April 10, 2017 • 28 mins
There have been many moments in history when the world came perilously close to a full-scale nuclear war, due to false alarms or miscommunication. One such moment is the only known time that a head of state has activated their nuclear briefcase.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Not long ago,
I went to the Maritime Museum in San Diego, California,
(00:22):
which if you like boats and ships in maritime history,
it was worth a stop. It's also right down the
road from the USS Midway Museum, so if you would
like some military history and some maritime history altogether, like
you can just spend a whole day out there. Um,
don't do what I did and lose your camera. Though.
If anyone saw my camera in San Diego, let me know. Yeah,
(00:44):
I think I have the last known photo from that
camera because you texted it to me from the museum. Oh,
I took that from my iPhone. Fortunately I didn't lose
my phone. I only lost my point issue camera anyway.
The actual point is Among the many faring vessels at
the Maritime Museum is the Soviet Foxtrot class submarine, which
(01:06):
is home to an exhibit about a really harrowing incident
I had never heard about before. It was one of
the surprisingly many moments in history when the world came
perilously close to a full scale nuclear war. Uh And
I did not actually know there were that many, that
surprisingly many incidents until I started looking into it for
(01:27):
this episode today. So today we're just going to look
at three of them, including the one I learned about
in San Diego which inspired today's show. The incident aboard
Soviet submarine B fifty nine is tangled up with the
Cuban missile crisis and the nuclear arms race between the
United States and the Soviet Union. With the help of
its allies, the United States developed the first nuclear weapons
(01:49):
through the Manhattan Project. Among the weapons the Manhattan Project
produced were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
In Not long after World War Two, the Soviet Union
successfully detonated its own nuclear bomb, and soon the United
States and the Soviet Union were locked in a cold
war and a nuclear arms race. Both nations were simultaneously
(02:13):
building more nuclear weapons and developing more powerful weapons that
were able to travel greater distances and deliver bigger payloads.
The Cuban Missile crisis grew out of this cold war
and arms race. In July of nineteen sixty two, the
Soviet Union reached an agreement with Cuba to install several
missiles there. The negotiation and the transportation of missiles to
(02:35):
Cuba were conducted in secret, but the US learned about
it through aerial surveillance photography on October fourteenth, nineteen sixty two.
Those photographs were delivered to the White House the next day.
At this point, the United States nuclear arsenal was far
far bigger and more powerful than the Soviet Unions, and
the United States also already had missiles stationed in Turkey
(02:59):
in easy reach of Soviet territory. But with the placement
of missiles in Cuba, for the first time, the Soviet
Union also had missiles an easy reach of American territory.
Even though the Soviets insisted that the missiles were only
in Cuba as a defensive measure, this was a move
that was both intended and interpreted as a threat. For
(03:20):
a few days, news of the missile installation was also
kept secret from the general public, but on October twenty two,
President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address giving Americans
a detailed description of the missile sites being built. He
called Soviets placement of missiles in Cuba a quote clandestine,
reckless and provocative threat, and he announced a naval quarantine
(03:43):
around Cuba to prohibit the delivery of any further materials
or weapons. This quarantine really goes in air quotes. It
was a blockade, but calling it a blockade would have
presumed a state of war, so they chose the word
quarantine to be nice about it. Kennedy also wrote to
Nikita Krushchev, the first Secretary of the Central Committee of
(04:06):
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, basically the leader
of Soviet Union, to say that the United States would
not tolerate the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He
also spelled out that any nuclear attack on any nation
launched from Cuba would be viewed as a Soviet attack
on the United States, and the United States would retaliate
(04:26):
in kind. Kristef, for his part, insisted that these missiles
were just being placed there to defend Cuba from attack.
For the whole of the thirteen days of the Cuban
Missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union were
in an incredibly tense stalemate, with the US demanding that
the Soviet Union removed the missiles and the Soviet Union
(04:47):
both refusing and continuing construction on the missile sites. And
on October things were particularly bad. The US had been
at def Con too, with the armed forces ready to
launch an all out nuclear war for three days, and
then that day an American YouTube spy plane was shot
down by a Russian missile over Cuba and its pilot,
(05:10):
Major Rudolph Anderson, was killed. So the prevailing description of
the Cuban missile crisis is that for this entire time,
the world was on the brink of a nuclear war.
But there was also this other element of it going
on that wasn't known about until much later. There were
four Soviet submarines, each of them with a nuclear tipped
(05:31):
torpedo among their armaments, and they were on route to
Cuba as part of a submarine force that was going
to be stationed there. These were all Fox Trot class submarines,
and they were powered by a combination of diesel and
battery power. While they were submerged, they ran on their batteries,
and then they had to return to the surface periodically
to get recharged. Soviet navigators were exceptionally skilled at using
(05:54):
the varying temperatures of the ocean depths to avoid detection
on radar, but without periodically recharging the batteries on the surface,
where they were much more easy to spot, they could
not stay underwater. Their last instruction from Moscow had been
to hold position not far from Cuba, but they had
since lost contact and the vessels, themselves built for use
(06:17):
in colder waters, were not tolerating the warmer ocean near
Cuba very well. The air conditioning failed and the temperatures
in the subs started to rise well above a hundred degrees.
To make matters worse, they were running out of food
and water, and since they lost contact with Moscow, their
only way of finding out what was happening and whether
the United States and the Soviet Union had gone to
(06:39):
war was to listen to a civilian radio broadcast from Miami.
