was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or ExComm, which was swiftly assembled to advise the President during the crisis. The most influential account, which was also one of the earliest, was written by Robert F. Kennedy, the President’s brother and Attorney General. The story of what the Americans call the Cuban missile crisis, the Cubans call the October crisis, and the Russians call the Caribbean crisis has been told many times. There should, it seems, be a useful lesson to be learned from that frantic afternoon. Had Savitsky’s orders been carried out, chances are good that the Americans would have responded in kind, and a full-scale nuclear war would have broken out. What the grenade tossers did not know-what almost no one knew until four decades later-was that one of B-59’s torpedoes was carrying what the Soviets called “special ammunition.” The “special” part was a fifteen-kiloton nuclear warhead. “Maybe the war has already started up there, while we are doing somersaults here,” he shrieked. Savitsky ordered the crew to get ready to fire back. But that day someone decided to drop hand grenades into the water. ![]() They were to drop harmless depth charges and instruct the subs to surface. To avoid escalation, American warships were supposed to follow a careful protocol when they came across subs. The boat’s captain, Valentin Savitsky, knew from previous days’ communications that a crisis was unfolding above the waves, but, unable to receive radio signals, he had no way of learning about recent developments. “It’s getting hard to breathe in here,” a crew member recorded in his diary.īy October 27th, conditions on B-59 were so bad that men were passing out in the words of one, “They were falling like dominoes.” American destroyers were practically on top of the sub this prevented it from surfacing to recharge its batteries and use its antenna. Temperatures inside rose to uncomfortable levels and kept on rising, to more than a hundred and ten degrees, and carbon-dioxide levels climbed, too. The subs, built for navigating farther north, had trouble operating in warm water. ![]() They were ordered by the Soviet naval command to change course and take up positions in the Sargasso Sea. By the time he announced the “quarantine” of Cuba, on October 22nd, they were nearing the island. Once past Iceland, the subs had trouble contacting Moscow for a while, according to Ketov, the only voices audible over the radio “were those of Murmansk fishermen.”īy the time President John F. Kennedy learned of Operation Anadyr, on October 16th, the subs were halfway across the Atlantic. “You have to hold on to something even in your sleep, or else you’ll fall off,” a crew member complained. The Atlantic that October was turbulent, and the pitching sea made it tough for the boats to maintain their desired speed. “For the sailors, this Cuban missile crisis started even before its beginning,” Ryurik Ketov, the captain of another Cuba-bound sub, once observed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |