vigil617
US Veteran
Thanks for all your comments here. I found a link on PBS where you can watch the whole thing:
The Man Who Saved the World - Watch the Full Episode | Secrets of the Dead | PBS
I watched a documentary last night, "The Man Who Saved The World" about a nearly catastrophic Cold War incident I had never heard of before. Have you?
It happened at sea, in the Sargasso Sea just outside the exclusion zone around Cuba during the height of the Missile Crisis. The commander of a Soviet diesel-electric sub -- one of four that had sailed for Cuba as part of the planned military build-up, each armed with a nuclear torpedo -- was seconds away from launching against five American destroyers that had identified the submerged sub and were trying to drive it to the surface by sonar pinging and bracketing depth charges.
The sub's batteries -- which required recharging on the ocean's surface -- were nearly dead, and conditions on board were almost unbearable between the heat and the incessant ASW activity of the U.S. Navy ships and planes overhead. It had been insanity by the Soviet government to even have sent that type of sub into potential warfare in warm water anyway, as the diesel electric boats relied on cold ocean waters both for proper mechanical functioning and tactics -- including the ability to hide beneath the thermocline .
But the Soviets' nuke fleet was out of commission in October 1962, having been quarantined after a reactor accident on board the K-19 a few months earlier, when several sailors and officers died from radiation exposure. Amazingly, one who had been on board was now the commander of the four-sub group, and was the only officer on-scene with authority to overrule the sub captain's decision (along with the political officer's) to launch against the Americans, which would almost certainly have provoked a massive nuclear response (promised by President Kennedy if any Soviet nuclear weapons were used against Western Hemisphere targets) that would have triggered MAD (mutually assured destruction) between the US and USSR.
The Soviet commander, known for coolness under pressure, and probably mindful of what he had seen after the reactor casualty on the K-19, overruled the sub captain at the moment when the order was about to be given. Instead, the Soviet captain contacted the US vessels to alert that it was surfacing, and did so, unmolested by the Americans. The Soviet subs then withdrew and returned to their base, apparently to undeserved disdain and contempt by their government and military.
Throughout the ordeal, the Soviets had no radio contact with Moscow, and only learned about what was occurring in the United States and Cuba by listening to radio news reports from US stations, knowing that America had mobilized to Defcon Two and all-out war could break out at any moment.
Only in recent years, apparently, has the story become known -- including by way of an interview of one of the officers on board the sub, who spoke with US intelligence about it. The documentary did a fine job of including portions of the interview, and others with Soviet sailors and officers, as well as some from their US Navy destroyer opponents.
I consider myself relatively well informed, particularly on military subjects, but I had never heard of this incident, or how close the world came to nuclear war that day. There are a number of excellent books about Cold War incidents at sea, including Blind Man's Bluff, which describes several of the most well known. This one, however, was news to me!
By the way, the Soviet commander who "saved the world" died a few years later of kidney cancer, as did several others from the K-19 that had been exposed to radiation. He has now rightly been credited with personally averting one of the closest calls the world has ever known.
The Man Who Saved the World - Watch the Full Episode | Secrets of the Dead | PBS
I watched a documentary last night, "The Man Who Saved The World" about a nearly catastrophic Cold War incident I had never heard of before. Have you?
It happened at sea, in the Sargasso Sea just outside the exclusion zone around Cuba during the height of the Missile Crisis. The commander of a Soviet diesel-electric sub -- one of four that had sailed for Cuba as part of the planned military build-up, each armed with a nuclear torpedo -- was seconds away from launching against five American destroyers that had identified the submerged sub and were trying to drive it to the surface by sonar pinging and bracketing depth charges.
The sub's batteries -- which required recharging on the ocean's surface -- were nearly dead, and conditions on board were almost unbearable between the heat and the incessant ASW activity of the U.S. Navy ships and planes overhead. It had been insanity by the Soviet government to even have sent that type of sub into potential warfare in warm water anyway, as the diesel electric boats relied on cold ocean waters both for proper mechanical functioning and tactics -- including the ability to hide beneath the thermocline .
But the Soviets' nuke fleet was out of commission in October 1962, having been quarantined after a reactor accident on board the K-19 a few months earlier, when several sailors and officers died from radiation exposure. Amazingly, one who had been on board was now the commander of the four-sub group, and was the only officer on-scene with authority to overrule the sub captain's decision (along with the political officer's) to launch against the Americans, which would almost certainly have provoked a massive nuclear response (promised by President Kennedy if any Soviet nuclear weapons were used against Western Hemisphere targets) that would have triggered MAD (mutually assured destruction) between the US and USSR.
The Soviet commander, known for coolness under pressure, and probably mindful of what he had seen after the reactor casualty on the K-19, overruled the sub captain at the moment when the order was about to be given. Instead, the Soviet captain contacted the US vessels to alert that it was surfacing, and did so, unmolested by the Americans. The Soviet subs then withdrew and returned to their base, apparently to undeserved disdain and contempt by their government and military.
Throughout the ordeal, the Soviets had no radio contact with Moscow, and only learned about what was occurring in the United States and Cuba by listening to radio news reports from US stations, knowing that America had mobilized to Defcon Two and all-out war could break out at any moment.
Only in recent years, apparently, has the story become known -- including by way of an interview of one of the officers on board the sub, who spoke with US intelligence about it. The documentary did a fine job of including portions of the interview, and others with Soviet sailors and officers, as well as some from their US Navy destroyer opponents.
I consider myself relatively well informed, particularly on military subjects, but I had never heard of this incident, or how close the world came to nuclear war that day. There are a number of excellent books about Cold War incidents at sea, including Blind Man's Bluff, which describes several of the most well known. This one, however, was news to me!
By the way, the Soviet commander who "saved the world" died a few years later of kidney cancer, as did several others from the K-19 that had been exposed to radiation. He has now rightly been credited with personally averting one of the closest calls the world has ever known.
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