On the October, a spotter plane caught a glimpse of
one of the submarines near the surface of the ocean,
and late that afternoon American reconnaissance had detected the presence
of at least three Soviet submarines near Cuba. Ships that
(06:59):
were in the area as part of the quarantine started
to try to get the submarines to the surface by
dropping signaling charges into the ocean. There's a little bit
of discrepancy in accounts among the people who were actually there.
Some of them say that dropping four or five loud
but non damaging charges was an official signal to surface,
(07:21):
but others say that they were intentionally dropping these charges
to harass the submerged submarines and the hope of basically
forcing them up to the surface. Aboard the B fifty nine,
though the Soviets had no idea what was going on.
They had not gotten new orders from Moscow in more
than a week, and they were overheated, dehydrated, and exhausted
(07:43):
as battery power failed, life support systems did as well,
and the air aboard had less and less oxygen. They
didn't know if the explosions that they were hearing around
them could damage or destroy their craft, and their only
source of information was these American news report on the
civilian radio which were reporting the extreme tensions and fears
(08:04):
about the Cuban missile crisis. The commanders of these four
submarines had been authorized to use their nuclear tips torpedoes
if they were attacked, and aboard the B fifty nine,
Captain Valentine Stevitsky concluded that they were, and he gave
orders to prepare their nuclear torpedo, saying quote, we will die,
(08:25):
but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace
our navy. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Savitsky had the agreement
of his other officers in launching the torpedo, but since
the B fifty nine was the flagship of the flotilla
bound for Cuba, it also carried the flotilla commander Vesiley Archipov.
(08:46):
Since Arkipov was aboard, they needed his approval as well,
and Arkipov refused, and he instead convinced Sevitsky to surface.
They got fresh air, they recharged their batteries, and at
the first opportunity some urged and slipped away, again, evading
American detection, before apparently returning to Soviet waters. Today, Arkibov
(09:08):
is generally regarded as a hero, as somebody who's clear
thinking prevented what surely would have been a full on
nuclear war, But on his return to the Soviet Union,
his decisions were heavily criticized. The general feeling was that
he and the rest of them should have gone down
with a ship. Arkipov later died of cancer, probably a
(09:29):
result of a previous incident aboard a submarine, which was
a near meltdown on the K nine team during its
maiden voyage that killed seven people who were aboard almost
immediately and then caused delayed effects for many of the
others who were been there. Basically, they averted a total
meltdown situation, but it was at a high cost. The
(09:50):
US was completely unaware that they had been dropping signaling
charges on a nuclear armed submarine until much later, and
the whole incident was little known until documents related to
it were declassified in n If you would like to
know more, there is a PBS Secrets of the Dead
episode about this whole incident that's called The Man Who
(10:11):
Saved the World. And to wrap up the Cuban missile crisis,
eventually the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from
Cuba in exchange for a pledge that the United States
wouldn't invade the nation, something that the US had already
tried and failed to do during the Bay of Pigs
invasion in nineteen sixty one. And in another move that
(10:31):
wasn't publicly known until decades later, the US also removed
its nuclear missiles from Turkey. I kind of imagine this
as as being like if you were if you were
throwing rocks at a tree and not hitting it, and
then you realized later that the tree had a big
old hornets nest inside. Like, that's sort of what was
(10:53):
going on with dropping signaling charges onto this nuclear armed
submarine full of people who were over exhausted, dehydrated and
not having enough oxygen. Yeah, but a hornet's nest that
could kill a lot of people. Yeah, a hornet's nest
that would destroy the entire world. So with that, Sterry thought,
we're gonna take a quick break, take a word from
(11:14):
a sponsor before we move on to our next story. Now,
we are going to move beyond the Cold War into
a story that's right on the cusp of our typical
window of history on the show. It took place in
three and as was the case with the Soviet submarine
(11:36):
B fifty nine, this also happened during a period of
heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Throughout the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet
Union were actively making plans for what they would do
if the others struck first in a nuclear attack, and
for a couple of years in the early nineteen eighties,
Yuri Andropov, general Secretary of the Communist Party of the
(11:58):
Soviet Union, was particularly convinced that the US was making
definite plans for a nuclear attack that would devastate Soviet
leadership under his command. The Soviet Union was preparing for
a certainty not in eventuality. Both the US and the
Soviet Union had also made it clear that a nuclear
strike by one would prompt an immediate and devastating response
(12:20):
from the other. In nine a series of incidents had
ratcheted up the general sense of nuclear paranoia. On March eighth,
President Ronald Reagan had delivered a speech arguing against a
proposed nuclear freeze, in which he called the Soviet Union
an evil empire. Later that month, he announced the missile
(12:41):
defense system that came to be known as star Wars.
Both nations undertook maneuvers and drills purportedly for the sake
of preparedness, but often they were interpreted by the other
as being anything from a threatening show of force to
a real effort to secretly lay the groundwork for an
upcoming World War three. And when our next incident took place,
(13:04):
the latest and probably most alarming of these was the
downing of Korean Air Flight zero zero seven. The commercial
flight was en route from New York to Seoul, with
a stop and anchorage to refuel. After leaving anchorage for
reasons that aren't entirely clear, the flight diverged from its
planned course and wound up in Soviet airspace. The Soviet Union,
(13:26):
apparently believing it was a US spy plane, scrambled two
fighter jets, which attacked the plane with air to air missiles.
The flight crashed into the sea, killing all two hundred
and sixty nine people of board, one of whom was
US Representative Larry McDonald of Georgia. The incident sparked international
outrage and a slew of conspiracy theories, some of which
(13:49):
still persists today. The Soviet Union did not help the
matter by being incredibly secretive about the incident at first,
not even admitting that it had happened, and not feeling
whether it had found the wreckage or flight BATA recorders.
A lot of the details remained completely unknown to the
rest of the world until after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, and some of the details are still a mystery.
(14:13):
Three weeks after the incident, with Flight zero zero seven.
On September, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air
Defense Forces was stationed in a bunker known as Serpikov fifteen,
which was part of the Soviet Union's newly enabled early
warning satellite defense network. At Serpakov fifteen, satellite intelligence was
(14:33):
received and analyzed, and in the case of an attack,
there was a telephone with a direct line to commanding officers.
Petrov's job there was so secret that not even his
wife knew where he worked or what he did. At
this point, both the United States and the Soviet Union
each had satellite systems that were meant to help keep
(14:54):
watch for the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles. From the other,
United State satellites basically looked down on the Earth from above,
but on the Soviet side, the satellites looked at the
planet on edge. They were looking for missiles after they
had already been launched. It would sort of be silhouetted
against the black the background of space. In theory, this
(15:15):
minimized the number of natural phenomena and other non threatening
human activities that could cause a false alarm. But on September,
just after midnight local time, a false alarm did indeed happen,
most likely thanks to some light reflecting off of high
altitude clouds. The system detected the presence of at first
(15:37):
one missile, but in moments that number grew to five,
all launched from the United States. The warning of the
detected incoming missile strike played out within the Serpico fifteen
bunker like something out of a movie. They were blaring
alarms and warnings in huge red letters on the screens.
If you've ever seen a nuclear disas st movie in
(16:01):
which the launch happens and it's met with like giant
whaling Claxon's and the words launched in big red, flashing
letters on the screen, and you've thought, man, that looks ridiculous.
Apparently that's really what happened. It looked exactly like that.
Protocol was for Petrov to immediately contact his superior officers
(16:22):
to report that the launch had been detected, but he
had some doubts that the report was accurate. This system
was brand new, and in his opinion, it had been
rushed into use when it was still in his words,
raw five also seemed like an unusually low number of
missiles for a preemptive nuclear strike. He would later say, quote,
(16:43):
when people start a war, they don't start. They don't
start it with only five missiles. You can do little
damage with just five missiles. So instead of contacting his
superior officers to say that a nuclear strike was incoming,
he called to report a false alarm. Even as he did,
though he wasn't completely sure that he was right. It
(17:04):
wasn't until the missiles in question failed to reach the
Soviet Union that he knew for sure that his hunch
had been correct. Yeah, he was, like, I thought it
was maybe fifty fifty. And he also later theorized that
if someone else had been on duty, it would not
have been the same call. By his own account, though,
after this was all over, he went home, he drank
(17:25):
a whole lot of vodka, and he slept for more
than twenty four consecutive hours. As with the submarine B
fifty nine, the details of this incident only became public
much later. At the time, Petrov himself got no recognition
within the Soviet Union for what he had done, and
the crisis averted under his watch. However, after an investigation,
(17:46):
he did get a reprimand for not keeping a detailed
enough log about what had happened. His explanation was that
he had a phone in one hand and the facilities
intercom in the other, and he couldn't juggle both at
once and also take notes. In the aftermath of all this,
the computer program that was designed to filter out natural
phenomena another noise from the early warning systems results was
(18:10):
rewritten to account for this combination of sun and high
altitude clouds. The world learned of Petrov's actions about fifteen
years later when his commanding officer wrote about it in
his memoir. His wife learned of it when a reporter
came to their home. Following the publication of that memoir,
a documentary about this whole incident came out in which
(18:30):
was called The Man Who Saved the World. That is
not an error. It is the same name as the
one about the submarine. And we're gonna take another quick
break before we talked through one more of these. The
(18:51):
last of these incidents that we are going to talk
about today is way more recent than we generally get
into this on show. And we have kind of a
rule of thumb window, you know, it's this is definitely
newer than that. But as I was going through the
surprisingly many events of this type. It stood out for
reasons that are going to become clear. By this point,
(19:13):
the Soviet Union had dissolved, so the nuclear superpowers at
play where the United States and Russia. And we have
a little less detail on this one than we did
on the other two Empire because any United States documents
pertaining to it are probably still classified. On January, Russian
(19:33):
radar operators near the coast spotted a fast moving object
that appeared to be a missile. It was over the
Barents Sea, roughly between Russia's northern coast and the Arctic Ocean,
and then as it moved, the objects separated into multiple pieces.
It was behaving like a trident missile, and judging from
where it originated, it could have been launched from a
(19:56):
U S submarine. The radar technicians fear that this was
an American nuclear warheads set to detonate high in the
atmosphere and to put all of Russians of Russia's early
warning satellite system, which was still being maintained in spite
of the end of the Cold War, out of commission.
That system, though had not detected any launches, but it
(20:17):
was also primarily focused on missile sites in North America,
there was apparently also some cloud cover. The satellite operators
notified their commanding officers that a suspected lodge was in
the works. In the United States, Russia and other nations
that have nuclear weapons, especially outfitted satchel, known as the
nuclear briefcase, accompanies the head of state. The briefcase is
(20:41):
actual contents are secret, and the US version weighs about
forty five pounds. Its purpose is to make sure the
head of state has all the necessary documentation on hand,
while also allowing them to receive information, make decisions, and
if necessary, order a nuclear strike. The US has also
noted that part of the briefcase's purpose is being able
(21:03):
to identify that it really is the president making the call.
