To the 45th anniversary of the most dangerous nuclear confrontation between the USSR and the USA
The year 1962 from the Nativity of Christ could be the last year of our era ... And the most violent battle between the Soviet and American fleets in all decades " cold war"was the one that broke out in the late autumn of 1962. In response to the US naval blockade of Cuba, Khrushchev ordered submarines to be thrown into the Caribbean Sea. In case of interception of Soviet ships, they were supposed to strike American ships from under the water.
The choice of the commander-in-chief fell on the 4th squadron of diesel submarines in Polyarny. And there they decided that the 69th brigade, more precisely, its core, consisting of large B-4, B-36, B-59 and B-130 torpedo submarines, was best prepared for real combat operations.
Headache of President Kennedy
It was a real adventure, caused by the circumstances of almost wartime: to send submarines adapted to the conditions of the Arctic into hot tropical seas. It's like poking into the water, not knowing the ford. And no one knew the "ford" in those unknown waters, even the dear hydrographic service. Not a single Soviet submarine has yet cut the depths of the accursed Bermuda Triangle with its propellers. But the most important thing is that our military intelligence did not really know what anti-submarine traps the United States had prepared in case of a big war. The nerves were also strained by the fact that for the first time submariners took with them to long hike nuclear torpedoes.
At the very last moment, the newly-made rear admiral, commander of the 69th brigade, went to the hospital. His military experience clearly calculated: there is no chance of success. And then the captain of the 1st rank Vitaly Agafonov was appointed the flagship of the almost doomed four.
Vitaly Naumovich Agafonov has just celebrated his fortieth birthday. This calm, sensible and quick-witted peasant from Vyatka peasants gave President Kennedy, perhaps, the most acute headache. In any case, for many days in a row the American President has been televising his people about the progress of the great hunt for "Red October". Instead of four Russian boats, Kennedy and his admirals counted five ...
So, the fees were short-lived. And especially secret. No one, including the submarine commanders, knew the end point of the route.
#comm#To keep the military secret of the campaign, the navigators of the assigned ships were given a set of maps of the entire oceans. The communists were ordered to hand over their membership cards to the political department. The boats were taken out of Polyarny to the remote Sayda Bay, cordoned off by a triple line of guards.#/comm#
Four packages with combat orders for the campaign were enclosed in a general package labeled "Top Secret" and "Hand in person to the commander of the 69th submarine brigade." - Recalls Agafonov. - We had to open the packages only with access to the sea, and announce to the crews where and why we were going - already in the ocean. In principle, our task was not the most desperate: to make a secret passage across the Atlantic and settle in the Cuban port of Mariel, a little west of Havana. But, as they say, it was smooth on paper ...
Behind the island of Kildin, the submarines submerged and moved west in march formation.
And ship lags went to count miles and seas - the Barents, Norwegian, Icelandic, North Atlantic, Sargasso ... Their path to the shores of America was blocked by NATO anti-submarine lines, brought into increased activity due to the aggravation of relations between the USA and the USSR. At first, they slipped unnoticed through the line of ship patrols and air patrols between the northernmost cape of Europe, the North Cape, and the Norwegian Bear Island. Then, just as secretly, they crossed the Faroe-Icelandic border, controlled by british navy and American planes taking off from Iceland. Finally, they went out into the open spaces of the Atlantic and headed for Bermuda, where the most important anti-submarine barrier was waiting for them.
From the very first days of the march, they immediately fell into a fierce storm of the autumn ocean. The headquarters set a clearly unrealistic speed for a covert underwater passage - 9 knots. In order to meet the deadlines, it was necessary to surface at night and make up for lost time under diesel engines. I also had to surface to charge the batteries. Here the waves crashed with such force that they tore off the steel sheets of the light hull. It was thrown so that electrolyte splashed out in the battery pits, the sleeping ones were thrown out of their beds, the ribs of the officers of the watch were broken on the gunwale, and the teeth of the signalmen were knocked out with binoculars if they did not dodge the waterfall strike in time.
#comm#The top watch was in rubber wetsuits, chained to the periscope bollards to keep them from being washed overboard. #/comm#
But they were going, just bypassing the checkpoints of the route in due time.
From the Azores we turned to the Bahamas. It got warmer. Outboard water temperature rose to 27 degrees. A new torture began - heat, stuffiness, inferno. Those who are alive today still have perspiration on their foreheads at the word "Sargasso". Yes, it was the tropics, and the heat, despite the end of October, was tropical. Even the depth did not cool the overheated hulls of the boats.
The most important anti-submarine line was approaching - between the island of Newfoundland and the Azores archipelago ... Once upon a time, navigators considered the Sargasso Sea impassable due to thickets of giant algae clinging to the bottoms of ships. The Americans made this myth a reality, only instead of gigantic plants, thousands of kilometers of cables lay along the seabed, connecting hydrophones-listeners scattered over the tops of seamounts into a single notification system. The Caesar system was prepared in case of a big war in the ocean, and this case, the Americans considered, had come: the underwater situation lighting system was put into combat mode. Coastal station operators immediately spotted technical noises in the general ocean biophone. How could Agafonov know that an even more powerful and extensive system of underwater target designation SOSUS lies in wait for his "insects"? One had only to raise the periscope for a minute, as the radiometrist immediately reported on the work of the American radars surveying the surface of the ocean.
Wherever you go, they are waiting for you everywhere! - Says the former assistant commander of the B-36 Anatoly Andreev. - We even began to think that a spy sat down in the General Staff of the Navy, who clearly tracked all our maneuvers.
However, the invisible and inaudible underwater voyeur lay at the bottom of the Sargasso Sea. It was on its transparent arena in all respects that the drama of the Northern Fleet submarines played out. A drama that almost turned into a tragedy...
judgment of fate
Two people decided the fate of their countries, the fate of each of us, and in general the life of every being on the planet: the leaders of the nuclear superpowers - John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. Each of them could give the order for an atomic strike. But there was a third person who, just like they did, solved this painful question for himself. The question is according to the understanding of God, not a mere mortal. He was then as old as the crucified Christ - thirty-three. Neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev knew about him. Even now, no one really knows anything about him ... But he is alive, unlike his high-ranking fellow thinkers, and I am going to his house - to the northern outskirts of the capital: to Medvedkovo.
Retired Captain 1st Rank Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shumkov (on the picture). In that diabolical bullfight of American ships and Soviet submarines, he was the only commander who had experience in firing nuclear torpedoes ...
When the commander of the large ocean-going submarine B-130, Captain 3rd Rank Shumkov, received an order from Moscow - "Switch to a continuous communication session" - he realized that before the war with America, before the new world - thermonuclear - war, there were only a few hours, if not minutes. An uninterrupted communication session means that an order to "use special weapons" on enemy ships is about to arrive. You don't have to go far for the enemy - American destroyers and frigates are tackling right overhead. The main target - the anti-submarine helicopter carrier Essex - is also nearby, within the reach of a long-range torpedo with a nuclear filling.
"Continuous session" - this means that the boat must always be with the antenna and periscope exposed above the water. And this is in the clearest waters of the Sargasso Sea, and this is in a crowd of anti-submarine ships that are looking for Shumkov's boat with might and main and, for sure, will not miss the opportunity to “accidentally” keel along its wheelhouse as soon as they notice the white surf of the periscope. But an order is an order. The radio reconnaissance officer brought the last intercept to the central post:
Comrade Commander, a Neptune anti-submarine aircraft has taken off from Rooseveltrost Air Base. He received orders to have on-board weapons ready for use.
It doesn't get any easier...
#comm#The word that ached in the brain for the second month became a reality: WAR! Two bow tubes were loaded with atomic torpedoes. How they explode, Shumkov knew better than anyone. A year ago, he fired them in Chernaya Bay on Novaya Zemlya.#/comm#
Shumkov did not wait for the anti-submarine aircraft to arrive, which had an order to use airborne weapons, and ordered to dive. However, the Americans have already spotted a submarine that has surfaced for a communication session.
The ships were rushing at full speed with the clear intention of ramming the Russian boat. Forty seconds of the delay of the nearest destroyer and twenty meters of already gained depth saved from a blow to the hull. The howl of water-chopping propellers swept over the heads of the submariners...
And overboard, depth charges were already exploding: there was a rumble from the left... A rumble from the right... Shumkov well remembered the last parting word of the Chief of Staff of the Northern Fleet, Admiral Rassokho: "Weapons should be used only on orders from Moscow. But if they hit on the right cheek, don't turn the left one! "
It exploded so that the lights went out.
Central! Explosion on the bow superstructure! - The speaker shouted in the voice of the commander of the first compartment.
We are being bombed! - Someone clarified the situation gloomily.
They turned on the emergency lighting, and Shumkov immediately felt half a dozen inquisitive glances on him. They made it difficult to concentrate and understand - "What is it, you have already been hit on the right cheek? Should I answer?" And then it dawned on him (and if it hadn't dawned on him?!): this was not a bombing. This is the Americans throwing signal grenades into the water: three explosions according to the international code - an order to immediately surface. But the B-130 was rapidly sinking. The third grenade fell directly on the hull and its explosion jammed the nose rudders.
The depth gauge showed 160 meters. It's up to the surface of the sea. And to the ground - as much as five and a half kilometers.
Central! The sixth drowns! .. - The speaker of the inter-compartment communication screamed and fell silent badly. In the sixth - rowing electric motors are buzzing, there are running stations under voltage ... Splashing salt water there is the same as dousing smoldering coals with gasoline. That's just a fire to complete disaster was not enough! "God save us!" - the prayer of my grandmother, a Siberian Cossack, was recalled by itself ...
