Cold War Warriors
The Cuban Missile Crisis - Part 1
Commander John Murphy, USN Retired
Late in October 1962 the U.S.
Quarantine forces became concerned about the presence of
four or more Soviet Foxtrot class submarines ( diesels )
operating in or near the Quarantine line which was then
about 500 miles east of Cuba. What we did not know back
then was that these submarines all carried nuclear
weapons.
This fact became known in 2002
when it was published in a Russian book "The Cuban Samba
of the Foxtrot Quartette". Something that President
Kennedy's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009
) believed could have been a game changer. That, at the
time of the incident, Kennedy was being pushed to invade
Cuba. McNamara believed that the Soviets might have
responded to such an invasion by firing their nuclear
torpedoes which could have triggered nuclear war. Sound
crazy? Read on!
As I recall the incident, a single
diesel submarine was being aggressively pursued by U.S.
Navy ships and aircraft on October 27, 1962. I remember
thinking " We must be driving them crazy. "I would not
learn how close I was to the truth for another forty
years. At the time, I thought that this minor incident was
almost laughable. Little did I know back then - that the
encounter came very close to triggering World War III. At
a time when we thought the crisis was coming to and end.
We had been tracking four or five
Soviet Foxtrot submarines for over a month and knew that
they were now in the area of our Quarantine forces east of
Cuba. The U.S. Navy had its best, antisubmarine forces
near the Quarantine line. Ships and aircraft backed up by
long range, surveillance sensor systems such as SOSUS
(Sound Surveillance System) and BULLSEYE (Radio Direction
Finding) which had tracked the subs since they left their
bases near Murmansk.
Once a submarine entered the
Quarantine area it would be detected and then pursued
aggressively. On the October 27th the group of four Soviet
Foxtrots was in the Quarantine area and being harassed
with practice depth charges while submerged. After 18
hours of this treatment, one of the Foxtrots came to the
surface and was challenged by the destroyer - USS Cecil
(DD 835).
The USS Cecil shadowing a Soviet Foxtrot Submarine
When asked for its name - the sub
responded with ?????? (KORABL). Shortly afterwards, a
sailor came running into our Intelligence Unit at CINCLANT
Hqs saying " Mr. Murphy, we challenged that Foxtrot that
Cecil just surfaced and he gave us his name. Can you
translate it for us ? " I told him that the name he had
been given meant " SHIP " in Russian. The Foxtrot's
commander had shown some character and wit at a stressful
time.
Forty years later I heard the
Soviet version of the incident for the first time. It was
a much grimmer tale to say the least. In the Russian book
" The Cuban Samba of the Foxtrot Quartette " ( Military
Parade Magazine by Alexander Mozgovoi, 2002 ) the intense
pursuit of a group of four Foxtrot submarines enroute Cuba
is described in detail. To the Soviets, we literally had
the four Foxtrots dancing a Cuban samba. The book takes
particular note of a Foxtrot commanded by Captain Valentin
Savitskiy. He tells how the Americans spotted it on the
surface and how the sub submerged to escape further
contact.
American ships then encircled the
sub and began dropping "stun grenades". The attacks went
on for several hours and Savitskiy's crew was in shock.
Oxygen was running low and the heat in the submarine was
up to 122 degrees Farenheit. After a particularly large
explosion burst near the sub, Captain Savitskiy became
enraged and ordered the arming of a nuclear torpedo."
There may be a war going on up
there and we are trapped down here doing somersaults! We
are going to hit them hard. We may die ourselves. We will
sink them, but not stain our Navy's honor." Savitskiy
eventually controlled his temper and ordered the Foxtrot
to surface where it was met by U.S. Navy ships and a
helicopter which bathed them with a searchlight. "We felt
like a wolf hunted down "an officer recalled." It was a
beautiful, but frightful scene."
Author Mozgovoy notes that use of
nuclear weapons would have required the specific
authorization of the Soviet Defense Minister, but the
aggressive U.S. Navy pursuit of Savitskiy's submarine made
it impossible for him to surface for his regular
communications sessions with Moscow. Mozgovoy also notes
that none of the other three Foxtrot submarine commanders
considered using their nuclear weapons, but that "Savitskiy's
crew was under terrible pressure at the moment - both
psychologically and physically."
We know now that the four Foxtrots
were trying to transit past our Quarantine line to reach a
new, Soviet submarine base being created for them at
Cienfuegos, Cuba. That they left their base area near
Murmansk in late September and transited southward through
the Atlantic.
I became particularly conscious of
them right about the time we deployed the Quarantine Force
(Monday, 22 October, 1962) because it seemed we were
always seeing reports of a Foxtrot on the surface. At the
time we thought this was a single sub that was having
problems of some sort. Also, we had a lot more to worry
about than one Foxtrot. There were probably about 24
diesel and nuclear submarines operating in the Atlantic
and Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were
more worried about the nuclear submarines because of their
speed and ability to remain submerged so long.
They were not as "observable" as
the four Foxtrots. Also, late October 1962 was a
transitional time in the Cuban Missile Crisis. It looked
like things were going well, but the situation remained
volatile. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev were aware that a
seemingly minor incident could still trigger nuclear war.
Khrushchev in his exchanges with Kennedy had noted "If war
should break out there is no way either of us can control
what happens next. This is the logic of war". Also
Khrushchev noted "They would" clash like blind moles, and
then reciprocal extermination would begin."
By October 27 we had seen that the
Soviets were not going to try and "run" the Quarantine
line with ships enroute Cuba. Also, Khrushchev had told us
that he was backing off and would remove his missiles. Now
we just had to stay alert and keep track of the Bloc ships
to the east of the Quarantine line and start inspecting
any and all ships carrying the Soviet weapons out of Cuba.
In 1992 I told this story to a
group of Soviet scientists and Soviet naval officers who
had helped design the Foxtrot class submarines at the
prestigious, Krylov Shipbuilding Institute in St.
Petersburg. They loved it. Especially when I came to the
punch line and asked the KGB officer across from me to
translate ( for the Americans present ) the response to
USS Cecil's challenge. " ?-?-?-?-?-? ". "S-H-I-P"! The
room exploded in laughter. A great joke in 1992. Not so
funny when we learned about Captain Savitskiy's real
mindset in 2002 - 40 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Have your own Cold War Warriors' story?
If so, send them to us at history@emmitsburg.net
Read other articles by Commander John Murphy