On the brink of Armageddon ...
SIXTY years ago this week was the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 16-29, 1962), when the world came close to nuclear Armageddon. I was aged nine at the time and living in a Birmingham children’s home, Lilac View, with my sister Irene. But I can vividly recall the staff at the home talking anxiously about the crisis and the prospect of nuclear war. They were so worried, they speculated over whether a disused air-raid shelter behind the home, which had provided protection for the children and staff from Hitler’s Luftwaffe only 22 years earlier, would be re-opened. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave deserved praise to President John F. Kennedy for his masterly handling of the crisis, describing his diplomatic success as preserving ‘both peace and honour’. Max Hastings, the military historian, who periodically writes about war and international politics for the Daily Mail, has just written a magnificent account of those 13 eventful days when the world held its breath (Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962). During the crisis, JFK said ‘the great danger and risk in all of this is a miscalculation’. He had many flaws as a human being but the world owes him a debt of gratitude.
PETER HENRICK, Birmingham. NEXT Thursday, October 27, we should celebrate Vasili Arkhipov, the man who saved humanity.
In October 1962 the world stood, as it does today, on the brink of atomic apocalypse. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev had sent nuclear-armed submarines to the seas around Cuba, and Kennedy threatened to sink the ships carrying missiles to the island. In the Caribbean, the Russians’ North Atlantic diesel-engined submarines became so hot that crew were dying. They could not gain relief by surfacing because the U.S. navy was hunting for them and communications with Moscow had been lost. Inevitably, they were found and the U.S. fleet dropped a pattern of depth charges to signal: ‘We know you are there. Surface and we will talk.’ Unfortunately, the Russians were not familiar with the signal and thought they were under attack.
One submarine captain panicked and decided to fire his nuclear torpedos. But, uniquely in the Russian navy, although Vasili was his second-incommand, he was also in charge of the whole flotilla. Despite pressure from his captain and another senior officer, he refused permission for the torpedo launch.
Had he given it, there is little doubt the world would have been plunged into Mutually Assured Destruction.
DAVID DONNELLY, Talywain, Gwent.