On October 14, 1962 marked the beginning of the Caribbean missile crisis.
Spies from the United States discovered that the Soviet Union (USSR) had installed medium range ballistic missiles in Cuba, 200 km from US territory, leaving latent possibility of a blitzkrieg.
The news reached President Kennedy, who ordered a quarantine and a naval siege
As the days went by, the tension increased. “I remember that there was a feeling that a nuclear war was about to begin and that all of us were going to die,” writes Russian journalist Vladimir Pózner on his website. “Not everyone knows how close we were to that war.”
People’s fears were understandable, since both powers concentrated enough nuclear power to leave the planet uninhabitable.
On October 27, the U.S. Navy UU. detected a submarine B-59 of the USSR near its coasts.
In response, they caused a great explosion in the depth to force them to surface.
The outbreak generated a blackout of the Soviet submersible’s electrical system.
At that time, the three officers in command of the ship did not know if the war with the US had already begun. UU. and they were forced to decide whether or not to launch their missiles against the Americans, according to a National Geographic article.
They were incommunicado and only had their own opinions. Therefore, it was necessary for commanders to agree on a unanimous decision.
Two voted in favor of the attack; only missing the decision of Vasili Arjipov, who finally said: “No”.
It is difficult to know the reason for his response in a tense circumstance, but either out of fear or precaution, history will remember his refusal as the moment in which the greatest nuclear war hitherto known was avoided, since the United States would not have stayed with folded arms if Arjipov approved the attack.
“This is how close we were to destroy each other,” says Pozner.
The next day, negotiations between the presidents of both powers put an end to the missile crisis, the silent conflict that kept humanity on the brink of destruction.
However, the Cold War continued.
There is currently an obvious degree of distrust between the heiress of the USSR (Russia) and the USA. UU., Which continue to monitor each other’s nuclear capabilities.