Russia had a clear protocol in the event of a
missile launch, first signal the president's nuclear briefcase at this point,
accompanying President Boris Yeltson, then assess the situation, and within
ten minutes make a decision on whether to retaliate. According
(21:26):
to Russian defense protocols, incoming missiles didn't have to actually
strike anything before the retaliatory strike was ordered. In spite
of the discrepancy between what the radar operators in the
early warning satellites were reporting. About five minutes into that
ten minute window, word went out to submarine commanders in
(21:46):
the area to maintain a state of readiness and prepare
for further instruction. Eight minutes into the ten minute window,
the mystery objects on the radar fell into the sea
and everyone thankfully stood down. And the culprit in this
case was the Black Brand twelve. A sounding rocket, which
is a scientific rocket used to take measurements and conduct tests.
(22:10):
A sounding rocket typically has a rocket and a payload
designed to separate from it at a certain altitude. Often,
once it's taken its measurements or conducted its experiment, the
payload portion comes back to Earth with its descent slowed
down by a parachute. That separation of the instruments and
the payload from the rocket is what the radar detectors
had interpreted as the separation of a trident missile. It
(22:34):
was really a Norwegian rocket that was being used to
study the northern lights. Uh. And where it gets Yeah,
where it gets a little un nerving is that um.
The Norwegian and American team that was responsible for this
thing had notified multiple other countries, including Russia, of what
was about to happen. But nobody had told these satellite
operators who raised the alarm about it. And apparently nobody
(23:00):
made the connection between this report of a launch from
the coast and the launch of a scientific rocket that
was already known to everyone, like nobody connected those two
things together. However, the thing that made this so notable
and made me want to include it in today's episode
(23:20):
in spite of its recency, is it's the only known
time in world history that Ahead of State has actually
activated their nuclear briefcase. I can't help but think how
frustrating it would be for the science team to be like,
we did everything right and yet and yet literally told
you inadvertently, we could have set off like a horrible
(23:42):
global incident, despite having gone through the checklist and done
everything we were supposed to uh To our knowledge, there
is no movie or TV show about this particular incident yet,
But since this incident was about ten minutes of a
long and sometimes controversial political career for Boris Yelton, they
will probably title it something besides the Man who Saved
(24:03):
the World, although you never know. Maybe so maybe that's
just the title of all nearly near all incidents of
of of just barely averting nuclear's catastrophe, they will all
be called the man who saved the world. That does
seem to definitely be the pattern. Do you have a
(24:25):
listener mail for us? Sure do. It's from Julie uh
and Julie has written to us. This is from a
little bit ago. I was out of the office for
a while on the vacation that prompted this episode, so
I have some things in the inbox that are from
older episodes, and this one is from Julie and it
is following our episode on Jamaica's Maroon Wars, which is
(24:48):
a Dear Holly and Tracy, my name is Julie. Like
so many other fans of your podcast, I was like
forward to Mondays and Wednesdays to listen to your latest episodes.
I'm an Acadian French Canadian group mainly from the maritime
provinces of can Nada, from New Brunswick, Canada and currently
live in Ottawa, at the nation's capital. While I greatly
appreciated learning a bit of Jamaican history during your Jamaica's
(25:09):
Maroon Wars episode, I didn't expect to drop parallels with
my own personal history. About forty years prior to the
maroons deportation to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Acadians who were
living in the area of what are now the provinces
of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island faced
their own deportation under the British rule starting in seventeen
(25:29):
fifty five. Villages and crops are destroyed. His families were
separated and forced onto boats. Their destinations varied between New England,
Ports England, France and even the Caribbean. You can imagine
my shock at the irony of these circumstances being repeated.
And I was listening to the turn of events for
the Maroons. And like the Maroons, the Acadian people's history
is one of resistance and resilience. As some Acadians my
(25:52):
ancestors included, uh, we're able to hide from the deportation
with the help of the mcmac allies the low cool
indigenous population. In addition, several years following the deportation of
many Acadians made the long trek back to Akadia to resettle.
Some groups decided to start a new life in the
colony of Louisiana. Where they came, where they became known
(26:14):
as the Cajuns. Kadians today are very proud our legacy
culture and French language, and more than happy to share
more information if you'd like to explore a Kadian history
as a potential episode topic. Keep up the excellent work
because we have so much to learn from our different histories,
as well as the connections where we least expect them.
Love from your Canadian neighbor, Julie, Thank you so much, Julie.
(26:37):
I wanted to read this for a couple of reasons.
One is that it was not quite within my brain
um that the deportation of Maroons to Halifax was in
such relatively close proximity to the expulsion of the Acadians.
But we have had a number of folks ask for
(26:57):
an episode about the expulsion of the Acadians, and it
is on the list. I just want to note that
it's on the list, been on the list pretty much
from day one of us coming on for sure, four
years on the list. It's a it's one of the
similarly to the Executive Order six episode that we did
pretty recently, it is such a big topic. It's size
(27:21):
and scope have meant that has been on the list
for a long time, and I'm not sure when it's
gonna make up to the top of the list because
it is a a big one to get into you,
but it is on the list for the folks who
have asked, um if you would like to write to
us about this certain either podcast or history podcast that
how stuff Works dot com. And we're also under the
(27:43):
name missed in History all over social media, so that's Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, Instagram,
all that stuff. For missed in History, you can come
to our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works
dot com. Uh. You can learn so much about how
clear weapons work at how stuff Works, there's a lot
(28:03):
of it. You can go into our our website which
is missing history dot com. You will find show notes
about all of the episodes that Holly and I have
worked on together. You will find an archive of every episode. Ever,
the whole thing is searchable, so about of the time, Uh,
if there's a particular subject you want to see if
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(28:23):
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(28:44):
dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Not long ago,
I went to the Maritime Museum in San Diego, California,
(00:22):
which if you like boats and ships in maritime history,
it was worth a stop. It's also right down the
road from the USS Midway Museum, so if you would
like some military history and some maritime history altogether, like
you can just spend a whole day out there. Um,
don't do what I did and lose your camera. Though.