Central! The leak has been eliminated! Sixth...
Shumkov's palm wiped cold perspiration from his forehead. Cold! It's in forty-degree hell.
And the hull of the boat rang like whips were being whipped at it. They whipped, but not with scourges, but with sonar pulses. The destroyers, having felt the steel shark with ultrasonic beams, took it into a dense "box". Shumkov tried to break out of it on the miserable remnants of the energy reserve. Twitched to the right, to the left, changed depths - where there. And then, in the central post, the figure of a radio reconnaissance midshipman appeared.
Comrade commander, I beg your pardon - there was a mistake. The radiogram contained not "weapons to prepare", but search equipment.
#comm#In order to have enough electricity for a breakthrough, the commander ordered to turn off the electric stoves in the galley and reduce the lighting in the compartments to the limit. In the stuffy hot twilight, the shadows of people stretched down to their underpants with towels around their necks froze at the devices and screens. Most of all, they took care of the acoustics - the "eyes" of the submarine. #/comm#
Shumkov says: "Surprise - win! There was only one way we could surprise the Americans: turn around on the circulation and rush towards America. And that's what we did ..."
The destroyer-hunters really did not expect this. A half-dead fish escaped from the network of sonar beams and, at the limit of its strength, left the tracking zone. The B-130 was moving away from the pursuers at the speed of... a pedestrian. The old and rather depleted battery, which they did not manage to change before the trip, was squeezing the last ampere-hours out of its plates. The hope that had dawned for a successful outcome of the duel began to fade again, as soon as the acoustician threw into the microphone in a fallen voice:
By bearing ... I hear the work of the sonar.
Shumkov wilted - now they will cover again. He would have known then what a commotion his four-hour detachment on the anti-submarine aircraft carrier Essex, which included unlucky destroyers, had caused. All carrier-based aircraft and helicopters were lifted into the air.
And the speed of the B-130 dropped to one and a half knots. The battery was discharged, as the mechanic reported, almost "to the water." pop up?
Shumkov looked at the wet, emaciated faces of his men, overgrown with black stubble. For the fourth day they breathed not even air - a monstrous aerosol from the vapors of a solarium, hydraulics, sulfuric acid, antimony hydrogen and other battery gases. This infernal suspension corroded not only the light ones - the foam rubber scraps with which the pillows were stuffed. Shumkov had no doubt that his crew would have been breathing this poison for the fifth, sixth, and seventh day, if the energy reserve for underwater travel had allowed. But he dried up before human strength.
Stand in place! To the ascent!
#comm#American helicopter pilots, hovering over the sea, watched with bated breath as the long body of a black monster vaguely glimmered in the transparent blue of the water column. The snake-headed nose and front of the narrow-browed, big-eyed cabin were the first to emerge. B-130 surfaced in positional position. The destroyers immediately took the boat into a tight ring. This is how the guards hold the captured fugitive.#/comm#
Huddled at the rails, American sailors in white tropical shorts and panamas looked with interest at half-naked people in blue divorces, who greedily grabbed fresh air with their mouths. How could they know, after their air-conditioned cabins and cockpits, from what hell these goons had escaped?
An unheard of, unthinkable, murderous cipher message flew to Moscow: "Forced to surface. Latitude ... Longitude ... Surrounded by four US destroyers. I have faulty diesels and a completely discharged battery. I'm trying to repair one of the diesels. I'm waiting for instructions. The commander of the B-130 submarine" .
Radiotelegraphists broadcast this text 17 times. The Americans clogged the communication channel with interference. It took six hours for Moscow to learn about the misfortune of the "one hundred and thirty" ...
All instructions prescribed to emerge only at night, - now Shumkov recalls, - I pulled with the ascent until dawn. Why? Yes, because in the dark it would be easier for them to hide the fact of a ram. In the world, many would see ...
The destroyer Barry lunged at us, aiming her stem at the middle of the boat. We lay in a drift - do not turn away, dodge. I was on the bridge. For about thirty meters the ship turned sharply to the side - we were doused with a rip wave. I immediately passed a semaphore to the flagship Blandy: "Instruct the commander of the destroyer tail number DD 933 to stop hooliganism."
"Barry" stalled the move. He swayed from us half a hundred meters. I saw his commander well - red-haired, in a pressed white shirt, with a pipe in his hand. He looked down at me - the destroyer's bridge was higher than the boat house. A hefty negro sailor stood at a distance - he very expressively showed us at the Hedgehog bow bomber - they say, this is what we will cover you with if you try to dive ...
On large ocean-going submarines of the 641 project, there were three diesel engines, three shaft lines, and three propellers. One will turn sour, there are two more, at worst, you can manage on one. But on the "one hundred and thirty" all three rather new forced engines failed at once. It was much more than the notorious "law of meanness". It smelled not of the mysticism of the Bermuda Triangle, but of the hack work of the workers of the Kolomna plant, through whose fault the drive gears cracked. Spare parts of this kind were not included in the onboard kit. The failed diesel engines were subject only to factory repairs. For the captain of the 2nd rank Shumkov, this was a verdict of fate. An order came from Moscow - to return home, go to the meeting point with the tugboat.
With a sin in half, the minders of Shumkov adjusted one diesel engine and slowly moved to the north-east - to meet with the exiled rescue ship SS-20. Shumkov recalls:
The Americans escorted us to the 60th meridian, which Kennedy defined as the "expulsion line" for Soviet submariners. At parting with "Barry" they prosemaphored for some reason in Ukrainian - "goodbye!" However, a year later I returned there again - on the K-90 nuclear missile carrier. And then another ... The Cold War on the seas was just unfolding.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Shumkov, retired captain of the 1st rank, lives in a one-room apartment together with his wife. On the bookshelf is a model submarine. On the wall carpet is an icon of Nicholas the Wonderworker, the patron saint of sailors.
Probably, only he kept me from the fatal step ... Today, from the mountain of my age, I clearly see on the edge of what abyss we walked. Of course, I could destroy an American aircraft carrier with my nuclear torpedo. But what would then become of Russia? With America? With the whole world?
"Only death could stop us!"
Not prone to pathos and pathos Agafonov (on the picture) brought out these words in his notes on the campaign "according to the Kam plan" as simply and casually as remarks about fuel reserves or sea water temperature. The more convincing they sound...
A few days later, the fate of the Shumkovskaya boat was shared by the B-36, commanded by an experienced submariner, Captain 2nd Rank Alexei Dubivko. B-36 almost broke into the Caribbean Sea. She has already entered the Caicos Strait - the main gate in the ridge of the Bahamas, separating the Sargasso and the Caribbean Seas. However, an unexpected order from the General Staff forced her to leave the strait and take a position at a distance. This order, still incomprehensible to Dubivko, brought the shame of forced ascent to the "thirty-six". Everything was almost the same as Shumkov's. After a two-day duel with the hunting ships, having discharged the battery "to the water", the B-36 surfaced to the delight of the adversary.
"Do you need help?" - the flagship destroyer "Charles Cecil" requested on the light signal, without removing the guns from the boat.
The wolf took pity on the mare! - Dubivko grinned, but at the request he ordered to convey: "Thank you. I do not need help. Please do not interfere with my actions."
But it was precisely for this that the American destroyers gathered around the emerging foxtrot. It was for this that the iron iceberg of an aircraft carrier loomed not far away, from which helicopters took off every now and then to escort the Russian submarine from the air. The reason for such super-dense guardianship soon became clear - the radio intelligence officer brought the commander a form with a transcript of the interception.
#comm#This was President Kennedy's personal order to the commander of the aircraft carrier search group: "To hold the surfaced Russian submarine by all means".#/comm#
In the meantime, all three diesel engines regularly beat the charging of discharged batteries. Abnormally high electrolyte temperature - 65! - dragged out this already lengthy procedure. Every cloud has a silver lining: on the other hand, they managed to repair what could not be repaired under water, and most importantly, to develop a separation maneuver. After the "council in Fili", held in the officer's wardroom, Captain 2nd Rank Dubivko, a cunning person by nature, drew up a final plan of action for himself. The main role in it was given to hydroacoustics. At the right moment, having tuned in to the frequency of the Charles Cecil's messages, they had to clog the receiving path of his sonar with their impulses. In the meantime, turning the bow of the boat in the direction of Cuba, Dubivko waited. I was waiting for the next change of air escorts. When the duty pair of "Sea Kings" - "Sea Kings" - flew off to refuel on an aircraft carrier, and their replacements were still spinning propellers on the deck, Dubivko ordered an "urgent dive". Never before had boats sunk so rapidly. Having gone deep in a matter of seconds, Dubivko abruptly changed course and dived under the flagship destroyer. Then he dived two hundred meters down and at full speed, describing a semicircle, lay down on the return course - away from Cuba. All this time, hydroacoustics, turning on the emitters to the maximum power, blinded the screens of their fellow opponents on the destroyer. So they left, escaping from the "shark cage".
Well, now Kennedy will give them a tear! - Rejoiced in the compartments.
Apparently, he really did, because the American anti-submarines, having gone berserk at the antics of Russian submariners, recouped in full on the third "raised" submarine - B-59 (Commander Captain 2nd Rank Valentin Savitsky). She surfaced in the middle of a search warrant a mile from the USS Randolph, guarded by a dozen cruisers, destroyers and frigates. In the predawn darkness, the Trekker carrier-based attack aircraft dived onto the boat. The heart-rending roar of engines, sheaves of powerful searchlights deafened and blinded everyone who stood on the bridge. In the next second, fire trails broke out from under the wings of the aircraft, which ripped open the sea at the B-59 course.
