The Russian That Saved The World
His name was Vasili Sergeyevich Arkhipov, he was a Soviet Naval officer.
On October of 1962 right in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis the Soviet Submarine Foxtrot type B-59 with nuclear torpedos was spotted near Cuba, eleven US Navy destroyers and one US aircraft carrier surrounded the Soviet submarine and despite being in international waters they started to launch depth charges, so the Soviet submarine dove deeper, by doing so they had no way to communicate with Moscow so the captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch thought that they were already at war with the United States,
so he decided to launch a nuclear torpedo at the aircraft carrier, but the soviet protocol for that to happen is that the three highest ranking officers in the submarine all had to agree in the launch, the capitan and another officer agreed but mr. Arkhipov did not, he said that they needed to be sure they were at war with the US first so he stood by his decision and the nuclear torpedo never was launched. Mr. Arkhipov probably saved the world from a nuclear war that could have been started if that missile had been launched.
Eventually, the submarine had to surface and that’s when they found out that it would have been the worst mistake to have launched the torpedos. The Us navy escorted the submarine as it went back to the Soviet Union, even though Mr. Arkhipov saved the world he was received in Moscow with disgrace for his failure of going undetected by the USA, his superiors did not understand that he alone had saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe, Vasili Sergeyevich Arkhipov died in Kupavna in 1998 of kidney cancer.
The submarine in the following photos is a soviet foxtrot B-59 Submarine that is anchored in San Diego Ca. as a marine museum, it’s exactly like the one in which Mr. Arkhipov was in.