1950s, there have been times when World War III was moments away but somehow we managed to survive. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, a U.S. picket ship enforcing the naval blockade of Cuba observed a Russian ship crossing the line that the U.S. had set. While his orders were to notify Naval command that the blockade had been broken which might have resulted in an escalation to nuclear war, he delayed taking action because he thought that the Russian ship might have navigation problems and this ultimately turned out to be true as the Russian ship turned and sail out of the prohibited area. It turns out that that was not the only incident in the Cuban Missile Crisis that brought us to the brink of war.
Vasili Arkhipov was an officer in the Soviet navy. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was second in command of the B-59, a diesel-powered sub that was armed with nuclear torpedoes. The B-59 was stationed in the Caribbean Sea near Cuba. In addition to being second in command of the B-59, Arkhipov was in charge of the entire flotilla of submarines that the B-59 was part of. The flotilla also included the B-4, the B-36 and the B-130. This gave him equal rank with the Captain of the B-59.
On October 27 of 1962, eleven U.S. Navy destroyers and the USS Randolph, an aircraft carrier were on patrol near Cuba but outside the area of the blockade. The U.S. shipped detected the submerged B-59 and decided to bring it to the surface even though it was in international waters. They began dropping weak depth charges used for practice in an effort to force it to surface.
Unlike the other submarines in the group, the B-59 required the cooperation of three command officers in order to fire the nuclear torpedoes. The Captain, the political officer and the second in command. If any of these three disagreed with the decision to fire the submarine would not fire. In addition to his rank, Arkhipov was highly respected because he had taken heroic action the year before when a nuclear accident aboard a Soviet submarine released radiation and endangered the crew. The other two men were ready to launch the nuclear torpedoes at the U.S. ships but Arkhipov objected and the three argued. The sub had been out of contact with Soviet Naval command in Moscow for some time and, for all they knew, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in a shooting war.
Eventually, Arkhipov convinced the Captain to bring the B-59 to the surface and try to establish contact with Moscow. With its batteries low on power and the air-conditioning system failing, the B-59 sailed back to base. The U.S. Navy claims that they informed the B-59 that they were only using practice depth charges to signal the B-59 but the officers of the B-59 deny that they received that information.
If U.S. ships had been destroyed by Soviet nuclear torpedoes close to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is highly probable that nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would have followed and it would have been the end of our civilization. How fascinating that it was the professionalism and humanity of single officers on both sides of the international dispute who each, in their own way and against pressure and orders from their own command structures, refused to take the action that could have destroyed our world.
Vasili Arkhipov:
