History's Youngest Heroes: Vasily Arkhipov and the End of Days

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Good evening, my fellow citizens. On the 22nd of October, 1962, President John F.
Kennedy addressed the people of the United States and the wider world.

This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba.

Tensions have been rising between the Soviet Union, the United States, and Cuba.

Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.

The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere. The world was on the brink of nuclear war.

By the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction, constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas.

President Kennedy at one point told his press secretary that,

you do realize if I make a mistake, 200 million people are going to die. Arguably, that figure was an underestimate.

The casualties would have been measured, if there was anyone to measure them, in hundreds, if not thousands of millions of people.

Over the next five days, the public watched in terror. The future of humanity appeared to be in the hands of three men.

President Kennedy, Soviet leader Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, and the Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro.

Deep in the waters of the Caribbean Sea, cut off from all communications, three Soviet naval officers were on board a submarine carrying a nuclear torpedo.

One of those men, Vasily Arkipov, had to make a decision that could save the world or trigger its destruction.

I'm Nicola Cochlin, and for BBC Radio 4, this is history's youngest heroes: rebellion, risk, and the radical power of youth.

Vasily Arkhapov and the End of Days.

This is Yelena Andrikova.

She's the daughter of Vasily Arkhapov.

He never spoke to her about his service.

This was forbidden. He signed a non-disclosure agreement.
It was Official Secrets Act. So he absolutely could not discuss.
these things with her.

Alga Smirnova, a BBC journalist and producer, interviewed Elena about her father's life. He wasn't very expressive, affectionate, it seems.

On the outside, he was quite reserved. But she said she always knew that he loved her.

During the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union fought as allies. After the war, though, the divisions between them widened.

In contrast to the active or hot war that had just ended, this balance of tension between East and West became known as the Cold War.

It developed into a global confrontation involving economic, political, ideological confrontation.

Len Scott is Emeritus Professor of International History and Intelligence Studies at Aberystwyth University.

The crucial factor in the development of the Cold War was the development of nuclear weapons.

During the Second World War, scientists in Britain and Germany began to work on nuclear technology.

The United States picked up the atomic weaponry program and developed it through the Manhattan Project.

In 1945, atomic weapons were used for the first time, dropped by the United States Air Force on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The atomic strikes caused shocking damage.

They also ended the war in the Pacific.

Both the Soviets and the Americans were in awe of this new technology.

During the Cold War, both powers engaged in arms races, developing new generations of atomic and nuclear weapons.

By the 1960s, enough nuclear weaponry was held on each side to destroy much of life on Earth.

The fact that both sides could obliterate the other in abundance came to be known as mutually assured destruction.

Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, likened the great powers to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but at the risk of their own life.

Neither of these could fire first because they'd be annihilated, but both needed to threaten annihilation lest the adversary strike.

Vasily Arkhipov was born in 1926 near Moscow. The story of the family is very typical and very tragic at the same time.

So they were a peasant family and to survive being a peasant in the Soviet Union in the 1930s was quite a feat.

When Vasily was two, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin initiated a five-year economic plan. Farming was industrialized.
Peasants were forced to give up their lands to form larger collective farms.

Most of the harvest was taken to cities to feed those factory workers and city population and very little was left for the peasants themselves. The result was widespread famine.

Millions starved to death. And to survive, Vasily's parents, they moved from one village to another, taking odd jobs.

Vasili's family settled in Moscow, where his father found work on the city's new metro system. The Arkopovs lived in cramped conditions.
Seven of them shared just two rooms.

There was no hot water in their home. Vasily and his siblings took turns to draw water from a pump outside.
So there was a sense of a

family surviving, helping each other. Life was hard, not just physically, but politically.
1930s and 40s were hard times in the Soviet Union. There were, you know, political trials.

People were still sent to gulags, but she stresses that her dad never complained. That was part of his personality.
The Arkhipovs made it through the famine.

In 1941, when Vasily was 15, the Soviet Union entered the Second World War on the Allied side.

