Also, I had no idea about this guy:
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (
Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов) was a
Soviet naval officer. On
October 27,
1962, during the
Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of 11
United States Navy destroyers headed by the
aircraft carrier USS Randolph entrapped a nuclear-armed
Soviet Foxtrot class submarine B-59 near
Cuba and started dropping
depth charges. Allegedly, the captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, prepared to launch a retaliatory
nuclear-tipped torpedo.
Three officers on board the submarine - Savitsky,
Political Officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and
Commander Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov - were entitled to launch the torpedo if they agreed unanimously in favour of doing so. An argument broke out between the three, in which only Arkhipov was against making the attack, eventually persuading Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from
Moscow. The
nuclear war which presumably would have ensued was thus averted.
At the conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis held in Havana on
October 13,
2002,
Robert McNamara admitted that
nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the
National Security Archive, said that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."
In the 2002 book of
Aleksandr Mozgovoy Cuban Samba of the "Foxtrot" Quartet: Soviet Submarines during the Year 1962 Caribbean Crisis (
ISBN 5773400413), the participant of the events, retired Commander Vadim Pavlovich Orlov presents the events less dramatically (Captain lost his temper, but the two other officers calmed him down).