vasili arkhipov--the man who averted WWIII
(as we observe the 50th anniversary of that near -disaster, this is a man about whom we have heard practically nothing, but to whom we apparently owe a great debt)
Vasili Arkhipov
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов
(30 January 1926 –19 August 1998) was a Soviet naval officer. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo and therefore a possible nuclear war. His story is to this day unknown to the wider public, although some believe that, as Thomas Blanton (then director of the National Security Archive) expressed it in 2002, "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."[1]
. . . . .
In July 1961 Arkhipov was appointed deputy commander or executive officer of the new Hotel-class ballistic missile submarine K-19.[2] He backed Captain Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev during the potential mutiny and received a dose of radiation after the accident.[citation needed] This incident is depicted in the American film K-19: The Widowmaker.
Involvement in Cuban Missile Crisis
On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph trapped the diesel-powered nuclear-armed Soviet ‹The template Sclass2 is being considered for deletion.› Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 near Cuba and started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. There had been no contact from Moscow for a number of days and, although the submarine's crew had earlier been picking up US civilian radio broadcasts, once B-59 began attempting to hide from its US navy pursuers, it was too deep to monitor any radio traffic, so those on board did not know if war had broken out.[4]. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, wanted to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo.[5]
Three officers on board the submarine – Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the second-in-command Arkhipov – were authorized to launch the torpedo if agreeing unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch.[6] Although Arkhipov was only second-in-command of submarine B-59, he was actually Commander of the flotilla of submarines including B-4, B-36, and B-130 and of equal rank to Captain Savitsky. Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. This presumably averted the nuclear warfare which would have ensued had the torpedo been fired.[7] The submarine's batteries had run very low and the air-conditioning had failed, so it was forced to surface amidst its US pursuers and head home.[8] Washington's message that practice depth charges were being used to signal the submarines to surface never reached B-59, and Moscow claims they have no record of receiving it either.
Aftermath
When discussing the Cuban missile crisis in 2002, Robert McNamara stated that we came "very close" to nuclear war, "closer than we knew at the time."[9]
. . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
= new reply since forum marked as read
Maybe, they can get Denzil Washington to play him in the film version. 
