Existing comment:
What They Didn't Know:
"We're going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all -- we will not disgrace our Navy!"
-- Soviet submarine Captain Valentin Savitsky, giving the order to arm a nuclear-tipped torpedo, October 27, 1962
Unbeknownst to the Ex Comm and the US Navy, each of the Soviet submarines was armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Soviet Captain VP Orlov of the Soviet submarine B-59 was in charge of the vessel's radio intelligence on October 27 when the US Navy dropped depth charges in an effort to force the submarine to the surface. He later recalled that the temperature soared to over 100 degrees, and he described the episode:
"If felt like sitting in a metal barrel with someone hitting it with a sledgehammer... It was unbearably stuffy... the duty officers ... were falling like dominoes ...We thought -- that's it -- the end. ... Savitsky [the submarine's commander] became furious. He summoned the officer who was assigned to the nuclear torpedo, and ordered him to assemble it to battle readiness... But we did not fire the nuclear torpedo -- Savitsky was able to rein in his wrath."
After hours of being subjected to the "depth charges," the Soviet submarine surfaced. Although the Soviet submarine commander was not authorized to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo without a direct order from Moscow, the incident might possibly have triggered a nuclear confrontation at sea. |