On this day 64 years ago Vasily Arkhipov literally saved the world. During the Cuban missile crisis his submarine was out of communication but being forced to surface by the US. They had to decide whether war has started and if they should launch their nuclear missiles. The captain and political officer wanted to but Vasily Arkhipov was the third votes required and he refused. Eventually he convinced the other and the ship surfaced peacefully.
Had they launched this would have almost certainly escalated to full nuclear exchange. You would think Vasily Arkhipov would be a household name for saving the world but he is basically an historical footnote.
Thank you for sharing. I had never heard of him before and will try to learn as much about him as I can. I doubt this is taught in most US schools at any grade level. I didn’t know that either the US or the Russians has nuclear torpedoes at the time per Vasily Arkhipov - Wikipedia.
Arkhipov, Petrov, surely others and as many Americans who we just have been better at papering over. As a security establishment you keep the cases quiet because you do not want to celebrate an example of NOT following the standing procedure, however right it may have been to do so.
But may there always be in the decision chain a living, feeling, fallible human who can pause and think,”no, wait, that can’t be right…”
The context, since lots of people now living were not alive at the time, was the Cuban missile crisis, where Kennedy and Khrushchev were in a staring contest with the fate of the world at stake, and Khrushchev blinked. Just over a year later, Kennedy would be dead. Now those were interesting times.
Nitpick: they were deciding whether or not to launch nuclear torpedoes. Plenty horrible and likely to lead to an exchange of missiles, but not missiles themselves.