Soviet troops were sent in their millions to fight the invading German army. They included Vasily's two older brothers, who were aged 18 and 19.

And they died

within two years of fighting. In 1942, Vasily joined training courses for the Soviet Navy.
During his final year, he was stationed in the far east of the Soviet Union. He took part in active combat.

He was putting mines in the sea. That was part of his assignment as a third-year student at a college.
He also served at the Caspian Sea, he served at the Black Sea and also in the North Sea. So

he was away an awful lot.

There's a photograph of Vasily in his early 20s with his wife, Olga Arkipova. They're a strikingly good-looking couple.
Vasily, square-jawed and sandy-haired, the image of a Soviet hero.

Olga, with a mass of dark curls. The couple had a child, Yelena.
She didn't see him in the morning. She didn't see him in the evening because he was still at work.

She said, he was a loving presence in my life but i saw him very little i remember she says

the smell of diesel oil from his uniform that was left lingering in our apartment when he went off to work

in 1961 vasily was sent on a mission ilena's family was living in the north of the soviet union one of the big submarine centers in the north. And her mother got a call, urgently come to Leningrad.

The next time she saw her husband, he was on a hospital bed. Basili was stationed aboard K-19.

The K-19

was the first

Soviet ballistic missile armed nuclear-powered submarine. The United States was already developing nuclear submarines.
Scrambling to catch up, the Soviets rushed the development of K-19.

On the 4th of July 1961, Vassili was on board the K-19 off the coast of Greenland. The submarine was completing exercises when a leak caused water pressure to drop in the reactor.

The cooling pumps, designed to stop the reactor overheating, were unable to function. With no backup, this could result in a nuclear meltdown.

What was more, the long-range radio system went down.

Cut off from any communication with Moscow, the captain had to decide what to do. This submarine at that time was by the coast of a Norwegian island.

So we would be talking not just about explosion that would affect the crew.

This will be the explosion that would have affected the Norwegian population. The captain directed the submarine's engineers to weld a water supply pump into an air valve.

The pump would deliver water to cool the reactor.

The crew saved the ship and averted a nuclear disaster.

But this came at a horrendous cost.

People were dying with froth. at their mouths.

They were very, very sick. They were covered in blisters.
It was a painful death.

Within three weeks, the eight men who'd worked closest to the reactor died from radiation poisoning. The rest of the crew were also irradiated.

Within two years, 14 more men of the K-19 would die from the after effects of radiation. Vasily Arkipov was sent to hospital, where his wife Olga was called to see him.
He had to undergo...

bone marrow transplant.

There was also a blood transfusion done.

and jelena also remembers that he was then taken to one of the sanatoria sanatoriums near leningrad vassili survived yet the trauma of the k-19 left a deep impact on him so he was in the unique position of knowing on his own body his own skin and the experience of his own crewmates of what radiation does to you.

Basili could not have known how great a responsibility would come to him the very next year.

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In July 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a secret agreement with Fidel Castro to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba.

Fidel Castro had come to power in 1959, ousting a corrupt dictator. At first, he instituted a liberal government and made attempts to work with the United States, yet that relationship quickly soured.

The United States was concerned with any extension of communism in the Western Hemisphere. While Fidel Castro was not at this stage a communist, some of those around him were.

When John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, he inherited a covert plan drawn up by the CIA for a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba at a beach known as the Bay of Pigs.

Kennedy went ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion just three months after coming into office.

It was a disaster.

Fidel Castro's forces repelled the invaders, and it was obvious that the CIA and the United States were behind the plan.

Operational security was poor. Castro knew the Bay of Pigs invasion was coming.
The day before the invaders landed, he publicly declared himself in the Cuban Revolution to be socialist.

This opened the door for him to ally with the Soviets.

As the United States began to station nuclear missiles around the Soviet border, notably in Turkey, the idea occurred to Nikita Khrushchev to station his own missiles in Cuba.

Khrushchev decided, against Castro's strong advice, to keep that all secret, to deploy the missiles in secret, to send them 8,000 miles across the world and hide them from the Americans until they were ready.