#comm#The fountains of water raised by shells did not have time to fall, as a second attack aircraft swept from the starboard side at the height of the raised periscope, reinforcing the searchlight attack with a cannon burst along the crests of the waves. A third Trekker immediately flew behind him, discharging its guns along the side of the helpless submarine. Then - fourth, fifth... Seventh... Tenth... Twelfth...#/comm#
As soon as this air-fiery extravaganza ended, the destroyer "Barry" rushed to the boat, must have admired the impression made. From the stern, right and left, three more of his brothers approached: "Whose ship? Name the number! Stop the move!" Requests and commands, amplified by an electric megaphone, rushed from "Barry" in Russian. Savitsky also answered in Russian, pointing the trumpet of the battered "cursor" in the direction of the destroyer:
The ship belongs to the Soviet Union! I follow my course. Your actions lead to dangerous consequences!
From the B-59 antenna, the same cipher addressed to Moscow broke off: "I am forced to surface ... I am subjected to constant provocations by American ships ... I ask for further instructions" Jammers threshed on the air. It was only on the forty-eighth attempt (!) that Moscow finally heard the voice of "half a hundred and nine"...
At low speed, carrying out forced charging of the battery, the hunted submarine stubbornly moved west. All day the destroyers-escorts skillfully put pressure on the psyche: they cut the course under the very stem, went in for a ramming strike and into last moments they turned away sharply, dousing the boat with clubs of exhaust gases and obscene abuse, dropped depth charges, trying to put them in such close proximity that light bulbs burst from hydraulic shocks in the compartments and crumbled cork crumbs from the ceiling. But time worked for the submariners, more precisely for their storage battery, whose cells filled with electric force with every hour of charging.
The B-59 was surrounded by four destroyers, which blocked her maneuver in all directions. The only direction they could not block was the way down - into the depths. Savitsky was insured on the campaign by the chief of staff of the brigade, Captain 2nd Rank Vasily Arkhipov. Together they came up with a wonderful trick ...
From the bridge of the Barry, they noticed how two half-naked Russian sailors pulled a plywood box full of papers onto the aft superstructure. The submariners were obviously trying to get rid of some incriminating documents. Shaking the heavy box, they threw it into the sea. Alas, he did not want to sink - the load was too light. The current quickly carried the box aside. And the vigilant destroyer moved for prey. When the distance between him and the boat grew to five cables, the B-59 disappeared from the surface of the sea in the blink of an eye. It is easy to imagine what the commander of "Berry" said, pulling out of the box the soaked newspapers "On Guard of the Arctic", abstracts of the classics of Marxism-Leninism and other "secret documents".
Having gone to a depth of a quarter of a kilometer, Savitsky fired propeller noise simulators from the stern torpedo tubes. So lizards throw off their tail, distracting their pursuers. While the American acoustics were wondering where the true target was, where the false one was, the B-59 once again changed course and depth, and then, at full speed, broke away from its enemies.
"For those who are in compartments"
Only one boat from the entire detachment - the B-4 - the same one on which the brigade commander Agafonov was, never once showed his cabin to the Americans. Of course, she also got it in order: planes drove her under water at night charging, and explosions of deep-seated grenades whipped along her sides, and she rushed about like a flagged wolf between the cutting-off barriers from sonar buoys, but was it military luck, and more - experience two underwater aces Vitaly Agafonov and commander captain 2nd rank Rurik Ketov - saved her from surfacing under escort.
The hunt for Russian steel sharks lasted more than a month...
We returned to Polyarny just before the New Year. They returned with a shield. They all returned safe and sound. They returned without a single corpse on board, which cannot be said about other much more peaceful "autonomy".
We met the 69th brigade sullenly. A commission of the General Staff has already arrived from Moscow with the task of appointing those responsible "for the loss of secrecy." None of the inspectors wanted to understand either the circumstances of the campaign, or the mistakes of the Moscow staff officers, or the real balance of power.
#comm#Only professionals understood what an unprecedented task the crews of four boats had accomplished. "Alive did not wait!" - they honestly admitted. #/comm#
The commander of the Northern Fleet, Admiral Vladimir Kasatonov, also understood this, for some reason he did not give his submariners to the slaughter of cunning Muscovites.
Marshals from the Ministry of Defense and party bosses from the Central Committee of the CPSU for a long time could not figure out why the submariners had to surface sooner or later. The commanders of the ships were called to answer to the Big House on the Arbat. The analysis was conducted by the First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrey Grechko.
Retired Captain 1st Rank R. Ketov says:
“Questions began to be asked one more wonderful than the other. Kolya Shumkov, for example, reports that he had to surface to charge the batteries. And to him: “What kind of charge is this? What kind of batteries are there?
It's my turn.
Why didn't they shoot at American ships? - Grechko boiled.
There was no order.
What, you couldn’t figure it out yourself without an order?
Here one of the Tsekovsky uncles tapped softly on the glass. Marshal, no matter how he shouted, but heard, immediately fell silent. But for a long time I could not understand why we were forced to surface. Once again they explained that we went to Cuba on diesel submarines, and not on nuclear ones. Got it!
How not on atomic?! - Marshal roared. He pulled off his glasses from his nose and grabbed them on the table. Only the glass flew in small splashes. The top military-political leadership of the country believed that nuclear submarines were sent to the Caribbean Sea. Later I learned that one nuclear boat sent ahead of us, but something broke, and she was forced to return to the base"
And the crafty courtiers did not report to Khrushchev which boats had gone to Cuba. Thank God that Captain 1st Rank Agafonov and his commanders had enough restraint and statesmanship not to shoot at American ships, not to plunge the world into a nuclear apocalypse. And the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy of the USSR, Sergei Gorshkov, crossed out the draft of the devastating order, inscribed: "In those conditions, the submarine commanders knew better how to act, so the commanders should not be punished."
#comm#Someone, and he already knew that even after forced ascent, breaking away from the convoy, submarines last day crisis continued to pose a threat to the US Navy.#/comm#
Most of the sailors in the 69th brigade were born in the stormy forty-first year. Then, in the sixty-second, they were thrown under the American aircraft carriers, as in the forty-first they threw the infantry - their fathers - under the German tanks. Think about this situation: for every Agafonov submarine, there was an anti-submarine aircraft carrier (40 aircraft and helicopters) and over 50 ships equipped with sophisticated search electronics. And this is not to mention the fact that the battlefield was illuminated by the SOSUS and Caesar systems. In the entire history of the world's submarine fleet, no one has ever had to operate in hostile waters against such an armada of anti-submarine forces! Nevertheless, the Fab Four defied most of the American fleet and played their hopeless game with skill and defiance.
The national hero of Russia (though unknown to her) captain 1st rank retired Vitaly Naumovich Agafonov until recently lived in the middle of nowhere - on the far outskirts of Moscow, beyond Vykhino, on Stary Gai Street.
Thirty-eight years after the "presidential hunt" we poured with him a small one "for those who are in the compartments", and he clicked his fingernail first on the edge of the stack, then - twice - on the bottom: so that there were two ascents per dive.
A school map of the world hangs in Agafonov's kitchen, on which three submarines are marked not far from Cuba - B-36, B-59 and B-130 - at the points, as I understand it, where the Americans raised them. I also understand why this card hangs in such an unpresentable place. The high authorities called the campaign unsuccessful, and the reflection of this assessment involuntarily fell on the main work of Agafonov's life, even in his own mind. Even though he himself doesn't think so.
The card is framed with photographs of children and grandchildren. This is like an example for posterity. With the hope that the descendants will understand everything and appreciate it.
October 1, 1962 in the strictest secrecy. Soviet diesel submarines set off from the Polar Sea to the Barents Sea. Each was loaded with 22 combat torpedoes, including one with a nuclear charge. No explanation was given about the nature and nature of the task. The collections were fast.
Four submarines of the 69th brigade of the Northern Fleet went on the campaign: B ("Buki") -4, B-36, B-59 and B-130. The Americans called them "foxtrots". The commander of the B-4 was the captain of the second rank Rurik Ketov, the B-36 was commanded by the captain of the second rank Alexei Dubivko, the B-59 was commanded by the captain of the second rank Valentin Savitsky, the B-130 was commanded by the captain of the second rank Nikolai Shumkov. The chief of staff of the 69th brigade, captain of the second rank Vasily Arkhipov, was on Savitsky's boat ...
"My dear! The tenth day goes by, and we still have no idea where we are going ... Do you know what smell I hate now? The smell of rubber. It is possible to emerge in fits and starts, at night - and all the time at the top in a wet rubber wetsuit. You don’t even really feel the air ... ”(From a letter to the wife of a submarine officer Anatoly Andreev.)
Only in the Barents Sea, having received a special radio signal and opened the packages, did they learn that a course was prescribed for Cuba, to the port of Mariel to "fulfill international duty." They could not know how rapidly the situation on land was changing ... And that in just a few days the world would be on the verge of nuclear war, and that the start of this war will depend directly on them - too.
- Now it's about the Caribbean crisis - a detailed alignment in any history textbook, and then even we, the military, lived more guesswork, - recalls Nikolai Shumkov. - They understood that the situation around the island of Freedom was escalating, but they did not know how everything would turn out. Only when they arrived in the area of the Bahamas, thanks to their radio intelligence officers, they began to receive information and more or less navigate. For example, from the intercepted communications of the enemy, we first learned that Soviet Union secretly, by agreement between Khrushchev and Castro, back in September "exported" to Cuba several anti-aircraft missile, artillery, motorized rifle, aviation and naval units - about 400 missiles with nuclear warheads ...
