Category: Historical

While the winds of the Gobi Desert normally blow toward Beijing, in a surprising twist, some fully-armed and armored survivors of the 53BCE Battle of Carrhae marched out of a westward-bound haboob on a bright, sunny morning, long after deploying eastward toward the ancient town of Liqian, a remote town in Yongchang province, just this morning.  They said they were looking for Marcus Crassus, whom they universally referred to as “simiani inanis” (“a conceited ape”) and were quite disappointed to be told that he had already been assassinated at a confab with the Parthian Army more than twenty centuries earlier.

Upon seeing 21^st century transport trucks on the highway they were following, Laertius Barbecanus, the surviving Tribune for the 356 troops (about four and a half centuriae), sputtered “Irrumabo, ubi sumus?” (“Where the f–k are we?”)  He gave a quick order to his troops, who immediately formed a defensive testudo and launched a few pilae (battle darts) at the road monsters. A brief intervention by this reporter resulted in handshakes all around and the bewildered truckers proceeded on their way.

According to Barbecanus’s report, his Cohort VI had engaged with a ragtag band of Parthian soldiers, lost a few hundred troops to the Parthians in a set piece battle, chased them into the mountains and lost track of them, ran into a dust storm, wandered a bit more, and got completely lost themselves while they survived on looting, pillaging and foraging. Engaging in more than a few rolls in the hay with some local villagers who were kind enough to take them in, they were hired as mercenaries to defend the local village, which then became known as Li-Jien.

“I’m sure we left behind our share of spurius (bastard children),” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “Well, now what do we do? If the Roman Army has gone down the cacatorium, we need something to do. Who’s in charge?”

When told that his troops might consider either the U.S. Army or the U.S. Marine Corps, Barbecanus’s eyes lit up. After the promotional literature was translated into Latin and classical Greek, the centuriae all liked the idea of learning to use new weapons and transportation methods, although they thought the pay and benefits could be improved. They agreed that it sounded good, took a vote, and asked to visit a couple of very confused US Army and USMC recruiters.

155 years ago, someone wrote a letter to his parents from the battlefield.

Pittsburgh Landing, Tenn.

April 10^th, 1862

My Dear Father and Mother: —

This is the first time since the battle that I could find time to write you.  I ought to have written before, knowing what anxiety you would feel respecting my safety, but I have had a great deal of work to do.  Our Lieut. Col. and Major were both killed, and all the captains but one besides myself were killed or wounded.  The colonel was home sick; the captain who was not killed does not amount to much, and all of the labor of taking care of the wounded, burying the dead, etc., has developed upon myself and Adjt. Chas. F. Barber and the surgeons.

I had been back from my visit to Barton and Charles about three weeks when the battle commenced.  We had been expecting for some time to attack the enemy at Corinth, but they got the start of us and when we were little expecting them, attacked us with their whole force.  I had just eaten breakfast, put on a new shirt, and was about to commence a letter to you, when heavy  fighting was heard near our camp.  In a few minutes we were ready in ranks and marching to the scene of action.

“In the Hornet’s Nest”

We are in Hurlburt’s Division. Our brigade composed of four regiments was attached to the division to support Gen. McClearnand’s division. We were then placed in the hottest of the fight – the boys have called it the “Hornet’s Nest.”  We were placed where several regiments had given away; all admit that our regiment was in the most dangerous position of any regiment in the fight.

We formed a line as ordered and commenced a heavy fire upon the enemy who was but a little distance from us.  Several regiments to our right ran without firing a gun.  They were not from Illinois regiments however.  Several batteries not captured fell back on a run and ran through our lines – still did our regiment alone stand its ground.  When the enemy saw the lines to our right broken and the men running, they pressed upon us.  Several times did the balls from our muskets make them fall back, but again would they rally and charge upon us, but we mowed them down like grass.  I saw hundreds of the poor devils bite the dust.  Almost overpowered by numbers – probably six or seven regiments  were pressing upon our regiment at once, we were compelled to fall back and form a new line.  I looked for the Lieutenant Colonel to see  what was to be done when I saw the enemy within a few rods of my company; could not see any field officers, the colores were gone and I had to bring my company back or we should (those not killed or wounded) have been taken prisoners.  How proud I was of my company!  I believe I have written you before – young men from my old home, Lake County, Illinois, and most all under twenty years of age.  They fought like heroes and not one showed the white feather.

