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Vasily Arkhipov

Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov (30 January 1926-19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy vice admiral during the Cold War. His decision against launching a nuclear torpedo against US Navy ships off Cuba amid the Cuban Missile Crisis saved the world from global thermonuclear war.

Biography[]

Vasily Arkhipov was born in Zvorkovo, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union in 1926. He served aboard a Soviet Navy minesweeper during the Soviet-Japanese War of 1945 before graduating from the Azerbaijan Higher Naval School in 1947 and serving in the Black Sea, Arctic Sea, and Baltic Sea. In 1961, he was appointed deputy commander of the ballistic missile submarine K-19, and he and the rest of the crew were irradiated during an incident that nearly resulted in the ship exploding and a NATO base in Greenland being damaged (which could have led to the outbreak of World War III). Arkhipov later served as second-in-command of B-59 and as chief of staff of the Soviet flotilla sent to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. After US ships dropped depth charges, the captain of the B-59 believed that war had started and that their submarine was under attack, but Arkhipov refused to consent to use nuclear weapons in retaliation, averting nuclear war. He and his crewmates were faced with disgrace from their superiors on their return to the USSR, but he was later promoted to rear admiral in 1975 and vice admiral in 1981 before retiring in 1988. He died of kidney cancer in 1998.

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