The actions of the USSR in Cuba were a response to the deployment of American missiles in the immediate vicinity of the Soviet borders - Italy and Turkey. After the landing of American troops in April 1961 on Cuban territory in Playa Giron, Khrushchev and Castro decided to defend Liberty Island with Soviet missiles. To repel a possible attack by American troops on Cuba, the development of an operation code-named "Anadyr" began.
The four foxtrot submarines that set off for Cuba from Polyarny in October 1962 were assigned the role of a trump card in this operation.
On board +70ºС
For some reason, Khrushchev was informed that not diesel, but nuclear submarines had gone on the campaign. And diesel ones cannot work without floating up: every 12 hours they need to rise to recharge the batteries.
As long as we were going to the goal, everything happened like that. But the submariners could not know that back in September 1962, the United States began to prepare for a massive blockade of the island of Freedom: 150 thousand reservists were mobilized, a mass evacuation of residents began in the state of Florida, and then four aircraft carriers, more than thirty escort ships with each - a total of 85 percent of the surface forces of the US Atlantic Fleet. The Americans were preparing for a big bucha - and of course they had no doubt: the Russians would bring their submarines.
- American ships controlled almost every square meter on the way to Cuba,” recalls Aleksey Dubivko. - There could be no question of surfacing. They got up only at night, for a few minutes - six or seven times. As they surfaced, they saw the silhouettes of enemy ships right in front of them. Let's take a breath of air and dive again. Couldn't really charge the batteries. The temperature on the submarines began to cover all conceivable limits, because these are southern latitudes ...
Water in the Bahamas even in October, even at a fairly large depth - 25-30 degrees. The temperature in the electric motor compartments of the submarines reached 70 degrees, in the battery compartments - 65, in the bow and stern compartments - about 45. The sailors literally melted before our eyes. After two weeks, each had lost almost two-thirds of the weight. They looked like victims of Auschwitz. They didn't eat anything, they just wanted to drink. The content of carbon dioxide reached a critical, lethal level. Everyone felt that they were on the verge of death, but ammonia in the nose - and work. Soviet people! On the B-36, 14 people immediately applied to join the party. Among them was lieutenant commander Anatoly Andreev, who got married on the eve of the campaign - it was he who kept the diary quoted above, compiled from letters to his wife. “The second month of our voyage has begun ... Today, three sailors fainted again from overheating. Many become covered with spots and scabs ... It is difficult to write. Sweat drips onto the paper, but there is absolutely nothing to erase it with. Used all the shirts, sheets and even, sorry, underpants. We walk like savages..."
An emergency happened on Shumkov's boat: all three diesel engines failed at once - and on October 25, the B-130 was forced to surface, discovering itself.
According to the submariners, Savitsky's crew suffered the most. In an effort to get our submarine up, the Americans began to bombard the B-59 with signal grenades, which could be mistaken for depth charges. There was no communication with Moscow, although they managed to accept one instruction: “readiness to use weapons “4 hours”. This meant full combat readiness.
The messages of the Americans, delivered by radio intelligence, were also of a threatening nature: "red readiness" was declared on US ships. Kennedy ordered the Navy to hold the submarines by all means and means, and if they approached the American coast for more than three miles, sink ...
In such a situation, Savitsky's nerves could not stand it:
Maybe the war has already begun upstairs, and we are somersaulting here. Now we're going to hit them! We ourselves will die, we will sink them all, but we will not dishonor the fleet!
Forty years later, at the Havana "conference of reconciliation", the submariner Vadim Orlov, a witness to the "moment of truth", recalled this.
Jazz for shadows
Orlov, now a retired captain of the second rank, says:
This "reconciliation conference" in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis was entirely paid for by Robert McNamara, who served in 1962 as US Secretary of Defense. Few people came from Russia: only nine people, including me ... As soon as I arrived in Cuba, foreign journalists encircled, pounced - what happened and how it was ... I told them. And he remembered Savitsky’s words: “Maybe there is already a war upstairs ...”
On October 27, the Americans forced Savitsky's submarine to rise. The crew, who had practically not surfaced for two weeks, were already at their full limit. But for the hot, expressive Valentin Grigorievich, this ascent was equal to mortal disgrace. It was then that the chief of staff of the 69th brigade, Vasily Arkhipov, said the decisive word. Being more restrained and balanced, at the most tense moment on October 27, he managed to cool the ardor of the submarine commander. Witnesses of a stormy explanation between Savitsky and Arkhipov were political officer Ivan Maslennikov and commander of the radio intelligence group Vadim Orlov. They were the first to climb the bridge of the surfaced submarine.
- It happened at four in the morning, - Vadim Pavlovich recalls. - We didn’t have time to breathe deeply, as we went blind. From all sides, the Americans aimed searchlights at us. A helicopter hovered over the B-59. And all around, as far as the eye could see, the signal lights of hundreds of aircraft sonar buoys were flashing. they overlaid us like a wolf with red flags ... Then anti-submarine aircraft began to take off from the deck of the nearest aircraft carrier Randolph - at low level they swept over the B-59, firing machine guns at the boat's course. Then the destroyers took the boat in a vice ... And only after we raised the red flag and gave a semaphore to the Randolph: “The ship belongs to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Stop your provocative actions!” The Americans have calmed down.
On the same day, on the 27th, due to a breakdown, the crew of the B-36 submarine also made a forced emergency ascent. Our submariners - without blood in the face, emaciated, in clothes corroded by sweat - were in sharp contrast to the American sailors and officers in blue tunics. The Americans drank Coke, frankly had fun, even deployed a jazz band on one of the destroyers. According to the recollections of the submariners, all this was worse than direct insults. The Americans danced, while our submarines at that time recharged their batteries, intending to break away from their pursuers again at the first opportunity - and they did this as soon as it began to get dark. The most terrible, culminating day of the Caribbean Crisis - October 27, the day when the world hung in the balance, was experienced ...
The confrontation subsided. In the end, Khrushchev and Kennedy were able to get out of the crisis in peace ...
But what Marine officer Arkhipov?
If we were to award “For Saving the World”, then all four, or rather, five, should have been awarded: both submarine commanders and Arkhipov, - believes Igor Kurdin, chairman of the board of the St. Petersburg Submariners Club. But fate is selective. The lot fell on Arkhipov, and there is probably no point in arguing with this now ...
01.01.2013 11:51:18
Dear readers!
Before you is a collection of memoirs of submarine officers who were directly involved in the events of the Caribbean crisis of 1962. They served on the submarines of the 4th squadron: "B-4", "B-36", "B-59" and "B-130" and were consolidated into the 69th brigade, which became part of the newly created 20th squadrons for further deployment in the Republic of Cuba. According to the plan, the transition was planned in a calm environment on the surface together with a floating base with average speed 10 knots. But the rapid aggravation of the international situation changed all plans. It was decided to relocate not a squadron, but only the 69th submarine brigade, and covertly, at an average speed of 5 knots
Material source -http://flot.com/blog/historyofNVMU/5622.php
. However, in a hurry, no one corrected the speed of 10 knots in the transition task, which put the submarines in the most difficult conditions. The further development of the Caribbean crisis led the Soviet government to the decision to abandon the basing of our ships in Cuba. Submarines of the 69th brigade were tasked with carrying out combat service in assigned positions in the immediate vicinity of the US coast, saturated with naval bases and airfields with the largest contingent of anti-submarine forces and assets in the world, with their concentration in a relatively limited water area. Of the four submarines of the brigade, three were discovered by US ASW and were forced to surface to charge their batteries, after which they successfully left the search area. Submarine "B-4", commander captain 2nd rank R.A. Ketov, was not found. The peculiarity of the memoirs presented in the collection is that they were written by commanders of combat units, groups, chiefs of services in the rank from lieutenant to lieutenant commander. The attentive reader will notice some discrepancies in the coverage of certain facts and events. I think that this should be treated with condescension - these are the properties of human memory. But all the memories are united in one thing - they testify to the courage, endurance and patriotism of the entire personnel of the submarines, shown in extreme conditions. Such qualities of our people cannot but arouse admiration and respect for the military work of our submariners.
Sincerely,
Chernavin Lev Davidovich. Rear Admiral, commander of the 4th submarine squadron of the Northern Fleet from 1974 to 1979. During the Caribbean crisis, the commander of the S-98 submarine, and from 1964 to 1966. commanded PLB-130.
V.N.Kopanev (Murmansk, Russia), V.G.Makurov (Petrozavodsk, Russia). Northern Fleet and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
V.P. Zablotsky. Big hunt in the Sargasso Sea or Soviet submarines against US Navy.
Information about the participation of the submarines "B-4", "B-36", "B-59", "B-130" of the 69th brigade of submarines of the Northern Fleet in the operation "Anadyr" in October-December 1962.
Agafonov Vitaly Naumovich, commander of the 69th submarine brigade of the Northern Fleet, retired captain of the 1st rank. Interview, Moscow, 2001.
Arkhipov Vasily Alexandrovich, chief of staff of the 69th submarine brigade of the Northern Fleet, retired vice admiral. Speech at a conference on October 14, 1997.
Senin Vladimir Prokhorovich, RTS flagship specialist of the 69th submarine brigade, rear admiral, retired. Memories of the campaign on the "B-130".