“Swore to Win Fight”

As soon as I found that the Lieutenant Col. and Major were both dead, and all the captains but two were killed or wounded, I then took command of the regiment and formed in line and went into battle again and fought where we could do the most good the rest of the day.  We had many shots at the enemy and I tell you it was fun to see them tumble over.  The enemy had, on Sunday morning, one hundred thousand men, we had 38,000. Several Ohio and other regiments ran, leaving the Illinois boys to breast the flower of the southern army.  Had we not fought  like bull dogs, they would have whipped us long before night.  We swore by the Great Eternal we would die before we would be whipped by southern rebels.  Although thousands of our men were killed and wounded they did not make us surrender; our regiment had 600 men Sunday morning and over 250 of them were either killed or wounded – we lost many of the wounded Monday.

“Reinforcements”

The enemy drove us inch by inch, outflanked us several times, and as night came on we had fallen back near the river, when, and thank God for it, Gen Buell with his army was seen approaching on the opposite side of the river.  This cheered the boys and they charged the enemy several times, driving them back some distance, when darkness put an end to the first day’s fight of death and carnage.

Then, for the first time, did I begin to think of myself.  Early in the morning during the battle a piece of shell had hit my breast and right arm.  I spit blood during the day and I must have bled inwardly but did not feel any pain.  A large minié ball hit me in the left side – it must have struck the rib and went under the skin, as I picked it out with my fingers.

The enemy were in our camp sleeping in our tents and we had to lay down on the wet ground, but not to sleep with our blankets over us.  Then it was that my breast and arm commenced to pain me very much, but I thought I should be able to go into battle in the morning without any trouble.  In the night it rained very hard, and I was wet all over and took cold and could not speak out loud in the morning or use my right arm.  I did not complain – there were so many worse off than I was.  I moved the regiment – what there was left of it – to where the brigade was and stayed with the regiment all day.  The fighting at times was very hard but not as severe as the day before.  I stayed on the field all day and our regiment made the last charge Monday night led by General Grant in person. That night the Adjt. Chas. F. Barber, who had been wounded, and I  worked until 12 o’clock taking care of the wounded, then I went to my hut and found four dead rebels in it.  They had been wounded the day before and crawled in out of the rain to die.  I found some blankets and laid down to get the first sleep I had had since Saturday night. I pulled the dead rebels out of my tent by the heels.

My wounds do not trouble me much and I am pretty well now.  I beg of you to not worry about me.  Mother’s good letter just received.  Soldiering is no fun but I shall stay in the Army if I am able until the Union you  taught me to love is restored.  I will write you again soon.

With lots of love to all,

Affectionately your son,

George

He was one of my great-grandfather’s three brothers, in the 15th Illinois Regiment.  My great-grandfather was in the Supply Corps.

Family history is so very important. Without it, we don’t know where we really came from or who came before us.

Do not let it fade into nothing.

. . . Congress declared war on Germany, resulting in US entering World War I.

4.7+ million US personnel served during World War I; 53,402 died during combat.

The last US veteran of that war, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 – at age 110.

Fox has a short article today on the anniversary; it’s worth a read.  The article also contains a link to livestream of a service to be held at 1100 EDT today commemorating the anniversary at the National World War I Museum and Memorial.

Rest in peace, elder brothers-in-arms.

Danish 14-year-old Daniel Rom Kristiansen was looking for high school homework project when his father, Klaus, jokingly suggested that he search for the plane that his grandfather had told him crashed in a field near the family farm. From the Daily Mail;

When the machine started beeping over a patch of boggy ground the pair started digging – but realised they would need to go deeper.

They borrowed an excavator from a neighbour, and around four to six metres down, they discovered the remains of the plane.

