The Unknown Story of Vasily Arkhipov, the Man Who Saved the World From a Nuclear War in 1962.
Alone, he prevented the USSR from attacking the United States during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
When I mention the name Vasily Arkhipov, few people will be able to tell me who he is and what he did. At most, you will say that he was probably a Russian or a Soviet. But you won't know much more than that, because history books rarely mention Vasily Arkhipov.
And yet, if Vasily Arkhipov had not existed, there is no doubt that the face of the world would have been very different today. Born in 1926 to peasant parents, he climbed the ranks in the Soviet army, which led to his appointment in 1961 as head of the USSR's new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, a certain K-19.
From the very first voyage of the submersible, things went wrong.
A leak is reported: it concerns the cooling system of the nuclear reactor. Panic on board. If no solution is found, we go straight to nuclear fusion. As best they could, the submarine's technical team set up an emergency cooling system to avoid a meltdown.
Unfortunately, the entire crew was exposed to high levels of radiation. In the month following the incident, the members of the technical team die one after the other. This tragedy, which marks Arkhipov for life, will weigh on the continuation of his career, as well as on the capital decisions which he will have to take.
In October 1962, he was appointed captain of a ship.
Vasily Arkhipov was in charge of a flotilla composed of four submarines, including the B-59, in charge of reaching Cuba from Russia. He traveled on board the B-59, of which he was also second in command. This attack submarine is equipped with about twenty torpedoes, including a nuclear one.
Although moving in international waters, the flotilla transgressed the blockade of Cuban waters established by John Fitzgerald Kennedy a few days earlier. The United States had clearly warned that they would use depth charges to force the Russian submarines to the surface.
However, the members of the four submarines did not have this information. The radio contact with Moscow has been broken for several days.
At the end of October, the B-59 was spotted and started to be hit by American grenades. On board the B-59, tensions are high. Everyone was on edge because of the total absence of information. The crew even wonders if war has broken out with America … The high temperature, 37°C, even close to 50°C in some areas, also weighs on the crew.
It is necessary to say that the air conditioning of the B-59 definitively stopped working. Many people fainted because the carbon dioxide level was high. Nothing goes anymore.
On the side of the officers, the hypotheses and the conjectures fuse. Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, commander of the submarine, is convinced that the war between the USSR and the United States has begun, and expresses his desire to launch the nuclear torpedo of the B-59. Target: the USS Randolph, an American aircraft carrier.
But here is the problem: it had been established beforehand that for such a launch to be validated, the decision had to be unanimous within the trio formed by Commander Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and Vasily Arkhipov. The first two are in favor of the use of the torpedo with a nuclear warhead, but the third is opposed.
The conflict raged between Savitsky and Maslennikov on one side and Arkhipov on the other. Aware of the potential consequences of such a move, the latter refused to participate in the decision until an order from Moscow was received.
After a long arm wrestling, he convinced his two opponents to bring the B-59 to the surface to be able to contact the headquarters of the navy. This was a saving decision. Welcomed by an American destroyer at the time of its emergence, the Russian submarine is simply invited to leave the Cuban waters and return to the USSR.
It was only many years later, during a press conference given by Russia in 2002, that the American authorities learned that the B-59 had a torpedo with a nuclear warhead and that it was close to using it.
Only Vasily Arkhipov (who died in 1998 of cancer, probably due to the radiation from the K-19) and a few others knew about this affair which, if it had taken another turn, could have been the first step in a world nuclear war. A war that would have changed the face of the world.
Fun fact to end this little-known story, Vasily Arkhipov inspired several movie characters, including the one played by Liam Neeson in “K-19: The Widowmaker.”
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