Ketov Rurik Alexandrovich, commander of the B-4 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. Memories of the campaign of the submarine "B-4" during the Caribbean crisis.
Shekhovets Yevgeny Nikolaevich, commander of the torpedo group of the mine-torpedo warhead of the B-4 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. Memories of Operation Kama.
Dubivko Aleksey Fedoseevich, commander of the B-36 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. From the memories of the participation of the ship in the operation "Kama".
Andreev Anatoly Petrovich, assistant commander of the B-36 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. Memories of the operation "Kama" and the events that determined the participation of "B-36" in the operation "Kama".
Naumov Vladlen Vasilyevich, commander of the navigation warhead of the B-36 submarine, rear admiral, retired. Memories of the participation of the ship in the operation "Kama".
Mukhtarov Aslan Azizovich, commander of the mine-torpedo warhead of the B-36 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. Memories of participation in the Caribbean crisis.
Buynevich Viktor Ivanovich, head of the medical service of the B-36 submarine, retired lieutenant colonel of the medical service. Memoirs about the peculiarities of the sanitary and hygienic situation on submarines of the 641st project and their influence on the activities of the B-36 crew during the Caribbean crisis.
Kobyakov German Alexandrovich, commander of the motor group of the electromechanical warhead of the B-36 submarine, captain of the 2nd rank, retired. Memories of the participation of the ship in the Caribbean crisis.
Anikin Radomir Serafimovich, commander of the OSNAZ group of the B-36 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. Notes on the participation of the ship in the Caribbean crisis.
Mukhtarova Alla Sergeevna, wife of the commander of the warhead-3 of the submarine "B-36". From the memories of the Caribbean crisis.
Leonenko Anatoly Vladimirovich, commander of the mine-torpedo warhead of the B-59 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. Memories of a trip to Cuba.
Mikhailov Viktor Alekseevich, commander of the steering group of the navigational warhead of the B-59 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. Memories of a trip to Cuba.
Orlov Vadim Pavlovich, commander of the OSNAZ group of the B-59 submarine, retired captain of the 2nd rank. From the memories of participation in the Caribbean crisis.
Shumkov Nikolai Alexandrovich, commander of the B-130 submarine, retired captain of the 1st rank. From the memories of the ship's campaign in the Cuban crisis.
Cheprasov Albert Grigoryevich, head of the RTS, commander of the warhead-4 of the B-130 submarine, captain of the 1st rank, retired. Memories of the participation of the ship in the Caribbean crisis.
The Northern Fleet and the Caribbean Crisis of 1962. V.N.Kopanev (Murmansk, Russia), V.G.Makurov (Petrozavodsk, Russia). - Issues of the history and culture of the northern countries and territories No. 4, 2008
First stage
The term "cold war" in international relations is commonly understood as a sharp confrontation, a confrontation between the two superpowers represented by the USSR and the United States and the military-political blocs supporting them (the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic bloc of NATO), which can come to balancing on the brink of war (hot war). ), but do not cross this line. A similar situation developed between the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition after the Great Patriotic War. During the entire period of the Cold War, there were periods of aggravation and thaw in Soviet-American relations, but never before has the world been on the verge of a new world war, which could threaten the existence of all mankind, as in October 1962. Never before have two superpowers been ready apply the most powerful nuclear weapon to achieve their foreign policy goals and ambitions.
The crisis that broke out between the two countries in the autumn of 1962 can be considered one of the climaxes of the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States of America in the Cold War. This confrontation, caused by the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, confronted the world with a real threat of the use of nuclear weapons by the two superpowers. The Cubans themselves refer to this period of their history as the "October Crisis"; in the United States it is better known as the "Cuban Missile Crisis"; in Soviet historiography - as the "Caribbean Crisis".
Under the conditions of the Cold War, the confrontation between the USSR and the USA consisted not only in direct military confrontation, but also in the expansion of their spheres of influence in the world. The Soviet Union sought to support people's liberation movements in various states of the world, considering them as one of the elements in the struggle against "imperialism". In the event of the victory of the revolution, they sought to bring this country to the socialist camp, military bases were built there, and significant resources were invested. Often, assistance from the USSR and other socialist countries was provided free of charge, which attracted the sympathy of many third world countries - Africa and Latin America.
The United States of America acted in a similar way, arranging revolutions and coups in the same regions in order to plant their own “democracy” and pro-Western regimes in them. The United States also had its allies in the form of a number of Western European states, Turkey, and some Asian and African countries. in particular the Republic of South Africa.
For the first time after the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959, the Soviet Union did not have close relations with this country, since the political orientation of the new leaders of Cuba, in particular F. Castro, was not yet clear. But after they began to nationalize American enterprises there, the Americans stopped supplying oil to Cuba, the main source of energy, and buying sugar, the main source of Cuba's exports, this threatened the very existence of the Cuban economy, and, consequently, the existence of a new regime in Cuba. "Island of Liberty"
In his memoirs about the Caribbean crisis, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N.S. Khrushchev writes that shortly after the restoration of diplomatic relations in the summer of 1960, the Soviet Union, after a corresponding appeal for help, “had to urgently organize the delivery of oil to Cuba. At that time, this was a rather difficult task: we did not have a sufficient number of tankers or other suitable sea vessels, and we had to urgently mobilize from among those operating to the detriment of already going traffic, as well as purchase and order tankers in order to provide Cuba with oil products.
The United States of America attempted to overthrow the "Castro" regime by providing armed support to the Cuban counter-revolutionaries, the so-called "contras", "gusanos". The first attempt to overthrow the new Cuban government with the help of the United States was the landing of armed troops on the coast of Cuba in 1960. Shortly after the defeat of the armed invasion of the Contras in Playa Giron on May 1, 1961, Fidel Castro made an official statement about the beginning of the construction of socialism. Thus, Cuba independently, without military or political pressure from the USSR, chose the socialist path of development. N.S. Khrushchev saw great sense in this and considered the defense of the "free island" a very important matter for the socialist bloc as a whole.
The practical development of the plan was led by the head of the Main Operational Directorate (GOU), deputy head General Staff USSR Armed Forces, Secretary of the Defense Council, Colonel-General S. Ivanov. In June 1962, the plan was approved, including by the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Based on it, a group was created Soviet troops in Cuba (GSVK) consisting of: headquarters (133 people), strategic missile forces, ground forces, air defense, air force, navy and logistics units. The total number of the grouping was designated as 44-50 thousand people. Army General I. Pliev was appointed commander of the group.
To be continued
Must be used to the fullest Warsaw Pact- said Dubivko.
Patrolling in the Sargasso Sea in the area indicated to her, the B-36 moved on an economical electric ship during the day, and at night went under the RDP on two diesel engines and charged the batteries. They made their way to an area about two hundred miles south of Bermuda, where they operated for about twelve days. On several occasions in the area, they spotted sonar signals from American destroyers and anti-submarine aircraft, but managed to avoid detection because they moved in silence, avoided search areas, and sat quietly when hunters pursued from behind.
All the while the B-36 eluded the American fleet, Dubivko had the impression that his good friend Nikolai Shumkov, in the B-130, was just a few miles to the west of him and was performing the same maneuvers.
In the order of the General Staff of the Navy, received by them on October 20, "B-130" Shumkov was assigned a patrol area immediately west of the patrol area "B-36" Dubivko. They have not received orders from the brigade commander Agafonov since they entered the Atlantic.
The communications officer, Lieutenant Zhukov, showed extraordinary initiative, spending hours and days without sleep in the stuffy quarters of the fourth compartment. He achieved significant success in listening to tactical radio networks, in which destroyers and aircraft of the search and strike groups of the US Navy worked in microphone mode. By carefully triangulating their radio transmissions, Zhukov, Dubivko, and other watch officers were able to tie the transmitting radio stations to the destroyers and stay on the very edge of their search areas. Sonar conditions turned out to be so in favor of the hunters that the B-36, which did not have a layer of liquid soil to cover, operated mainly at depths of just under a hundred meters and often rose to a depth of thirty meters to extend the antenna for Zhukov and take advantage of his ability to save them unnoticed. The greater the depth, the less effective were their radio interception and analysis of hydroacoustic conditions, which suggested one or another cutting of search areas by the Americans.
Anti-submarine patrol aircraft from the aircraft carriers Essex and Randolph proved to be serious opponents, and Dubivko became worried whenever Tracker S2F aircraft and Seaking helicopters equipped with submersible and towed sonar flew nearby.
The most serious threat to the B-36s was the long-range patrol aircraft, especially the newly introduced Orion R-3 aircraft, which laid out clear figures from the dropped sonar buoys and watched them for hours. Several times Dubivko was amazed when, having risen to periscope depth to survey the surface, he thought that the R-3 had already left the search area in which it had dropped sonar buoys more than twelve hours earlier. To Dubivko's surprise, he saw the same R-3 circling with two out of four feathered engines and remaining over the search area for thirteen hours. Incredible! He argued with Zhukov and said that he was wrong, because there is no turboprop aircraft that can stay above the water for such a long time, but Zhukov convinced him that he was right, proving that, according to the call sign, this is the same R-3 from the squadron base patrol aircraft in Jacksonville, Florida, which appeared in the area thirteen hours ago.
