{"id":49269,"date":"2019-10-30T07:12:17","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T12:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49269"},"modified":"2019-10-30T07:12:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T12:12:21","slug":"ray-mcgovern-thanks-to-a-soviet-navy-captain-we-survived-1962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49269","title":{"rendered":"RAY McGOVERN: Thanks to a Soviet Navy Captain \u2014 We Survived 1962"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2019\/10\/28\/ray-mcgovern-thanks-to-a-soviet-navy-captain-we-survived-1962\/\">RAY McGOVERN: Thanks to a Soviet Navy Captain \u2014 We Survived 1962<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov spared humanity from&nbsp;extinction&nbsp;on what has been called \u201cthe most dangerous moment in human history.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>O<\/strong>ct. 27, 1962, is the date on which we humans were spared extinction thanks to Soviet Navy submarine Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arkhipov insisted on following the book on using nuclear weapons. He overruled his colleagues on Soviet submarine B-59, who were readying a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo to fire at the USS Randolph task force near Cuba without the required authorization from Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Vasili_Arkhipov.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-40882\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Soviet naval officer Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov.&nbsp;(Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Communications links with naval headquarters were down, and Arkhipov\u2019s colleagues were convinced WWIII had already begun. After hours of battering by depth charges from U.S. warships, the captain of B-59, Valentin Grigorievich Savitsky, screamed, \u201cWe\u2019re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all \u2014 we will not disgrace our Navy!\u201d&nbsp; But Captain Arkipov\u2019s permission was also required.&nbsp; He countermanded Savitsky and B-59 came to the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Much of this account of what happened on submarine B-59 is drawn from Daniel Ellsberg\u2019s masterful book, \u201cThe Doomsday Machine\u201d \u2014 one of the most gripping and important books I have ever read.\u00a0 Dan explains, inter alia, on pages 216-217 the curious circumstance whereby the approval of Arkhipov, chief of staff of the submarine brigade at the time, was also required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ellsberg adds that had Arkhipov been stationed on one of the other submarines (for example, B-4, which was never located by the Americans), there is every reason to believe that the carrier USS Randolph and several, perhaps all, of its accompanying destroyers would have been destroyed by a nuclear explosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RAY McGOVERN: Thanks to a Soviet Navy Captain \u2014 We Survived 1962 Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov spared humanity from&nbsp;extinction&nbsp;on what has been called \u201cthe most dangerous moment in human history.\u201d Oct. 27, 1962, is the date on which we humans were spared extinction thanks to Soviet Navy submarine Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov. Arkhipov insisted on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[27463,27464,6963,13773,742,827],"class_list":["post-49269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-27463","tag-captain-vasili-alexandrovich-arkhipov","tag-consortium-news","tag-cuban-missile-crisis","tag-soviet-union","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49270,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49269\/revisions\/49270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}