No. of Recommendations: 4
This is an example of keeping your cool and questioning what seems to be. This happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis - how a nuclear torpedo launch was averted. We should build a monument to Arkhipov in Miami.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/how-1-rus...SNIP...All four vessels were detected, partly as a result of numerous malfunctions sustained from being ordered to travel to Cuba at a breakneck speed of 10 knots, and partly due to ill-advised radio communication practices. The anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces of the U.S. Navy set out to hunt the four Soviet submarines, unaware that they could be carrying nuclear payloads. The ASW was under strict orders not to use anything other than
practice depth charges (PDC), low-powered explosive devices meant to signal to hostile submarine operators that they had been spotted. Soviet high command was alerted to these signals, but subsequent research has shown that this knowledge never trickled down to the four Soviet submarine commanders; indeed, each one of the four captains perceived the PDC detonations as hostile military actions.
Despite the risks inherent in these methods, two of the four submarines were successfully forced to surface and left Cuban waters without a direct confrontation; another stayed submerged for long enough to lose the ASW patrol and return home. But the captain of the B-59, Valentin Savitsky, insisted on calling the ASW’s bluff, refusing to surface in spite of his ship’s depleted battery. After four days of nonstop PDC shelling, internal temperatures had shot up to intolerable levels and crew members were beginning to faint from oxygen deprivation.
Gripped by paranoia and cut off from Moscow, Captain Savitstky concluded that the war had already begun and that the only honorable way out was to fire the B-59’s nuclear warhead at their ASW pursuers:
“We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all – we will not become the shame of the fleet,” he exclaimed to his exhausted crew.The B-52 was already cleared by Moscow to use any force that is deemed necessary, but protocol required all officers aboard the vessel to unanimously approve the decision to deploy nuclear warheads. The ship’s political officer, Ivan Maslennikov, gave his consent. This would normally have been all that’s required to initiate a chain of events likely culminating in a third world war. As it happens, there was a third officer aboard the B-59 on that fateful day: Vasili Arkhipov, second captain of the B-59 and commodore of the entire Cuban submarine flotilla. Witness accounts report that Arkhipov single-handedly stonewalled the nuclear torpedo launch, convincing Savitsky to surface and await further orders from Moscow.
The B-59 finally emerged, surrounded by U.S. warships and helicopters, flying the Soviet flag and demanding that the ASW patrol stop their “provocative actions.” The crew was gaunt and harried, but not defeated– they could perhaps be forgiven for indulging in an obstinate pride, having persisted until the very last moment in the face of hellish living conditions and unrelenting military pressure.
Then there is Arkhipov, who retained his presence of mind in the direst circumstances and refused to follow his colleagues into delirious martyrdom. There is, admittedly, little comfort in the notion that one man’s chance intervention was all that stood in the way of a conflagration that could have spiraled into a global nuclear war. And yet, the world bears a debt of gratitude for his stubborn refusal to succumb to baser instincts; for looking into the abyss, and having the restraint to recoil at what he saw. In that sense, we could use more Arkhipovs.