Zhukov also noticed that American pilots were extremely careless in radio communication and often, in the midst of pursuing a possible boat, would depart from lightly coded terminology and use open, uncoded radio traffic in VHF radio networks, which Zhukov and his operators recorded without difficulty. Zhukov discovered that the aircraft carriers Essex and Randolph were the most notorious violators of communication discipline, since they often resorted to open negotiations. When planes took off from or landed on aircraft carriers, the radio network operators on the aircraft carriers were incessantly engaged in barely coded conversations. When the boat was close to aircraft carriers, Zhukov constantly changed intercept operators, giving each of them the opportunity to listen to the chatter on the busy radio networks used to control aircraft during landing and in the holding area. The Russians amused themselves by listening to the pilots who used nicknames and abbreviated call signs to covertly identify themselves. Any slow-thinking intercept operator, having listened to the conversation of the pilots, easily identified them. In the end, some of the Russian operators, who listened to the same voices day and night and knew each pilot by voice and a special manner of negotiating over the radio, began to make bets among themselves on which of the pilots flew this or that aircraft. It was an exciting sport that kept their brains dry during the long hours of non-stop shifts.
Zhukov and his operators also tuned in to regular commercial broadcasts on the VHF and HF bands, including Voice of America and the BBC, which they listened to carefully. They were attracted not only by unusual music, but also by the opportunity to fill the information gap that existed between the compressed orders that they received from time to time with short explanations or without them, and situational information from the General Staff of the Navy transmitted during circular transmissions throughout the fleet on ultra-low frequencies. The orders they received, in condensed and encrypted form, simply said: proceed here, patrol there, and, ironically, interrupt their covert passage to Mariel. Dubivko himself often went aft, to the fourth compartment, and listened there to the assertive broadcasts of Radio Liberty and Voice of America in Russian, whose news reports and analytical reviews were saturated with bile and propaganda. Zhukov and his cameramen had fun listening to the Russian speech spoken by the Voice of America announcers, who were undoubtedly Russian or Ukrainian in origin, but very far from the language spoken in the modern Soviet Union. Speakers on the radio often used long-outdated phrases, which delighted the radio intercept operators aboard the boat.
Comparing snippets of news, Dubivko realized that the Americans reacted sharply to Operation Anadyr and to the deployment of strategic weapons in Cuba. Judging by some broadcasts, it was obvious that the US military was seriously preparing for an amphibious landing on Cuba. They also heard that Soviet special envoy Anastas Mikoyan traveled to Cuba and then to Washington, negotiating with the Americans over a possible compromise on the secret Anadyr plan and easing rapidly growing tensions between the two countries.
Zhukov mentioned to Dubivko that he had heard that the Americans were setting up camps in Florida to receive Soviet prisoners of war.
For sure, the weather there will be better than this winter in Polyarny, - one of the interception operators commented on this news.
And our khaki shorts and tropical shirts will do just fine in Florida.
The political officer quickly hinted to him that there was no need to talk about such things anymore.
The entire crew of the B-36s now knew of the American naval blockade and realized that approximately eighty-five percent of the US Navy ships in the Atlantic were clustered above them in combat readiness.
Captain 2nd Rank Rurik Ketov, commander of "B-4"
norwegian sea
The captain of the second rank Rurik Ketov was an experienced submariner, and the B-4 was the second boat he commanded. The first boat on which he was the commander was the diesel "S-200" "Project 613", which had an average range. After a quick promotion from first mate to commander, he made two trips to the west coast of Great Britain on this boat, and later he was entrusted with the command of one of the new Project 641 long-range diesel submarines, this boat became the B-4; she entered the fleet in 1961 and had the privilege of owning the personal name "Chelyabinsk Komsomolets". No one really knew what was hidden behind this name, but, undoubtedly, it was given in honor of some party event in the Ural city lying to the east. Ketov knew one thing - to command such a boat is a great honor.
Sergey Vasiliev, 04/20/2012
Dear editors!
With great interest I read in the March issue of the newspaper the article “In Sarov they showed me Kuzka's mother!”. (“President”, No. 3 (293) March 2012). The publication organically intertwines mysterious antiquity and recent history associated with the tireless and noble work of domestic scientists to create the most advanced and most powerful weapons in the world to protect our state. As you know, nuclear, thermonuclear and hydrogen bombs are weapons of deterrence. If we didn’t have all this, the American hawks with their, as you rightly wrote, “thoroughly militarized souls” would have pecked at us half a century ago. Modern youth knows practically nothing about what in recent history has been called the Caribbean Crisis. No wonder: at that time, Vladimir Putin was in elementary school, and Dima Medvedev was not yet in the world. If possible, tell us about that difficult time when the USSR and the USA really stood on the verge of a "hot war"...
Sergey Lukyanenko
The hero is proud of naval service
So, the topic was suggested by the letter.
Books have been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Historians and publicists of the Soviet era have repeatedly addressed this topic.
But in this case, it is much more interesting for us to get acquainted with the testimonies of eyewitnesses, who, being in the thick of events, sometimes did not even know about their true scale.
Understanding came later - over the years, over time.
At that time, the future vice admiral and head of the Caspian Higher naval school them. CM. Kirov Vasily Alexandrovich Arkhipov was not even forty years old. Let us turn to his memoirs, published decades later.
As a Russian officer, I consider my naval fate happy. My generation was not only a witness, but also a participant in the development and creation of a powerful ocean-going nuclear missile fleet and modern naval bases in all the maritime theaters of our country. Since the seventies, the naval ensign of the ships of our Motherland has been developed everywhere, on all seas and oceans, where its interests were affected.
I had to start my officer service in the mid-forties in the smallest position on the smallest submarine, which was called the "Baby". From the beginning of the 50s, service continued on medium and large post-war submarines with a completely new solution to a number of technical problems in the management of submarines (submarines) with new weapons. These submarines, in terms of their combat capabilities, were the best diesel-electric submarines in the world. In the early 60s, at the dawn of the creation of the nuclear fleet, the command sent me for an internship. On a nuclear missile submarine. Unfortunately, a serious nuclear reactor accident occurred on it. And as a result of this - radiation exposure of personnel. After treatment, the doctors issued a verdict - not fit for service on nuclear ships. But in the course of my future service, I knew and visited most of the new ships entering service. Changes in their technical and combat capabilities gave rise not only to pride in the country, which managed to design them in a short time and bring the idea to life, but also to amazement. I talk about my service only to emphasize that technological revolution in the country, was especially clearly manifested in the progress in the development of the naval composition of the Navy. At one time, F. Engels said that the technical power of a state can be judged by the ship that this state is able to build. The post-war history of the development of the Navy of our country, as well as the fleets of the leading states of the world, confirmed the correctness of this conclusion. After all, a modern ship is building the entire state - hundreds of institutes, laboratories, training grounds, factories. Unfortunately, from the messages mass media we know that Russia is currently unable not only to build, but also to complete the construction of ships standing on stocks ...
During the years of naval service, there was a lot of joyful and sad, solemn and tragic. But admiration and admiration for the courage, heroism, endurance, patriotism of sailors, foremen and officers in the most extreme situations was especially sharply deposited in my memory. This had to be felt in the post-war period, but in conditions close to combat. During the transition of four submarines of the brigade, where I was chief of staff, during the Caribbean crisis to Cuba. Most of the US naval and air anti-submarine assets were deployed against our four submarines. The prolonged provocative actions of the Americans with firing from aircraft cannons, launching explosive cartridges, flying planes and helicopters at extremely low altitudes, maneuvering ships at dangerous distances and heading angles, violating all international rules and international agreements on ensuring the safety of navigation at sea created a critical situation. From which the personnel of submarines came out with honor and proved to be a worthy heir to the boundless courage of the submariners of the Great Patriotic War.
And now let's turn to a unique document of our recent history. To a dry and detailed reference on the Caribbean crisis, signed not only by retired Vice Admiral Vasily Arkhipov, but also by the heroic captains V. Agafonov, A. Dubivko, N. Shumkov and Yu. Zhukov. So, before you - with minor reductions - a certificate "0b the participation of submarines" B-4 "B-36", "B-59", "B-130" of the 69th brigade of submarines of the Northern Fleet in the operation "Anadyr" in period October-December 1962.
- IN Navy preparations for the operation "Anadyr" were carried out under the code "Operation Kama". Preparations for the operation began in March-April 1962.
- To participate in the operation, the 20 operational squadron of submarines was formed, consisting of: 69 brigades of diesel torpedo submarines 641 of the B-4, B-36, B-59, B-130 projects; divisions of four diesel missile submarines of project 629 with three ballistic missiles on board each and a coastal submarine base. The flagship of the squadron - the floating base of submarines "D. Galkin.
- Squadron commander - Rear Admiral Rybalko D.F., squadron chief of staff - captain 1st rank Baranov N.M., head of the political department of the squadron - captain 1st rank Vasiliev B.A. The commander of the 69th submarine brigade, Rear Admiral Evseev, after a briefing in Moscow, unexpectedly went to the hospital, and the day before the operation, Captain 1st Rank Agafonov Vitaly Naumovich was appointed commander of the brigade. Chief of Staff of the Brigade - Captain 2nd Rank Arkhipov Vasily Alexandrovich, Deputy Commander of the Brigade for Political Affairs - Captain 2nd Rank Smirnov B.N. Submarine commanders of 69 BPLs: "B-4" - captain 2nd rank Ketov R.A., "B-36" - captain 2nd rank Dubivko A.F., "B-59" - captain 2nd rank Savitsky V.S. , "B-130" - captain 2nd rank Shumkov N.A.
- Preparations for the operation ended on September 30, 1962, with the loading of 21 torpedoes with a conventional charge and one torpedo with a nuclear charge on each submarine.
