Two Officers Said Fire. He Said No: The True Story of Vasili Arkhipov

Tales of Life: Ordinary People, Extraordinary True Stories · Oct 9, 2026 · 12m

(08:54) Forty years of silence

(07:46) Up into the light

(06:42) Three officers, one vote

(05:27) Hunted

(04:39) Thirteen days

(03:13) A secret voyage

(02:21) The K-19

(01:19) A quiet boy from Kupavna

(00:00) Under the sea, October 1962

Chapters:

This is his story, what the men on board later remembered, and the questions historians still ask about it.

On 27 October 1962, the most dangerous day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet submarine B-59 was hiding deep in the Caribbean with a nuclear torpedo on board. Out of contact with Moscow, nearly out of battery power and almost 50 °C inside…