If anyone saw my camera in San Diego, let me know. Yeah,
(00:44):
I think I have the last known photo from that
camera because you texted it to me from the museum. Oh,
I took that from my iPhone. Fortunately I didn't lose
my phone. I only lost my point issue camera anyway.
The actual point is Among the many faring vessels at
the Maritime Museum is the Soviet Foxtrot class submarine, which
(01:06):
is home to an exhibit about a really harrowing incident
I had never heard about before. It was one of
the surprisingly many moments in history when the world came
perilously close to a full scale nuclear war. Uh And
I did not actually know there were that many, that
surprisingly many incidents until I started looking into it for
(01:27):
this episode today. So today we're just going to look
at three of them, including the one I learned about
in San Diego which inspired today's show. The incident aboard
Soviet submarine B fifty nine is tangled up with the
Cuban missile crisis and the nuclear arms race between the
United States and the Soviet Union. With the help of
its allies, the United States developed the first nuclear weapons
(01:49):
through the Manhattan Project. Among the weapons the Manhattan Project
produced were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
In Not long after World War Two, the Soviet Union
successfully detonated its own nuclear bomb, and soon the United
States and the Soviet Union were locked in a cold
war and a nuclear arms race. Both nations were simultaneously
(02:13):
building more nuclear weapons and developing more powerful weapons that
were able to travel greater distances and deliver bigger payloads.
The Cuban Missile crisis grew out of this cold war
and arms race. In July of nineteen sixty two, the
Soviet Union reached an agreement with Cuba to install several
missiles there. The negotiation and the transportation of missiles to
(02:35):
Cuba were conducted in secret, but the US learned about
it through aerial surveillance photography on October fourteenth, nineteen sixty two.
Those photographs were delivered to the White House the next day.
At this point, the United States nuclear arsenal was far
far bigger and more powerful than the Soviet Unions, and
the United States also already had missiles stationed in Turkey
(02:59):
in easy reach of Soviet territory. But with the placement
of missiles in Cuba, for the first time, the Soviet
Union also had missiles an easy reach of American territory.
Even though the Soviets insisted that the missiles were only
in Cuba as a defensive measure, this was a move
that was both intended and interpreted as a threat. For
(03:20):
a few days, news of the missile installation was also
kept secret from the general public, but on October twenty two,
President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address giving Americans
a detailed description of the missile sites being built. He
called Soviets placement of missiles in Cuba a quote clandestine,
reckless and provocative threat, and he announced a naval quarantine
(03:43):
around Cuba to prohibit the delivery of any further materials
or weapons. This quarantine really goes in air quotes. It
was a blockade, but calling it a blockade would have
presumed a state of war, so they chose the word
quarantine to be nice about it. Kennedy also wrote to
Nikita Krushchev, the first Secretary of the Central Committee of
(04:06):
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, basically the leader
of Soviet Union, to say that the United States would
not tolerate the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He
also spelled out that any nuclear attack on any nation
launched from Cuba would be viewed as a Soviet attack
on the United States, and the United States would retaliate
(04:26):
in kind. Kristef, for his part, insisted that these missiles
were just being placed there to defend Cuba from attack.
For the whole of the thirteen days of the Cuban
Missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union were
in an incredibly tense stalemate, with the US demanding that
the Soviet Union removed the missiles and the Soviet Union
(04:47):
both refusing and continuing construction on the missile sites. And
on October things were particularly bad. The US had been
at def Con too, with the armed forces ready to
launch an all out nuclear war for three days, and
then that day an American YouTube spy plane was shot
down by a Russian missile over Cuba and its pilot,
(05:10):
Major Rudolph Anderson, was killed. So the prevailing description of
the Cuban missile crisis is that for this entire time,
the world was on the brink of a nuclear war.
But there was also this other element of it going
on that wasn't known about until much later. There were
four Soviet submarines, each of them with a nuclear tipped
(05:31):
torpedo among their armaments, and they were on route to
Cuba as part of a submarine force that was going
to be stationed there. These were all Fox Trot class submarines,
and they were powered by a combination of diesel and
battery power. While they were submerged, they ran on their batteries,
and then they had to return to the surface periodically
to get recharged. Soviet navigators were exceptionally skilled at using
(05:54):
the varying temperatures of the ocean depths to avoid detection
on radar, but without periodically recharging the batteries on the surface,
where they were much more easy to spot, they could
not stay underwater. Their last instruction from Moscow had been
to hold position not far from Cuba, but they had
since lost contact and the vessels, themselves built for use
(06:17):
in colder waters, were not tolerating the warmer ocean near
Cuba very well. The air conditioning failed and the temperatures
in the subs started to rise well above a hundred degrees.
To make matters worse, they were running out of food
and water, and since they lost contact with Moscow, their
only way of finding out what was happening and whether
the United States and the Soviet Union had gone to
(06:39):
war was to listen to a civilian radio broadcast from Miami.
On the October, a spotter plane caught a glimpse of
one of the submarines near the surface of the ocean,
and late that afternoon American reconnaissance had detected the presence
of at least three Soviet submarines near Cuba. Ships that
(06:59):
were in the area as part of the quarantine started
to try to get the submarines to the surface by
dropping signaling charges into the ocean. There's a little bit
of discrepancy in accounts among the people who were actually there.