- The briefing of the submarine commanders and seeing off for the operation was conducted by the First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Fokin V.A. and Chief of Staff of the Northern Fleet, Vice Admiral Rassokho A.I. Admiral V. A. Fokin spoke to the personnel of the 69th submarine brigade and said that the brigade had to fulfill a special task of the Soviet government: to make a HIDDEN crossing of the ocean and arrive at a new base in one of the friendly countries. A few hours before the exit, the submarine commanders were handed "top secret" packages that were allowed to be opened after leaving the Kola Bay. The personnel of the brigade were allowed to report on the country of the new base only with the release of submarines in Atlantic Ocean. The submarine entered the operation at 4 am on October 1, 1962 from the city of Sayda. Missile submarines, the headquarters of the 20th squadron and the floating base of the submarine "D. Galkin" were supposed to leave after the arrival of the submarines of the 69th brigade of the submarine to Cuba, but the order for their exit was not followed. The coastal base of the submarine of the 20th squadron was loaded onto the ships of the Ministry of the Navy, arrived in Cuba in October and stayed there.
- Overcoming the opposition of the Norwegian, Faroe-Icelandic anti-submarine lines and the line of about. Newfoundland - Azores - four submarines of the 69th brigade arrived on the 20th of October in the designated areas of the Sargasso Sea, east of about. Cuba.
By the time the submarine arrived in the designated areas, the Americans discovered the deployment of missiles on about. Cuba and Soviet-American relations have reached a critical moment.
On October 22, a naval blockade of the island was carried out. For its implementation and the search for our submarines, the US Navy deployed over 200 combat surface ships, up to 200 base patrol aircraft, 4 aircraft carrier search strike groups with 50-60 aircraft on board and escort ships, with the task of searching, detecting and destroying our submarines with the outbreak of hostilities. To detect submarines of the brigade, the stationary sonar underwater reconnaissance and surveillance system "SOSUS" was also involved, as well as coastal electronic warfare equipment to create radio interference in the control system of our submarines. At almost all frequencies, at the beginning of the transmission of information from Moscow, jamming transmitters were turned on, which led to a delay in receiving orders from the General Staff of the Navy for a period of several hours to a day.
Thus, against four Soviet diesel submarines, the US Navy concentrated forces hundreds of times superior to ours in terms of combat capabilities. Naturally, with such a saturation of anti-submarine forces in a limited area of \u200b\u200bthe ocean, the issue of detecting diesel submarines forced to surface to charge the battery was a matter of time, which soon happened.
Submarine "B-130" floated to the surface to repair the failed all three diesel engines (manufacturing defect) and was discovered by anti-submarine aircraft, and then by surface ships.
When the fact of the presence of our submarines in the Sargasso Sea became obvious, the activity of the US anti-submarine forces became even more intensified.
As a result, they were discovered for several days, pursued and surfaced to the surface due to the complete discharge of the battery:
- submarine "B-36" - anti-submarine aviation and the destroyer of the radar patrol "Charles R. Sessil", tail number 545;
- submarine "B-59" - carrier-based aircraft and security ships "Bury", "Lowry", "Bell", "Beach", "Beal", "Eaton", "Koni", "Conway", "Merey" anti-submarine aircraft carrier "Randolph";
- the submarine "B-4" was discovered by anti-submarine aircraft, but, having a full charge of the battery, evaded pursuit and did not surface on the surface.
In the course of detecting and pursuing submarines, anti-submarine forces actively used explosive sources of Julie-Jezebel detection systems, the explosions of which cannot be distinguished from explosions of depth charges. It is possible that depth charges were also used, because. on three submarines, part of the antenna radio communication devices was damaged, which significantly hampered the reception and transmission of information.
In one of the episodes of the persecution, the sonar of the B-36 submarine detected the noise of the propellers of a torpedo fired at the submarine, and when the torpedo did not aim, because. The submarine quickly sank, the destroyer went to ram and passed over the wheelhouse and the central post of the boat. Fortunately, the depth of immersion at this point was already 30 meters. When the submarine "B-36" surfaced, the guns and torpedo tubes of the destroyer were uncovered, prepared for firing and directed at the submarine.
When the B-59 submarine surfaced, aircraft and helicopters from the RANDOLF aircraft carrier circled the submarine 12 times at altitudes of 20-100 meters. During each flight, aircraft cannons were fired (a total of about 300 shots were fired), and when flying over the submarine, searchlights were turned on to blind people on the bridge of the submarine.
Helicopters lowered the towed GAS along the course of the submarine and dropped explosive devices, hovered over the bridge of the submarine and demonstratively filmed. The destroyers maneuvered around the submarine at a distance of 20-50 meters with a demonstrative aiming of guns at the submarine, when crossing the course of the submarine they dropped depth charges and sonar buoys, raised flag signals and shouted into a megaphone demanding to stop the course. Similar actions were carried out with respect to the B-130 submarine.
The discovery of submarines of the 69th brigade was also facilitated by their inability to operate in tropical conditions:
- lack of an air conditioning system, when the temperature overboard is over 30 degrees;
- lack of a battery cooling system when charging;
- high: humidity in compartments and sea water salinity;
- the temperature at individual combat posts (hydroacoustics, electricians, mechanics), reaching up to 50-60 degrees.
All this led to the failure of the material part (decrease in the insulation resistance of antenna devices), salinization of water coolers, depressurization of outboard openings and cable entries, as well as to thermal shock and fainting among submariners. Limited fresh water supplies did not allow to give out more than 250 grams of water per day per person, and this is in conditions of severe sweating and dehydration of the body. The inability to wash off the sweat and dirt led to one hundred percent sickness of the personnel with prickly heat in a particularly severe purulent form.
In order to somehow improve living conditions, submarine commanders were forced to surface to ventilate compartments, thereby reducing the stealth of submarines, which could lead to their detection.
However, the submarine commanders and crews strove to fulfill their tasks no matter what. The personnel of all submarines in the operation showed good endurance, retained high morale in the best traditions of the submariners of the Great Patriotic War. So, after surfacing, charging the battery and the absence of an order to use weapons from the Central Command Post of the Navy, which controlled the submarines, the commanders of the B-36 and B-59 submarines independently decided to dive and detach from anti-submarine forces, which they did successfully.
Only the high responsibility, discipline and courage of the submarine commanders prevented the unleashing of a nuclear conflict in response to the provocative actions of the US Navy.
On November 14, 1962, by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, the submarines of the 69th brigade began a covert return to the Kola Bay, where they arrived safely in early December 1962.
- Immediately with the return of the submarines to the base, they were met by a commission of the Main Headquarters of the Navy and the command of the Northern Fleet, who checked the results of the campaign, drew up an inspection report and submitted a report to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, and then to the Minister of Defense of the USSR and to the Central Committee of the CPSU.
At a meeting with the personnel of the returning submarines, a member of the Military Council - the head of the Political Directorate of the Northern Fleet, Vice Admiral Sizov, summing up the campaign, spoke frankly: "WE DID NOT WAIT FOR YOU ALIVE."
With the arrival of submarines in the place of permanent deployment of the city of Polyarny, the 20th operational submarine squadron was disbanded and the 69th submarine brigade became part of the 4th submarine squadron of the Northern Fleet.
- In January 1963, the chief of staff of the 69th submarine brigade and the commanders of the B-4, B-36, and B-130 submarines were summoned to Moscow, where they reported on the results of the campaign to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, and then to the First Deputy Minister Defense of the USSR Marshal of the Soviet Union A. A. Grechko, who expressed dissatisfaction with the actions of the submariners and was very surprised when he found out. that the submarines participating in the Anadyr operation were not nuclear, but diesel.
But for the first time after the Great Patriotic War, diesel submarines came face to face with active opposition from the entire powerful anti-submarine system of the United States, in conditions when the world was on the verge of unleashing a nuclear missile war, and came out of this clash with honor.
In April 1963, when Fidel Castro arrived in the Soviet Union through the Northern Fleet for the celebration of May 1, the submarines of the 69th submarine brigade were lined up to meet him on the roads of the city of Severomorsk, and the B-36 submarine, together with a diesel missile submarine was put on the pier. Fidel Castro was introduced to the submarine "B-36" as participating in the Caribbean crisis. But due to lack of time, he only visited the missile submarine, which was planned to participate in the Anadyr operation.
No reward, no punishment...
Reference is reference, but there is also more living evidence that has been seeping into the Russian media since the mid-1990s. What did the newspapers write about this?
On July 19, 1962, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev arrived in Murmansk "to get acquainted with the life of the northerners." The main purpose of the visit was to see the latest models of naval weapons in action. Operation Anadyr was already underway at that time. In Leningrad, Odessa and other port cities, weapons intended for deployment in Cuba were loaded on ships, while the Murmansk military demonstration, according to the plan of the organizers, was supposed to confirm Khrushchev in the idea that the course towards a forceful solution to the Caribbean problem relies on a solid base.
The idea succeeded. The underwater launch of a ballistic missile produced a huge effect. When she, a few seconds after the submarine entered the combat position, went into the sky like a bright star, the Soviet leader expressed utter delight. There was, of course, one annoying detail that was not mentioned. In fact, the USSR Navy at that moment did not yet have in service submarines capable of delivering nuclear missile strikes from under the water. So far, their tests have only been completed. So Nikita Sergeevich was simply misled. As, however, and many land generals, who believed that the country already has a powerful fleet of nuclear missile carriers.