Soviet missile bases were secretly constructed in the Cuban jungle. Khrushchev sent a fleet of Soviet destroyer ships and four submarines to Cuba.
In October 1962, Vasily Arkhipov was 36.

He was stationed aboard one of those four submarines, the B-59. It was armed with a 15-kiloton nuclear warhead.
The nuclear warhead that is not far short of the bomb exploded over Hiroshima.

Knowing the mission was dangerous, Vasily said little to his family. They didn't know where he was going.
That crisis wasn't discussed in society widely. And he left his nice jacket.

She calls it a kanatka, Canadian jacket. It's a nice jacket with a fur, fur lining that was very warm.
And he left that jacket to be passed on to her mother.

And that's when her mother thought, oh, something might happen.

This is a more dangerous dangerous assignment than a lot of others. Long before the B-59 reached Cuba, conditions on board deteriorated.

These submarines were designed and their crews trained to operate in northern climates and in the north of the Atlantic. They were not adapted to serve or to be operating in hot tropical waters.

They don't have any air conditioning, they're running out of fresh drinking water. The temperatures in the boats are debilitating.

On the 16th of October, President Kennedy received photographs taken from a plane flying over Cuba. The images showed Soviet operatives setting up nuclear missile launch sites.

Khrushchev does not know that Kennedy knows about the missiles. And Kennedy has

basically a week in which to develop a political, military, diplomatic strategy to get the missiles out. He is in no doubt that the missiles have got to come out.

The Joint Chiefs presented Kennedy with two options. Launch strikes on Cuba to attack the missile sites, or mount a naval blockade to prevent the Soviet destroyers from reaching Cuba.

On the 22nd of October, Kennedy announced a blockade. All ships of any kind bound to Cuba, from whatever nation or port, where they're found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back.

The United States Navy and Air Force patrolled to deter Soviet vessels.

If any missiles were fired from Cuba, Kennedy vowed to strike back.

On the 24th of October, the four Soviet submarines reached the edge of the United States Navy's quarantine zone.

Basili's submarine, the B-59, was soon detected. The B-59 was captained by Valentin Savitsky.

On that ship, Captain Vasily Arkopov was the brigade chief of staff who simply happened to be on that ship. The US Navy began to pursue the B-59.

Captain Savitsky dived deep to avoid attack.

The Pentagon, on the eve of when the blockade comes into effect, comes up with ad hoc hoc procedures which involves using sonar and then using explosive devices to signal to the submarines that they should come to the surface.

The United States Navy pursued the B-59 for three days.

Finally, the Navy set off depth charges to signal to the crew of the B-59 that the submarine had entered the American quarantine zone.

The United States government had informed the Soviets that this action was a signal rather than an attack.

Unfortunately, in the last few days of sweltering heat, submarine B-59 had lost all communication with Moscow. So the crew didn't know that.

They are now dodging explosive devices dropped by American anti-submarine warfare systems.

Alone in the depths of the sea, Vasily and the rest of the crew had no idea what was going on.

And

they

cannot be entirely clear whether World War III has broken out, whether these explosions that they are sensing and feeling and hearing around them are for real or not.

One crew member later said, We thought that's it. The end.

It felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer. By now, the coolest area inside the B-59 was a sizzling 45 degrees Celsius.

The engine room was like a sauna. 65 degrees.

Fresh water was in short supply. The air was rancid.

Members of the crew were passing out.

The Americans do not know and do not suspect that the Soviet submarines they are trying to surface with explosive devices are in fact armed with nuclear weapons.

And you have Soviet captains who are unclear about whether they are being depth charged for real or whether these are signalling devices.

Captain Valentin Savitsky, who thanks to the intense heat had been nicknamed the sweater, didn't have many options.

He's pretty much exhausted in these appalling conditions where some of his officers are collapsing and fainting. And in that situation, he loses his temper.

Savitsky had been briefed by Soviet naval command before they left. If in doubt, use your nuclear weapons.

According to one account, he shouted, Maybe the war has already started up there while we are doing somersaults here. We're going to blast them now.