Some of them say that dropping four or five loud
but non damaging charges was an official signal to surface,
(07:21):
but others say that they were intentionally dropping these charges
to harass the submerged submarines and the hope of basically
forcing them up to the surface. Aboard the B fifty nine,
though the Soviets had no idea what was going on.
They had not gotten new orders from Moscow in more
than a week, and they were overheated, dehydrated, and exhausted
(07:43):
as battery power failed, life support systems did as well,
and the air aboard had less and less oxygen. They
didn't know if the explosions that they were hearing around
them could damage or destroy their craft, and their only
source of information was these American news report on the
civilian radio which were reporting the extreme tensions and fears
(08:04):
about the Cuban missile crisis. The commanders of these four
submarines had been authorized to use their nuclear tips torpedoes
if they were attacked, and aboard the B fifty nine,
Captain Valentine Stevitsky concluded that they were, and he gave
orders to prepare their nuclear torpedo, saying quote, we will die,
(08:25):
but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace
our navy. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Savitsky had the agreement
of his other officers in launching the torpedo, but since
the B fifty nine was the flagship of the flotilla
bound for Cuba, it also carried the flotilla commander Vesiley Archipov.
(08:46):
Since Arkipov was aboard, they needed his approval as well,
and Arkipov refused, and he instead convinced Sevitsky to surface.
They got fresh air, they recharged their batteries, and at
the first opportunity some urged and slipped away, again, evading
American detection, before apparently returning to Soviet waters. Today, Arkibov
(09:08):
is generally regarded as a hero, as somebody who's clear
thinking prevented what surely would have been a full on
nuclear war, But on his return to the Soviet Union,
his decisions were heavily criticized. The general feeling was that
he and the rest of them should have gone down
with a ship. Arkipov later died of cancer, probably a
(09:29):
result of a previous incident aboard a submarine, which was
a near meltdown on the K nine team during its
maiden voyage that killed seven people who were aboard almost
immediately and then caused delayed effects for many of the
others who were been there. Basically, they averted a total
meltdown situation, but it was at a high cost. The
(09:50):
US was completely unaware that they had been dropping signaling
charges on a nuclear armed submarine until much later, and
the whole incident was little known until documents related to
it were declassified in n If you would like to
know more, there is a PBS Secrets of the Dead
episode about this whole incident that's called The Man Who
(10:11):
Saved the World. And to wrap up the Cuban missile crisis,
eventually the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from
Cuba in exchange for a pledge that the United States
wouldn't invade the nation, something that the US had already
tried and failed to do during the Bay of Pigs
invasion in nineteen sixty one. And in another move that
(10:31):
wasn't publicly known until decades later, the US also removed
its nuclear missiles from Turkey. I kind of imagine this
as as being like if you were if you were
throwing rocks at a tree and not hitting it, and
then you realized later that the tree had a big
old hornets nest inside. Like, that's sort of what was
(10:53):
going on with dropping signaling charges onto this nuclear armed
submarine full of people who were over exhausted, dehydrated and
not having enough oxygen. Yeah, but a hornet's nest that
could kill a lot of people. Yeah, a hornet's nest
that would destroy the entire world. So with that, Sterry thought,
we're gonna take a quick break, take a word from
(11:14):
a sponsor before we move on to our next story. Now,
we are going to move beyond the Cold War into
a story that's right on the cusp of our typical
window of history on the show. It took place in
three and as was the case with the Soviet submarine
(11:36):
B fifty nine, this also happened during a period of
heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Throughout the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet
Union were actively making plans for what they would do
if the others struck first in a nuclear attack, and
for a couple of years in the early nineteen eighties,
Yuri Andropov, general Secretary of the Communist Party of the
(11:58):
Soviet Union, was particularly convinced that the US was making
definite plans for a nuclear attack that would devastate Soviet
leadership under his command. The Soviet Union was preparing for
a certainty not in eventuality. Both the US and the
Soviet Union had also made it clear that a nuclear
strike by one would prompt an immediate and devastating response
(12:20):
from the other. In nine a series of incidents had
ratcheted up the general sense of nuclear paranoia. On March eighth,
President Ronald Reagan had delivered a speech arguing against a
proposed nuclear freeze, in which he called the Soviet Union
an evil empire. Later that month, he announced the missile
(12:41):
defense system that came to be known as star Wars.
Both nations undertook maneuvers and drills purportedly for the sake
of preparedness, but often they were interpreted by the other
as being anything from a threatening show of force to
a real effort to secretly lay the groundwork for an
upcoming World War three. And when our next incident took place,
(13:04):
the latest and probably most alarming of these was the
downing of Korean Air Flight zero zero seven. The commercial
flight was en route from New York to Seoul, with
a stop and anchorage to refuel. After leaving anchorage for
reasons that aren't entirely clear, the flight diverged from its
planned course and wound up in Soviet airspace. The Soviet Union,
(13:26):
apparently believing it was a US spy plane, scrambled two
fighter jets, which attacked the plane with air to air missiles.
The flight crashed into the sea, killing all two hundred
and sixty nine people of board, one of whom was
US Representative Larry McDonald of Georgia. The incident sparked international
outrage and a slew of conspiracy theories, some of which
(13:49):
still persists today. The Soviet Union did not help the
matter by being incredibly secretive about the incident at first,
not even admitting that it had happened, and not feeling
whether it had found the wreckage or flight BATA recorders.
A lot of the details remained completely unknown to the
rest of the world until after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, and some of the details are still a mystery.
(14:13):
Three weeks after the incident, with Flight zero zero seven.