The submarines that went to Cuba according to the Anadyr operation plan had nuclear weapons on board, but in the form of warheads for conventional torpedoes. Rurik Ketov, who commanded one of the boats on that campaign, tells about the details.
The relocation of the squadron to Cuba was being prepared for about a year in strict secrecy. Three or four months before the start of the operation, the high command clarified that the division of missile submarines would not go to the Atlantic in full force. A month before the start - a new change: not even our entire team is going, but only four boats. The crews were not told about the goals and objectives of the campaign, but they were ordered to hand over warm clothes, and in return they were given a tropical uniform. Finally, they ordered to take on board torpedoes with nuclear charges. One for each boat.
We left at four in the morning on October 1, 1962. The deputy commander-in-chief of the USSR Navy, Admiral Fokin, arrived at the farewell, and handed each commander a piece of tissue paper - a “combat order”. Neither before nor since have I received such orders: a few words about a covert passage to the Caribbean and no specific instructions.
Fokin asks: "What is not clear to you?". Pause. Vasily Arkhipov, chief of staff of the brigade, says: “It is not clear, Comrade Admiral, why we took atomic weapons. When and how should we apply it? Fokin forcefully squeezed out something about informational powers, which he was not given. At this point, Admiral Rassokho, the chief of staff of the fleet, exploded: “Okay, guys! Record in your journals when special weapons should be used. First, when you will be bombed and you will get a hole in the hull. Secondly, when you emerge, they will fire at you and again there will be a hole. Third, by special order from Moscow. All!"
Before going out to sea, the commanders of the four boats held a short meeting. It was clear to all of us that secrecy, brought to the point of idiocy, requires most of the time to remain at a depth, At the same time, we will not be able to develop a speed of more than ten knots, we will not reach the given area by the deadline, Therefore, we agreed: first we dive, fifty miles we go to the north under the water. And then we surface and scratch at full surface speed to the first NATO anti-submarine line.
On land, meanwhile, the crisis between the USSR and the USA was growing with might and main. On October 22, President Kennedy announced the complete blockade Cuba from the sea and from the air. Khrushchev, for his part, invited William Knox, president of the Westinghouse Corporation, who happened to be in Moscow, to talk.
About him it was known that he was closely connected with the US administration. The Soviet leader declared that blocking and searching our ships on the high seas would henceforth be considered piracy. And if the United States behaves in this way, then he, Khrushchev, "will order his submarines to sink American warships."
The crews of our submarines knew nothing about the passions boiling up on both sides of the ocean. But they quite felt the growing attention to themselves from the US Navy. Against the Russian four, their command moved a whole armada ...
The commander of the brigade Agafonov went with us to Cuba. He ordered the boat, commanded by Aleksey Dubivko, to move forward at maximum speed and, neglecting secrecy, reconnoiter the situation. Near the Great Antilles Pass, Dubivko discovered an American destroyer. They also spotted him, they hunted him for two days. As a result, the batteries ran down on the boat, Alexei had to surface to recharge. However, he broke away from the persecution.
Nikolai Shumkov had an accident with diesels. For some time he dragged the Americans behind him on some electric motors, at the same time trying to make repairs right at sea. Nothing came of it, and, in the end, our transport ship had to take Nikolai's boat in tow and take it to the native shores in a surface position.
But the most dramatic episode is connected with the boat of Vasily Savitsky. When they surfaced to recharge, they found an anti-submarine aircraft directly above them. He began dropping markers, marking the target. The search and strike group was already turning in their direction in their entirety. Vasily - again under the water. The Americans began to bomb him. But since Savitsky's batteries had zero charge, he surfaced again at night. Right into the arms of US destroyers.
Vasily jumped out onto the bridge, followed by Arkhipov, the chief of staff of the brigade. The signalman was the third to rise, but got stuck in the hatch, caught on something with a portable searchlight. At this time, an aircraft dives onto the boat and hits with tracers. Several bullets hit the hull. Savitsky commands: “All down! Torpedo tubes on tovs! (We were given an order: to shoot with an atomic torpedo if you get hit).
Savitsky is the first to jump down - right on the shoulders of the signalman, who cannot free his searchlight in any way. For this reason, Chief of Staff Arkhipov lingers on the surface and then notices that the Americans are signaling something. He stopped Savitsky, pulled out a signalman with a searchlight. They told the Americans: "Stop the provocation." The planes retired, but the ships came even closer, took in the ring. Under their supervision, Savitsky recharged the batteries and again went under water. Our old diesel boats, unlike subsequent nuclear boats, inevitably had to surface when it was no longer possible to stay further under water. It's not just the batteries, there was nothing to breathe. The temperature in the compartments is plus 50 Celsius. The electrolyte boiled, poisoning people with acid fumes. From time to time, at least a breath of oxygen was needed. When surfacing, my boat was also found, also pursued and bombed. But - luckily, he broke away. Although once really almost got stuck.
Some of the wise staff officers came up with the idea: to appoint a so-called collective communication session, during which all the radiograms addressed to us over the past day would be duplicated. Session time - zero hours in Moscow. In the Western Hemisphere, this is just about four days. Given the dense saturation of anti-submarine weapons that the Americans possessed there, it was not difficult to find us.
And now they report to me: "Comrade commander, right on the course - a dangerous signal, a sonar buoy is working." This means that a naval reconnaissance aircraft is hanging somewhere above us. I give the command to go deep. And the head of communications reminds that it is just time to surface to receive a "collective" radiogram. Naturally, I say that I will not come up. Then he goes with a report to the brigade commander Agafonov, who keeps his pennant on my boat.
We quarreled a bit with the senior boss, Agafonov insists on surfacing. I had to declare that in such a situation I was forced to resign as commander. He went to the cabin, connected the phone to the central post. Agafonov, meanwhile, orders to listen to the horizon. Since everything seems to be clean, the boat starts to float. I could not stand it, I moved to the central post. I raised the anti-aircraft periscope - I see the plane. But Agafonov does not see anything from his command compartment.
When he saw it, he gave the order to evade. Right, but too late. We maneuvered for two hours, accompanied by a series of depth charges ... Somehow, we lasted until the saving night. They surfaced, recharged, again went to Cuba. Only the communication session was missed, which was later blamed on us. They were there, you know, worried!
The peak of the crisis had already passed, the Soviet Union pledged to return nuclear missiles home, and three Foxtrots (a type of our boats according to NATO classification) continued their dances around Cuba. In truth, it looked more like a protracted bullfight: for almost a month - daily bombings, maneuvers at the limit of strength, an exhausting pursuit. We did not dare to surface again until we received the order to leave. On New Year's Eve we returned to the base.
On January 3, I, Arkhipov, Dubivko and Shumkov were summoned to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy S.G. Gorshkov. Sergei Georgievich said: tomorrow we will be at the report of Nikita Sergeyevich, we must prepare well for this. And then he began to indicate what should be said and what should not be said. Then he gave us something like an exam. The meeting with Khrushchev did not take place, but we were called to the General Staff every day. And constantly made adjustments to the script. The result was a story that had little to do with reality.
In the second half of January, the question was heard in the Ministry of Defense. Marshal Grechko chaired the meeting. And our four were accompanied by Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Admiral Fokin and Captain 1st Rank Sergeev from the General Staff. Crowded with people - a full hall. Mostly army and aviation generals were present. But there were also two uncles in civilian clothes sitting on the presidium. Curators from the Central Committee of the CPSU.
“Nikita Sergeevich,” Grechko began, “instructed me to deal with this dirty business. Ugliness! Russia has been disgraced!” At these words, Admiral Fokin fainted, he was carried out on a stretcher. “Who is your senior here?!”, Grechko did not let up. The representative of the General Staff sat as if glued. Silent. Then Arkhipov got up: “I am the eldest, Comrade Marshal. Brigade Chief of Staff.
"Come here, report." Mindful of the briefing of the General Staff, Vasily pulled out a summary and began to present a version based on it, edited many times by the leadership. “What are you shaking with your paper? roared the generals. “Speak the truth in your own words!” Then Arkhipov began to report how everything was in reality.
We supplemented. They showed the order on tissue paper. Grechko took the sheet with two fingers and laughed: “We didn’t give military orders on papifax during the war!” Send questions, one another steeper. “How far away were the American ships? Why didn't you shoot them? Was there no order? Couldn’t they figure it out without an order?!” Shumkov explained for a long time that the ascent to charge the batteries was a forced and inevitable matter. What batteries? shouted the generals. - What charge?
Grechko himself for a long time could not understand the need for such an ascent, he was very angry for the violation of secrecy. I had to clarify again: we went to Cuba on diesel submarines, and not on nuclear ones. “How not on atomic ones ?!” the marshal shouted in a terrible voice. He pulled his glasses off his nose and slammed them so hard on the table that only splashes flew. The top military-political leadership of the country sincerely believed that new nuclear submarines were sent to the Caribbean. Later it became known to me that one such was indeed sent ahead of us, without telling us anything. But something broke there, and the submarine had to return to base.
After that meeting, we, the boat commanders, were simply returned to our duty station. Neither rewarded nor punished. But they did not miss a chance to remind that in an extremely responsible situation we acted incorrectly. Although, to be honest, the task in the form in which it was formulated for us was generally completed. Moreover, we have practiced interaction in a remote area of the World Ocean. Gained experience in overcoming anti-submarine lines and evading pursuit. They experienced in their own skin the methods of combating the American fleet with enemy submarines. The communication system was improved just after our trip to Cuba, and the submarines themselves were re-equipped in relation to the conditions of operations in tropical latitudes ...
