It's 1962 and the Cold War is in full swing.
Now, what if I told you that today, in 2022, you owe your life to a relatively unknown Soviet Navy
Officer. But not just you, though, I do as well, and more or less everyone alive today.
I am talking about one of the, if not the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. On October 27,
1962, a Soviet B-59 submarine was trapped under an American fleet and, in their perception,
was under attack by depth charges exploding around them. The submarine had embarked on
a mission from the Soviet Union nearly four weeks earlier to guard Soviet weapon transports to Cuba.
Onboard were 70 crewmen. The three most senior officers were Captain Valentin Savitsky,
the political officer Semonovich Maslennikov and the 2nd Lieutenant Vasily Arkhipov.
The B-59 was a submarine built for Arctic expeditions and was driven by diesel. It
was now stuck underwater near Cuba, in a climate that it wasn't made for.
According to letters from the submarine crew, the inside would often reach temperatures
over 50 degrees celsius with poorly filtered oxygen and mounting pressure from the depths.
All in all, Soviet submarines didn't have the ideal circumstances to make rational decisions.
A US fleet also guarded Cuba. It consisted of the USS Randolph and 11 destroyers. When they detected
unidentified submarines, they received orders to use depth charges to force submarines to the
surface. Now, President John F. Kennedy worried about this practice because the subs could mistake
the depth charges for an actual attack. According to Robert Kennedy, the president's brother, the
depth charges were 'the greatest source of worry for the president.' And, well, President Kennedy
wasn't too wrong to worry about the practice. When the US fleet learned there was an unidentified
submarine sailing beneath them, they put in motion the military protocols to deal with it.
Because there was no way to communicate with the submarine, after a brief deliberation, they began
launching depth charges to try and force it to the surface. Not exactly the most diplomatic move,
because… well [insert video of Operation Wigwam] But it was their only line of communication.
In the B-59, its commanders and crew thought they were under attack when depth charges
exploded around them. The fact the submarine had lost all radio contact with Moscow days before
didn't really help the situation. They never received the message that depth charges would be
used by the US navy to try and establish contact with submarines. The submarine had also listened
to US radio broadcasts, and from those programs, its crew understood that the US knew missiles were
being shipped to Cuba in secret and that Cuba had shot down a US spy plane earlier that day.
So the crew knew of the troubled situation on the surface, and now they were being bombarded with
depth charges. It caused them to dive even further down below to avoid the impact of the charges.
Diving deeper prevented them from listening to the American radio stations. In essence,
the nuclear submarine isolated itself even further while explosions surrounded their vessel.
Taking all things into consideration, two of the submarine's commanders figured the Third World
War had broken out and decided to launch their T-5 nuclear torpedo against the US war fleet. However,
for a nuclear torpedo to be launched, three commanders had to agree to the launch.
And this is where Arkhipov came in. Arkhipov was well-known among Soviet navy
personnel and although formally he was outranked by Savitsky, in practice they were on equal
footing. He thanked his status to an incident that occurred a year beforehand when he was the second
commander on the Soviet K-19 nuclear submarine that suffered a near-meltdown. After the accident,
Arkhipov repaired the reactor, being exposed to much nuclear radiation. Meanwhile, a mutiny broke
out among its crew and was only subdued because Arkhipov openly supported the submarine's captain.
Because of his heroic actions during that incident, he became a respected commander,
at least among navy circles. According to eyewitness accounts,
a heated debate broke out onboard between Savitsky, Maslennikov and Arkhipov.
The latter tried to convince the other commanders that the US fleet would have scored a direct hit
instead of exploding depth charges around them if the war had broken out. Furthermore, it was
the protocol that nuclear missiles could only be used if the Soviet Union was under direct attack
or an attack was imminent. The submarine was incredibly close to launching a nuclear missile
against the US fleet, and only because Arkhipov kept a cool head, he managed to prevent it.
Because the necessary unanimity to use nuclear weapons wasn't achieved, eventually, the
commanders decided to rise to the surface instead. A US destroyer sailed past on the surface, but no
one entered the submarine. Instead, the US war fleet left them alone. This was pretty telling,
because it meant the navy had no idea there was a nuclear warhead on board. Surely, otherwise,
they would have entered or at least relayed this information to their superiors. Instead, nobody,
except the crew of the Soviet submarine, realised how close the world got to all-out nuclear war. If
the missile had been launched, it would have led to a chain effect where the US retaliated, and the
Soviet Union retaliated again, with complete nuclear destruction of the world as a result.
As for Arkhipov, as far as we know, he wasn't punished, but he wasn't lauded either.
On the contrary, superiors were angry with the sub's captains because the US fleet detected
them. Besides that, from what we can tell, the close-call became buried in secret archives.
It didn't become public knowledge until after the fall of the Soviet Union.
A 2002 book written by Russian journalist Alexander Mozgovoi popularised the event,
In its aftermath, Vasily became a commander on his own submarine and eventually commanded an
entire submarine squadron. In 1975 he was promoted to rear admiral and became head
of the Kirov naval academy. He ended his Navy career with the rank of vice admiral.
He died in 1998 at the age of 72, from kidney cancer,
supposedly caused by his exposure to radiation on the K-19 submarine a year before the Cuba Crisis.
Forty years after the Cuba Crisis in 2002, the director of the national security archive,
Thomas Blanton, stated that a man "with the name of Vasily Arkhipov saved the world."
There was another nuclear scare over 20 years later. Because of a faulty detection
system commanding officer, Stanislav Petrov had to determine whether or not
a nuclear strike was launched against the Soviet Union.
His decision not to retaliate that night also saved the entire world from a nuclear war.
If you'd like to know more about that, check out my video about the nuclear close call of 1983.
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