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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsvasili arkhipov--the man who averted WWIII
(as we observe the 50th anniversary of that near -disaster, this is a man about whom we have heard practically nothing, but to whom we apparently owe a great debt)
Vasili Arkhipov
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов (30 January 1926 19 August 1998) was a Soviet naval officer. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo and therefore a possible nuclear war. His story is to this day unknown to the wider public, although some believe that, as Thomas Blanton (then director of the National Security Archive) expressed it in 2002, "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."[1]
. . . . .
In July 1961 Arkhipov was appointed deputy commander or executive officer of the new Hotel-class ballistic missile submarine K-19.[2] He backed Captain Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev during the potential mutiny and received a dose of radiation after the accident.[citation needed] This incident is depicted in the American film K-19: The Widowmaker.
Involvement in Cuban Missile Crisis
On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph trapped the diesel-powered nuclear-armed Soviet The template Sclass2 is being considered for deletion. Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 near Cuba and started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. There had been no contact from Moscow for a number of days and, although the submarine's crew had earlier been picking up US civilian radio broadcasts, once B-59 began attempting to hide from its US navy pursuers, it was too deep to monitor any radio traffic, so those on board did not know if war had broken out.[4]. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, wanted to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo.[5]
Three officers on board the submarine Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the second-in-command Arkhipov were authorized to launch the torpedo if agreeing unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch.[6] Although Arkhipov was only second-in-command of submarine B-59, he was actually Commander of the flotilla of submarines including B-4, B-36, and B-130 and of equal rank to Captain Savitsky. Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. This presumably averted the nuclear warfare which would have ensued had the torpedo been fired.[7] The submarine's batteries had run very low and the air-conditioning had failed, so it was forced to surface amidst its US pursuers and head home.[8] Washington's message that practice depth charges were being used to signal the submarines to surface never reached B-59, and Moscow claims they have no record of receiving it either.
Aftermath
When discussing the Cuban missile crisis in 2002, Robert McNamara stated that we came "very close" to nuclear war, "closer than we knew at the time."[9]
. . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Maybe, they can get Denzil Washington to play him in the film version.
burrowowl
(17,648 posts)renate
(13,776 posts)I'd never heard of this. How incredible that one man stood between the future of the Earth and nuclear annihilation. And at such a fraught time... it's truly amazing that WWIII didn't start. That is absolutely jawdropping.
If it weren't for him, another Russian wouldn't have had the opportunity to avert nuclear war. I heard about this guy in a lecture by Helen Caldicott that scared the pants off me, even though I don't remember the story she surely must have told about Savitsky in that same lecture:
On September 26, 1983 (Stanislov Petrov) was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early warning system when the system reported a missile being launched from the United States. Petrov judged that the report was a false alarm. This decision may have prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its Western allies. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had malfunctioned.
snip
Had Petrov reported incoming American missiles, his superiors might have launched an assault against the United States, precipitating a corresponding nuclear response from the United States. Petrov declared the system's indications a false alarm. Later, it was apparent that he was right: no missiles were approaching and the computer detection system was malfunctioning. It was subsequently determined that the false alarms had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
And we knew nothing about either of these incidents. Without our even being aware of how incredibly lucky we were, every day since October 1962, and since September 1983, has been gravy.
Here's a picture of the second Russian guy we owe our lives to:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/09/dayintech_0926
Turns out there's a movie about him--The Man Who Saved the World--coming out this month. Cool!
niyad
(113,556 posts)you are so correct, every day since oct 62 has been gravy. and we STILL have to listen to fools blithely talking about nuclear war.
I have heard Dr. Caldicott speak, and I remember the line "if there is a nuclear war, this will be the first time that the living envy the dead"
back during the crisis, I was reading a book called 'triumph", about the third war. at the end, having read pages and pages of the horror of such a war, the main characters are rescued. the leader is talking to the new zealand naval officer whose team rescued them, and says, "by the way, who won the war?" the officer replied "we did. .not that it matters" it was a statement that has stayed with me ever since, as I listen to the warhawks, the chickenhawks, and the drumbeat for war.
Selatius
(20,441 posts)If Kennedy had bowed to the hawks in the Pentagon and his cabinet to launch a ground invasion of Cuba to get rid of the ballistic missile launch sites that the Soviet Union was setting up, Castro likely would've used tactical nukes on invading US forces if such an event came to pass. The Cuban Missile Crisis arose over the presence of launch sites for strategic missiles that could carry strategic thermonuclear warheads. It wasn't over the presence of tactical warheads that were already on the island. That bit of information didn't come out into the open until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, where the Soviet archives were opened up.
A lot of things could've gone wrong, and any one of them could've triggered a nuclear confrontation.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)the US ships offshore. I recall that fact came out in 1995, as did this story about High Noon aboard a Soviet Hotel Class missile sub. "Crimson Tide", a movie with Gene Hackman and Denzil Washington released the same year is loosely based on it.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)OldDem2012
(3,526 posts)...but I never realized how tense it had gotten until much later.
Good article.
vgaliouk
(1 post)GALYUK IS THE LAST NAME...
my name is VLADISLAV Alexandrovich GALYUK and that is my grandfather muther f'ers!
The CIA had to change that name for Americans...
www.vladag.com
Cheers!
my American name is - Vladislav Galiouk no middle name...
transmuted thru green cards and French translation
my BIRTH name -> Vladislav Alexandrovich Galyuk and that is my Grandpa Vasa!
God Bless!!!
niyad
(113,556 posts)I have been researching Vasili Arkhipov lately for a post and was blown away by his story. If ever there was a single act in history that has saved countless lives, it is this man's refusal to launch his subs nuclear torpedo. There is an excellent documentary about the man which you can find here (http://www.top10zen.com/10-amazing-courageous-people-in-history-736). Truly inspiring!