A fresh look at the ‘Bedford Incident’

From the 1965 film “The Bedford Incident”:

During the cold war, a US Farragut Class destroyer was on a NATO patrol for Russian submarines in The GIUK gap.

The Bedford had a crew of 160, was commanded by a maniacal, anti-communist skipper who operated the ship under General Quarters. On board was a reporter, a pragmatic NATO military advisor, formerly a WW2 Nazis submarine commander, and a young, bullied, erratic junior weapons officer.

The Bedford hunts down a Russian submarine inside Greenland territorial waters that moves into international waters. Initially, NATO refuses a hunt request by the Bedford but then concurs to this dangerous, stunning cat and mouse pursuit. The Bedford, realizing the Russian submarine can only remain submerged for 24 hours, initiates a vicious hold down / hunt to exhaustion attack. The Bedford captain pushes his crew to the razor’s edge, hoping to force the submarine to surface, at one point crashing into the snorkel.

The NATO advisors stern rebuke to the captain that the submarine crew is desperate and to de-escalate is ignored. There is a heated discussion on the destroyers’ bridge to abort the destroyer attack. The Bedford captain exclaims to the NATO advisor, “The Bedford will never fire first, but if he fires one, I’ll fire one.” The distraught weapons officer hears only “fire one.” An antisubmarine rocket is launched.

The submarine is destroyed but not before it unleashes 4 nuclear armed torpedoes at the Bedford. A nuclear mushroom cloud vaporizes the Bedford and its crew.