Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов, IPA: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ arˈxʲipəf], 30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Naval officer who prevented a Soviet nuclear torpedo launch during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And the person who likely did more than anyone else to prevent that dangerous day from becoming an existential catastrophe was a quiet Soviet naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov. On that day, Arkhipov was serving aboard the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine B-59 in international waters near Cuba.
In 1962, Soviet submarine officer Vasili Arkhipov refused to launch a nuclear torpedo, averting a potential WWIII.
Arkhipov is credited with preventing a Soviet nuclear strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fifty-nine years ago, a senior Russian submarine officer, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, refused to fire a nuclear torpedo at an American aircraft carrier and likely prevented a third world war and nuclear destruction.
Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface and await orders from Moscow. His persuasion effectively averted a nuclear war which likely would have ensued if the nuclear weapon had been fired.
Arkhipov received little recognition during his lifetime, but to his wife Olga, Vasili was always a hero. In a 2012 PBS documentary titled The Man Who Saved the World, Olga Arkhipov said, “The man who prevented a nuclear war was a Russian submariner. His name was Vasili Arkhipov.
Fuchs also stated that "The last time when I handed over information [to Russian authorities] was in February or March 1949". Fuchs was arrested on 2 February 1950, charged with violations of the Official Secrets Act.
The first atomic bomb at Hiroshima
At 8.15 on the morning of 6th August 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was devastated by the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon of war. The bomb, nicknamed `Little Boy', was dropped from the USAAF B29 bomber `Enola Gay' and exploded some 1,800 feet above the city.
DEFCON stands for Defense Readiness Condition. Levels range from DEFCON 1 to DEFCON 5, with DEFCON 1 being the highest level of readiness. To the public's knowledge, the U.S. has never reached DEFCON 1. The U.S. Joint Military Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff set the current DEFCON level.
Georgy Zhukov, in full Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, (born December 1 [November 19, Old Style], 1896, Kaluga province, Russia—died June 18, 1974, Moscow), marshal of the Soviet Union, the most important Soviet military commander during World War II.
The last recipient of the title "Hero of the Soviet Union" was a Soviet diver, Captain of the 3rd rank Leonid Mikhailovich Solodkov on 24 December 1991 for his leadership and participation in a series of unprecedented extreme depth diving experiments.
Unofficially nicknamed Stalinets (Russian: Сталинец, "follower of Stalin"; not to be confused with the submarine L-class L-2 Stalinets of 1931), boats of this class were the most successful and achieved the most significant victories among all Soviet submarines.
The U.S. has never reached DEFCON 1. The highest it's thought to have been is DEFCON 2, which reportedly occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
As of January 2023, the current DEFCON level is estimated to be at 3 due to the Russian conflict, according to OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) on the website DefconLevel.com.
It increases in severity from DEFCON 5 (least severe) to DEFCON 1 (most severe) to match varying military situations, with DEFCON 1 signalling the outbreak of nuclear warfare. DEFCONs are a subsystem of a series of Alert Conditions, or LERTCONs, which also include Emergency Conditions (EMERGCONs).
The radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today is on a par with the extremely low levels of background radiation (natural radioactivity) present anywhere on Earth. It has no effect on human bodies.
Three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 – a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as “Fat Man.”
The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified at the time as being moral – in order to bring about a more rapid victory and prevent the deaths of more Americans. However, it was clearly not moral to use this weapon knowing that it would kill civilians and destroy the urban milieu.
Snezhinsk – formerly known as Chelyabinsk-70 (Челябинск-70), site of one of the two major Russian Federal Nuclear Centers. Tryokhgorny – formerly known as Zlatoust-36 (Златоуст-36), site of development of parts and machinery for atomic stations and weaponry.
David Greenglass — an American machinist at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Greenglass confessed that he gave crude schematics of lab experiments to the Russians during World War II.
Marinesko thus became the most successful Soviet submarine commander in terms of gross register tonnage (GRT) sunk, with 42,000 GRT to his name.
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov and Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov were two Soviet soldiers, members of the armed forces. They served the world from utter destruction.
In brief, the popular version of the story is that the Soviet early-warning satellites generated an alarm, which Petrov recognized as false thereby averting a truly catastrophic full-scale nuclear war.
The only time America went to DEFCON-2 during the Cold War was on October 22, 1962, the day that President Kennedy publicly denounced the Soviet Union's construction of missile launching sites in Cuba.