We will die, but we will sink them all. We will not become the shame of the Navy.

The submarine surfaced on the evening of the 27th of October to recharge its drain batteries.

The submarine was subjected to various provocations and threats and that these were interpreted by Savitsky as an indicator of hostile intent by the Americans.

That he then, in that context, decided to submerge the boat and then use the nuclear torpedo. But protocol did not permit Captain Savitsky to make this decision alone.

This decision had to be unanimous. To launch the torpedo, Stavitsky needed the backing of two other men on board: political officer Ivan Somyenovich Masjenikov and Chief of Staff Vasily Arkhipov.

Vasily was the third commander, the third person who had the power to stop this.

As the B-59 prepared to submerge, ready to fire its nuclear torpedo, Vassili was the last man left on the raised platform from which the officer can control the submarine.

This was called the Conning Tower.

As he stood on the conning tower, Vassili realized that one of the United States Navy destroyers was signaling an apology. In other words, this was not an attack.
This was a set of mistakes.

And when he comes down and talks to Savitsky, he explains what has happened and that therefore they should not fire the nuclear torpedo.

Savitsky's command to fire the torpedo was cancelled. Instead, the B-59 signaled back to the United States Navy to cease its attacks.

Captain Arkupov, together with the deputy political officer Ivan Maslenikov, succeed in calming Savitsky down,

succeed in dissuading him from using the nuclear torpedo,

which he has wanted assembled to battle readiness.

In the literal heat of that moment, Basili's bold action to Chalic's captain as a junior officer saved himself and his crew.

If the B-59 had fired the torpedo, the United States could easily have interpreted the attack as ordered from Moscow. And in that event, Kennedy had already said he would strike back.

From that point of view, Vassili's action potentially saved millions.

He saved so many lives by

being firm. Well, sticking to your guns on that submarine in that heat and two freaking out co-commanders

that take guts. That really takes guts.

The next day, the 28th of October, the fully charged B-59 submarine submerged again. It charted a course to return to the Soviet Union.

When B-59 returned back to base, Vassili and his teammates were blamed blamed for what happened. They had to explain their behaviour.

Some Soviet commanders were appalled that the crew of the B-59 had allowed themselves to be detected by the American fleet, had surfaced to charge their batteries, and had failed to use their nuclear torpedo.

Vasily Arkhipov was not in a position to end the Cuban missile crisis. That took a complicated game of strategy and diplomacy between Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro.

Unquestionably though, by his courage and presence of mind, Vassili averted a miscalculation which could have triggered a far wider war.

At the time though, no one outside the Soviet Navy knew this had happened. The fact that Vassili had stopped the torpedo was suppressed.

Even the fact that the B-59 submarine had been carrying a nuclear torpedo was suppressed.

For the rest of his working life, Vassili continued to serve in the Soviet Navy. He was promoted to Rear Admiral and then Vice Admiral before his retirement in 1988.

He kept his secrets, even from his family. Only after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1997 did Yulela learn of her father's Cold War experiences.

Vasili spoke about them for the first time at a conference in Moscow. A report had been published in Russia two years earlier.

alleging that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Soviet submarine had nearly deployed a nuclear torpedo.

When he addressed the conference, Vasily criticized this report as part of a plot to denigrate and defame prominent Soviet military and naval leaders and destroy the Soviet armed forces.

Vasily defended the crew's decisions, although he avoided confirming that the B-59 had been carrying a nuclear weapon. He never took credit for his own actions.

At the time of the conference, Arkhipov was 71 years old. And he died soon after of cancer, which was linked to radiation.

So he didn't experience this sense that he was a hero for very long.

Only after Vasily's death did the full story of what he had done come out.

Finally, his extraordinary action was recognized and celebrated.

In 2017, Vasily Arkhipov was posthumously awarded the Future of Life Prize for a heroic act that has greatly benefited humankind, despite personal risk and without reward.

It was a fitting tribute to a modest man who would quietly save the world.

Next time, on history's youngest heroes.

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