Soviet submarine B-59

Soviet submarine B-59 (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 October 1, 1962, the submarine B-59, as the flagship of a detachment with its sister ships B-4, B-36 and B-130, sailed from its base on the Kola Peninsula to the Caribbean Sea in support of Soviet arms deliveries to Cuba (an operation known to the Soviets as Anadyr). The arms consisted of nuclear missiles for which launch facilities had been prepared on Cuba, thereby precipitating a major confrontation between the US and Russia.

On October 27, blockading units of the United States Navy – the aircraft carrier USS Randolph and 11 destroyers – detected B-59 off the coast of Cuba. US vessels began dropping signalling depth charges of the type used for naval training which contained very little charge and were not intended to cause damage. The purpose was to attempt to force the submarine to surface and be identified. There was no other way to communicate with the submarine. Messages from the US Navy stating the type of depth charges being used never reached 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. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigoryevich Savitsky, believing that the use of depth charges meant that war had started, proposed to launch a nuclear torpedo at the US ships and ordered a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo to be loaded into its tube.

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 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 B-59 had to surface. It surfaced amid the US warships that were pursuing it and made contact with the US destroyer USS Corry. After discussions with the ship, B-59 was ordered by the Russian fleet to set course back to the Soviet Union.