A very close shave

摘要

ON OCTOBER 27TH 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, it was only the purest luck that saved the world from nuclear catastrophe. Five days earlier President John Kennedy had announced a naval blockade of the island to force his opposite number in the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev, to withdraw the medium-range nuclear missiles he had sent to Cuba in the summer of that year. us Navy anti-submarine warfare patrols were hunting down Soviet nuclear-armed subs that posed a threat to the blockade. The plan was to "pressure" the submarines into leaving the area of operation by dropping practice depth charges and grenades, but not to destroy them unless absolutely necessary. Submarine B-59 had experienced the effects of that pressure for two days and its crew were growing desperate from intense heat and toxic levels of carbon dioxide. When it surfaced for air, B-59 found itself harassed by American planes firing tracer bullets and flares.