Soviet submarine ''B-59'' (') was a Project 641 or Foxtrot-class

diesel-electric submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

of the

Soviet Navy The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...

. ''B-59'' was stationed near

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

during the 13-day

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...

of October 1962 and was pursued and harassed by US Navy vessels. Senior officers in the submarine, out of contact with

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

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'', the

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of navy, naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically ...

of a detachment of sister ships ''B-4'', ''B-36'' and ''B-130'', departed secretly from its base on the

Kola Peninsula The Kola Peninsula (; ) is a peninsula in the extreme northwest of Russia, and one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is border ...

for the Cuban port of Mariel, close to

Havana Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center. where it was intended to establish a Soviet naval base. The submarines, built in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

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 of which had a

nuclear warhead A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

. They were sent to the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...

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 Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. All nine nuclear states have developed some form of medium- to long-range delivery system for their nuc ...

, 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 The Sargasso Sea () is a region of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by four currents forming an ocean gyre. Unlike all other regions called seas, it is the only one without land boundaries. It is distinguished from other parts of the Atlantic Oc ...

, 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. A radio interception group on ''B-59'' heard Kennedy warn America that there was a possibility of

thermonuclear Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei combine to form a larger nuclei, nuclei/neutron by-products. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of ener ...

conflict with the Soviet Union. The need for the utmost secrecy had been emphasised, but ''B-130'' was forced to surface in the Sargasso Sea after all three of its engines broke down, which revealed the presence of the other submarines. The US Navy sent more than 200 combat surface ships, almost 200 shore-based aircraft and four aircraft carrier search and assault groups with 50-60 planes on each - 85 per cent of its anti-submarine forces in the Atlantic - to search for them.

Destroyers In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were conceived i ...

''Berry, Lowry, Beale, Beich, Bill, Eaton, Cony, Conway'' and ''Murray'' were charged with finding and destroying the submarines if military action became necessary. The US Navy had an existing tactical protocol against diesel submarines called "hunt to exhaustion" which was similar to tactics used by the British in World War II. The Soviet 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. Commanders of US ships were instructed to be ready to attack if a submarine refused to surface. On October 27, after three days of searching, blockading units of the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

, an aircraft carrier-based search and attack group consisting of the aircraft carrier USS ''Randolph'' and

destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were conceived i ...

s using multi-frequency sonars, Julie sonobouys, towed sono-locators, radio hydroacoustic buoys and "all means available", located ''B-59'' off the coast of Cuba and used grenade explosions as a signal that it should surface. USS ''Cony'', which 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 vessel were becoming extremely difficult. The submarine had nine extra people on board, members of an OSNAZ radio interception group, with all their equipment. There was now only emergency lighting, the interior was overcrowded and unbearably hot, and the crew of 70 were short of drinking water and breathable air and suffering from lack of ventilation, high levels of CO2, diesel fumes and increasingly high temperatures. Some were collapsing from heat stroke. The submarine was under what seemed to be attack for about four hours. Fourteen surface vessels surrounded it and tightened the circle, dropping grenades which exploded close to the hull. When ''B-59'' was finally hit with something stronger than depth charges the captain, Valentin Grigoryevich

Savitsky Savitsky (; or Савіцький; ); other transliterations: Savicki, Savicky, Savitski, Savitskiy, Savitzky, Sawicki, Sawitzki, Sawizkii), feminine: Savitska or Savitskaya, is a Slavic surname. Notable bearers include: *Abraham Savitzky (1919– ...

, who was by then "totally exhausted", became furiously angry and ordered the officer assigned to the nuclear torpedo to assemble it to battle readiness and load it into its tube. He is reported 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 situation inside the submarine and Savitsky's words were described later by naval intelligence officer Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, Commander of the Special Assignment adio interceptionGroup on the submarine. (Orlov's account has been described as "controversial" and it has been stated that other submarine commanders did not believe that Savitsky would have issued this order.) The three most senior officers on board ''B-59'' were Captain Savitsky; the political officer Ivan Semyonovich Maslennikov; and Chief of Staff of the deployed submarine detachment

Vasily Arkhipov Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov ( rus, Василий Александрович Архипов, p=vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ arˈxʲipəf; 30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998; sometimes romanized as Vasili Arkhipov) was a senior ...

, who was equal in rank to Savitsky but the more senior officer''.'' They were only authorized to launch a nuclear weapon if all three agreed to do it. ''B-59'' was the only sub in the flotilla that would have required the authorisation of three officers in order to fire the "special weapon". The other 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 men, 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, late in the evening of October 27, ''B-59'' had to surface. It surfaced amid the US warships that were pursuing it and was immediately subjected to intense harassment with searchlights and what appeared to be mock attacks from planes and helicopters from the ''Randolph''. The submarine made contact with the

USS ''Cony'' and after discussions with the ship, ''B-59'' was ordered by the Russian fleet to set course back to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. At the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana Conference in 2002, which marked its 40th anniversary, this was recognized for the first time as having been the most dangerous moment of the crisis. 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. During the three-day conference, between October 11–13, 2002, which was sponsored by the private

National Security Archive The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy, the N ...

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

and the Cuban government,SOVIETS CLOSE TO USING A-BOMB IN 1962 CRISIS, FORUM IS TOLD

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...

, 13 October 2002 Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Defence Secretary, said that nuclear war had come much closer than anyone had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the

, said Vasily Arkhipov had "saved the world". [ ''The Soviet source documents may be seen at https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2022-10-03/soviet-submarines-nuclear-torpedoes-cuban-missile-crisis: National Security Archive'' ]

Notes

References

* * Polmar, Norman, ''Cold War Submarines, The Design and Construction of U.S. and Soviet Submarines.'' KJ More. Potomac Books, Inc., 2003. *
"Cuban Missile Crisis: The Man Who Saved the World"
'' Secrets of the Dead'',

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

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
,

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.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:B-059 Foxtrot-class submarines Cuban Missile Crisis Ships built in the Soviet Union 1960 ships Cold War submarines of the Soviet Union

Background

Nuclear close call

See also

Notes

References

External links