On September, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air
Defense Forces was stationed in a bunker known as Serpikov fifteen,
which was part of the Soviet Union's newly enabled early
warning satellite defense network. At Serpakov fifteen, satellite intelligence was
(14:33):
received and analyzed, and in the case of an attack,
there was a telephone with a direct line to commanding officers.
Petrov's job there was so secret that not even his
wife knew where he worked or what he did. At
this point, both the United States and the Soviet Union
each had satellite systems that were meant to help keep
(14:54):
watch for the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles. From the other,
United State satellites basically looked down on the Earth from above,
but on the Soviet side, the satellites looked at the
planet on edge. They were looking for missiles after they
had already been launched. It would sort of be silhouetted
against the black the background of space. In theory, this
(15:15):
minimized the number of natural phenomena and other non threatening
human activities that could cause a false alarm. But on September,
just after midnight local time, a false alarm did indeed happen,
most likely thanks to some light reflecting off of high
altitude clouds. The system detected the presence of at first
(15:37):
one missile, but in moments that number grew to five,
all launched from the United States. The warning of the
detected incoming missile strike played out within the Serpico fifteen
bunker like something out of a movie. They were blaring
alarms and warnings in huge red letters on the screens.
If you've ever seen a nuclear disas st movie in
(16:01):
which the launch happens and it's met with like giant
whaling Claxon's and the words launched in big red, flashing
letters on the screen, and you've thought, man, that looks ridiculous.
Apparently that's really what happened. It looked exactly like that.
Protocol was for Petrov to immediately contact his superior officers
(16:22):
to report that the launch had been detected, but he
had some doubts that the report was accurate. This system
was brand new, and in his opinion, it had been
rushed into use when it was still in his words,
raw five also seemed like an unusually low number of
missiles for a preemptive nuclear strike. He would later say, quote,
(16:43):
when people start a war, they don't start. They don't
start it with only five missiles. You can do little
damage with just five missiles. So instead of contacting his
superior officers to say that a nuclear strike was incoming,
he called to report a false alarm. Even as he did,
though he wasn't completely sure that he was right. It
(17:04):
wasn't until the missiles in question failed to reach the
Soviet Union that he knew for sure that his hunch
had been correct. Yeah, he was, like, I thought it
was maybe fifty fifty. And he also later theorized that
if someone else had been on duty, it would not
have been the same call. By his own account, though,
after this was all over, he went home, he drank
(17:25):
a whole lot of vodka, and he slept for more
than twenty four consecutive hours. As with the submarine B
fifty nine, the details of this incident only became public
much later. At the time, Petrov himself got no recognition
within the Soviet Union for what he had done, and
the crisis averted under his watch. However, after an investigation,
(17:46):
he did get a reprimand for not keeping a detailed
enough log about what had happened. His explanation was that
he had a phone in one hand and the facilities
intercom in the other, and he couldn't juggle both at
once and also take notes. In the aftermath of all this,
the computer program that was designed to filter out natural
phenomena another noise from the early warning systems results was
(18:10):
rewritten to account for this combination of sun and high
altitude clouds. The world learned of Petrov's actions about fifteen
years later when his commanding officer wrote about it in
his memoir. His wife learned of it when a reporter
came to their home. Following the publication of that memoir,
a documentary about this whole incident came out in which
(18:30):
was called The Man Who Saved the World. That is
not an error. It is the same name as the
one about the submarine. And we're gonna take another quick
break before we talked through one more of these. The
(18:51):
last of these incidents that we are going to talk
about today is way more recent than we generally get
into this on show. And we have kind of a
rule of thumb window, you know, it's this is definitely
newer than that. But as I was going through the
surprisingly many events of this type. It stood out for
reasons that are going to become clear. By this point,
(19:13):
the Soviet Union had dissolved, so the nuclear superpowers at
play where the United States and Russia. And we have
a little less detail on this one than we did
on the other two Empire because any United States documents
pertaining to it are probably still classified. On January, Russian
(19:33):
radar operators near the coast spotted a fast moving object
that appeared to be a missile. It was over the
Barents Sea, roughly between Russia's northern coast and the Arctic Ocean,
and then as it moved, the objects separated into multiple pieces.
It was behaving like a trident missile, and judging from
where it originated, it could have been launched from a
(19:56):
U S submarine. The radar technicians fear that this was
an American nuclear warheads set to detonate high in the
atmosphere and to put all of Russians of Russia's early
warning satellite system, which was still being maintained in spite
of the end of the Cold War, out of commission.
That system, though had not detected any launches, but it
(20:17):
was also primarily focused on missile sites in North America,
there was apparently also some cloud cover. The satellite operators
notified their commanding officers that a suspected lodge was in
the works. In the United States, Russia and other nations
that have nuclear weapons, especially outfitted satchel, known as the
nuclear briefcase, accompanies the head of state. The briefcase is
(20:41):
actual contents are secret, and the US version weighs about
forty five pounds. Its purpose is to make sure the
head of state has all the necessary documentation on hand,
while also allowing them to receive information, make decisions, and
if necessary, order a nuclear strike. The US has also
noted that part of the briefcase's purpose is being able
(21:03):
to identify that it really is the president making the call.
