This man very likely prevented WWIII 50 years ago this month

Yeah.....I'm glad his story got out.
Hope some more get out as well.

Old Vasili wasn't the sort of guy you want to follow around. He was XO of (what we call) The K-19....and he had some fairly interesting times aboard that command as well. Still.....he got an admiralty and lived to 72----which is fairly old for a Cold War era Soviet submariner. (betcha he died of CANCER!!!)

Personally?
I don't know if lofting a tactical nuke @ a destroyer would have been enough. There would have been a whoop-de-doo about it, but we were both scared ^%#$@-less at the time, and I personally think that they would have covered it up. Administrations are good at that sort of thing...even today.
IMHO...We got even closer to swapping cities with the Rompin' Stompin Red Rooskies later in the decade.....but I guess that will be a story for another generation.....

 

I was in 2nd grade, at a Catholic school (Whole other discussion) in a suburb about 20 miles from the Philadelphia Naval Yard, a prime ground zero target, and at recess I joined a group of classmates in time to hear one say "My daddy says the Bombs will fall tonight!" I didn't have a clue what was going on but the nearest Penguin hustled him off the playground and directly into "The Nuns House" action like that I could understand, but they were too busy calming a bunch of kids down to explain!
When I got home that night, I mentioned what happened at school during dinner, mom & dad got real quiet! Dad worked 10 miles from the yard! I ended up going into the den, switching on the tv in time to hear an explanation of what was happening on the CBS news, I figured it out!