• Source: Soviet submarine B-59

Soviet submarine B-59 (Russian: Б-59) was a Project 641 or Foxtrot-class diesel-electric submarine of the Soviet Navy. B-59 was stationed near Cuba during the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 and was pursued and harassed by US Navy vessels. Senior officers in the submarine, out of contact with Moscow and the rest of the world and believing they were under attack and possibly at war, came close to firing a T-5 nuclear torpedo at the US ships.




Background


On the night of October 1, 1962, B-59, as the flagship of a detachment of sister ships B-4, B-36 and B-130, departed secretly from its base on the Kola Peninsula for the Cuban port of Mariel, close to Havana. The submarines, built in Leningrad in 1959-1961 and said to be "the best in the world", had a range of up to 26,000 miles and were each armed with 22 torpedoes, one with a nuclear warhead. They were sent to the Caribbean Sea in support of Soviet arms deliveries to Cuba in an operation known to the Soviets as Anadyr, which had been in preparation since March/April. The arms deliveries consisted of nuclear missiles for which launch facilities had been prepared on Cuba. The discovery of this precipitated a major confrontation between the US and Russia after the submarine group had put to sea. The submarines arrived at their assigned positions in the Sargasso Sea, east of Cuba, in the week [beginning] 20 October. US President Kennedy announced a blockade of Cuba on the evening of 22 October. The US was preparing a major airborne assault on the island. B-59's radio interception group heard Kennedy warn of the possibility of a thermonuclear conflict with the Soviet Union.
The need for the utmost secrecy had been emphasised, but B-130 was forced to surface on the night of October 25 after all three of its engines broke down, which revealed their presence. The US Navy sent more than 200 combat surface ships, almost 200 shore-based aircraft, four aircraft carrier search and assault groups with 50-60 planes on each, to search for them, and destroyers charged with finding and destroying them if military action started. The submarines were pursued for several days, and US Naval Command ordered that any submarine discovered in the area should be made to surface and be identified. The US Navy had an existing tactical protocol against diesel submarines called "hunt to exhaustion". Commanders of US ships were instructed to be ready to attack if a submarine refused to surface. Kennedy was informed about the discovery of the Soviet submarines on the morning of October 27.
On October 27, blockading units of the United States Navy, an aircraft carrier-based search and attack group consisting of the aircraft carrier USS Randolph and 11 destroyers, using multi-frequency sonars, Julie sonobouys, towed sono-locators, radio hydroacoustic buoys and "all means available", detected B-59 off the coast of Cuba and used grenade explosions as a signal to surface. USS Cony, who first detected the sub, USS Beale and other destroyers began dropping signalling depth charges of the type used for naval training which contained very little charge and were not intended to cause damage. Messages from the US Navy stating the type of depth charges being used did not reach B-59 or, it seems, Soviet naval HQ.




= Nuclear close call

=
B-59 had not been in contact with Moscow for several days. The submarine's crew had been picking up US civilian radio broadcasts, but once they began attempting to hide from pursuers the vessel had to run too deep to monitor radio traffic and those on board did not know whether or not war had broken out. Conditions inside the submarine were becoming extremely difficult for the crew, who were suffering from lack of ventilation, diesel fumes and high levels of CO2, high temperatures and limited reserves of drinking water. Crew members were collapsing from heat stroke. The vessel was under attack for about four hours. When it was finally hit with something stronger than depth charges, the captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigoryevich Savitsky, "totally exhausted", became furious and ordered the officer assigned to the nuclear torpedo to assemble it to battle readiness. He is stated to have said, "Maybe the war has already started ... We're going to blast them now. We will die, but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace our navy."
The three most senior officers on board the submarine were Captain Savitsky; the political officer Ivan Semyonovich Maslennikov; and Chief of Staff of the deployed submarine detachment Vasily Arkhipov, who was equal in rank to Savitsky but the senior officer aboard B-59. They were only authorized to launch a nuclear weapon if all three unanimously agreed to do it. B-59 was the only sub in the flotilla that required the authorisation of three officers in order to fire the "special weapon". The other three subs would only have required the captain and the political officer to approve the launch, but on B-59 Arkhipov's position as detachment commander meant that he also had to give his consent. Of the three officers, Arkhipov alone opposed the launch, and he persuaded Savitsky to surface and await orders from Moscow.
The submarine's batteries had run very low and its air-conditioning had failed and eventually, on the evening of October 27, B-59 had to surface. It surfaced amid the US warships that were pursuing it and was subjected to intense harassment with searchlights and mock attacks from planes and helicopters from the Randolph. The submarine made contact with the destroyer USS Cony and after discussions with the ship, B-59 was ordered by the Russian fleet to set course back to the Soviet Union.
This was recognized as the most dangerous moment of the crisis during the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana Conference in 2002, which marked its 40th anniversary. The three-day conference, between October 11-13th, 2002, was sponsored by the private National Security Archive, Brown University, and the Cuban government. The Americans had not been aware that B-59 was armed with a nuclear torpedo, of roughly the power of the bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima, and during the conference, McNamara stated that nuclear war had come much closer than anyone had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said, "A guy called Vasily Arkhipov saved the world."




See also


Vasily Arkhipov
The Underwater Cuban Missile Crisis at 60. (3 October 2022)




Notes






References


"Projet 641 Liste des unités" (in French). 2014-10-27. Archived from the original on 2014-10-27. Retrieved 2018-10-02.
Polmar, Norman, Cold War Submarines, The Design and Construction of U.S. and Soviet Submarines. KJ More. Potomac Books, Inc., 2003. ISBN 1-57488-530-8
Peter A. Huchthausen (2002). October Fury. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-43357-6.
"Cuban Missile Crisis: The Man Who Saved the World", Secrets of the Dead, PBS TV documentary, October 24, 2012
William Burr and Thomas S. Blanton, editors (October 31, 2002) "The Submarines of October. U.S. and Soviet Naval Encounters During the Cuban Missile Crisis", National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 75
Ketov, Ryurik A. "The Cuban Missile Crisis as seen through a periscope." Journal of Strategic Studies 28.2 (2005): 217-231. doi:10.1080/01402390500088304

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