Russia had a clear protocol in the event of a
missile launch, first signal the president's nuclear briefcase at this point,
accompanying President Boris Yeltson, then assess the situation, and within
ten minutes make a decision on whether to retaliate. According
(21:26):
to Russian defense protocols, incoming missiles didn't have to actually
strike anything before the retaliatory strike was ordered. In spite
of the discrepancy between what the radar operators in the
early warning satellites were reporting. About five minutes into that
ten minute window, word went out to submarine commanders in
(21:46):
the area to maintain a state of readiness and prepare
for further instruction. Eight minutes into the ten minute window,
the mystery objects on the radar fell into the sea
and everyone thankfully stood down. And the culprit in this
case was the Black Brand twelve. A sounding rocket, which
is a scientific rocket used to take measurements and conduct tests.
(22:10):
A sounding rocket typically has a rocket and a payload
designed to separate from it at a certain altitude. Often,
once it's taken its measurements or conducted its experiment, the
payload portion comes back to Earth with its descent slowed
down by a parachute. That separation of the instruments and
the payload from the rocket is what the radar detectors
had interpreted as the separation of a trident missile. It
(22:34):
was really a Norwegian rocket that was being used to
study the northern lights. Uh. And where it gets Yeah,
where it gets a little un nerving is that um.
The Norwegian and American team that was responsible for this
thing had notified multiple other countries, including Russia, of what
was about to happen. But nobody had told these satellite
operators who raised the alarm about it. And apparently nobody
(23:00):
made the connection between this report of a launch from
the coast and the launch of a scientific rocket that
was already known to everyone, like nobody connected those two
things together. However, the thing that made this so notable
and made me want to include it in today's episode
(23:20):
in spite of its recency, is it's the only known
time in world history that Ahead of State has actually
activated their nuclear briefcase. I can't help but think how
frustrating it would be for the science team to be like,
we did everything right and yet and yet literally told
you inadvertently, we could have set off like a horrible
(23:42):
global incident, despite having gone through the checklist and done
everything we were supposed to uh To our knowledge, there
is no movie or TV show about this particular incident yet,
But since this incident was about ten minutes of a
long and sometimes controversial political career for Boris Yelton, they
will probably title it something besides the Man who Saved
(24:03):
the World, although you never know. Maybe so maybe that's
just the title of all nearly near all incidents of
of of just barely averting nuclear's catastrophe, they will all
be called the man who saved the world. That does
seem to definitely be the pattern. Do you have a
(24:25):
listener mail for us? Sure do. It's from Julie uh
and Julie has written to us. This is from a
little bit ago. I was out of the office for
a while on the vacation that prompted this episode, so
I have some things in the inbox that are from
older episodes, and this one is from Julie and it
is following our episode on Jamaica's Maroon Wars, which is
(24:48):
a Dear Holly and Tracy, my name is Julie. Like
so many other fans of your podcast, I was like
forward to Mondays and Wednesdays to listen to your latest episodes.
I'm an Acadian French Canadian group mainly from the maritime
provinces of can Nada, from New Brunswick, Canada and currently
live in Ottawa, at the nation's capital. While I greatly
appreciated learning a bit of Jamaican history during your Jamaica's
(25:09):
Maroon Wars episode, I didn't expect to drop parallels with
my own personal history. About forty years prior to the
maroons deportation to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Acadians who were
living in the area of what are now the provinces
of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island faced
their own deportation under the British rule starting in seventeen
(25:29):
fifty five. Villages and crops are destroyed. His families were
separated and forced onto boats. Their destinations varied between New England,
Ports England, France and even the Caribbean. You can imagine
my shock at the irony of these circumstances being repeated.
And I was listening to the turn of events for
the Maroons. And like the Maroons, the Acadian people's history
is one of resistance and resilience. As some Acadians my
(25:52):
ancestors included, uh, we're able to hide from the deportation
with the help of the mcmac allies the low cool
indigenous population. In addition, several years following the deportation of
many Acadians made the long trek back to Akadia to resettle.
Some groups decided to start a new life in the
colony of Louisiana. Where they came, where they became known
(26:14):
as the Cajuns. Kadians today are very proud our legacy
culture and French language, and more than happy to share
more information if you'd like to explore a Kadian history
as a potential episode topic. Keep up the excellent work
because we have so much to learn from our different histories,
as well as the connections where we least expect them.
Love from your Canadian neighbor, Julie, Thank you so much, Julie.
(26:37):
I wanted to read this for a couple of reasons.
One is that it was not quite within my brain
um that the deportation of Maroons to Halifax was in
such relatively close proximity to the expulsion of the Acadians.
But we have had a number of folks ask for
(26:57):
an episode about the expulsion of the Acadians, and it
is on the list. I just want to note that
it's on the list, been on the list pretty much
from day one of us coming on for sure, four
years on the list. It's a it's one of the
similarly to the Executive Order six episode that we did
pretty recently, it is such a big topic. It's size
(27:21):
and scope have meant that has been on the list
for a long time, and I'm not sure when it's
gonna make up to the top of the list because
it is a a big one to get into you,
but it is on the list for the folks who
have asked, um if you would like to write to
us about this certain either podcast or history podcast that
how stuff Works dot com. And we're also under the
(27:43):
name missed in History all over social media, so that's Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, Instagram,
all that stuff. For missed in History, you can come
to our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works
dot com. Uh. You can learn so much about how
clear weapons work at how stuff Works, there's a lot
(28:03):
of it. You can go into our our website which
is missing history dot com. You will find show notes
about all of the episodes that Holly and I have
worked on together. You will find an archive of every episode. Ever,
the whole thing is searchable, so about of the time, Uh,
if there's a particular subject you want to see if
we've covered it will come up in search. The other
(28:23):
one percent of the time we are working on tagging
or or tweaking the title or something to make it
more easily searchable, so you can do all that and
a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com
or missed in History dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
(28:44):
dot com.
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Tracy Wilson
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