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. The B-59 finally emerged, surrounded by U.S. Witness accounts report that Arkhipov single-handedly stonewalled the nuclear torpedo launch, convincing Savitsky to surface and await further orders from Moscow. 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. This would normally have been all that’s required to initiate a chain of events likely culminating in a third world war. The ship’s political officer, Ivan Maslennikov, gave his consent. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.ĭespite 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. 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. Navy set out to hunt the four Soviet submarines, unaware that they could be carrying nuclear payloads. The anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces of the U.S. These vessels were dispatched to the Cuban port of Mariel at the beginning of October, to provide the Castro regime with a nuclear-armed missile submarine deterrent against a prospective US invasion.Īll 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 blockade created a steel ring around four diesel-electric Foxtrot-class submarines- the B-4, B-36, B-130, and B-59, each armed with one nuclear-capable T-5 torpedo and boasting a total capacity of 22 torpedoes spread across 10 tubes.
0 kommentar(er)