Further excavation yielded the remains of the Messerschmitt pilot and some of his clothing which contained paperwork;

‘In the first moment it was not a plane,’ Mr Kristiansen told the BBC. ‘It was maybe 2,000 – 5,000 pieces of a plane. And we found a motor… then suddenly we found parts of bones, and parts from [the pilot’s] clothes.

‘And then we found some personal things – books, a wallet with money… Either it was a little Bible or it was Mein Kampf – a book in his pocket. We didn’t touch it, we just put it in some bags. A museum is now taking care of it. I think there’s a lot of information in those papers.’

[…]

[Klaus] added that he has lived there for 40 years, oblivious as to what was hidden just beneath the surface.

‘We had never seen anything on the surface,’ he said.

‘Not a single bit of metal. He was telling a lot of stories, my grandfather. Some of them were not true, and some of them were true – but this one was true. Maybe I should have listened to him a bit more when he was alive!’

DPAA did not announce the accounting for of any US personnel this week.  So instead, today you’re getting yet another “walkabout” ramble – this time, on a historical topic.

Consider yourself forewarned.  (smile)

. . .

The Cold War produced many crises.  But the most serious – and most dangerous – of them was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What follows concerns one specific incident during the Cuban Missile Crisis that was unknown in the West for nearly four decades.  Had it turned out differently, the planet would be a far different place today.

. . .

On 1 October 1962, a small flotilla of four Soviet diesel-electric submarines departed their base on the Kola Peninsula.  Their departure was in support of Operation Anadyr  – the Soviet operation to install MRBMs (R-12/SS-4), IRBMs (R-14/SS-5), associated other weaponry, and position up to 60,000 Soviet troops in Cuba unobserved.  The operation had begun some weeks earlier.

Operation Anadyr’s strategic objective was to protect Cuba from a US invasion; a secondary benefit would be to greatly increase the number of deliverable Soviet nuclear warheads that could be used reliably to target the US.  (The so-called “missile gap” of 1960 election fame indeed existed, but it was the Soviets – not the US – who were holding the short straw.  If successful, Operation Anadyr would roughly double the number of reliably deliverable Soviet warheads targeting the US.)

The submarines in this Soviet flotilla deployed in support of a secondary operation that was simultaneously part of Operation Anadyr – Operation Kama.  This subsidiary operation would have stationed seven Soviet ballistic missile submarines at Mariel, Cuba.

The deployment of the 4 submarines on 1 October 1962 did not include any ballistic missile submarines.  The submarines comprising the flotilla – B-4, B-36, B-59, and B-130, with B-59 serving as the flotilla’s flagship – were Foxtrot-class diesel-electric attack submarines.  They were being deployed to clear the way for the planned deployment of ballistic missile subs.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, from the Soviet perspective), Operation Anadyr was discovered prematurely by US intelligence.  Some evidence of Soviet activities was discovered during September 1962 while equipment was en route to Cuba by US intelligence assets.  But partially complete missile installations were not discovered until a US U-2 overflight of Cuba on 14 October 1962.

The latter discovery tipped off the US government that something serious was going on in Cuba regarding Soviet nuclear forces.  The result was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The secondary Operation Kama also failed.  All four of the subs in the deploying flotilla were detected while transiting the Sargasso Sea, and were tailed by US naval assets.  Three of the four were eventually forced to surface by the US Navy.  Only B-4, which the US Navy attempted to force to surface shortly after it had fully recharged its batteries, was able to evade and escape without being forced to surface under the guns of US Navy warships.

During the pursuit of these submarines, the world likely came closer to a general nuclear war than ever before or since.

. . .

Unknown to US intelligence,  warheads associated with the MRBM and IRBM installations in Cuba detected by US overflights were not the only nuclear weapons on Cuba at the time.  Along with MRBMs and IRBMs, the Soviets had clandestinely deployed short range missiles (both FKR-1 and Luna, AKA FROG, missiles) with nuclear warheads to Cuba.  They had also deployed a small number of tactical nuclear bombs suitable for delivery by jet aircraft.

Additionally – and also unknown to the US at the time –  each of the Soviet submarines in the Operation Kama flotilla was equipped with one nuclear torpedo.  The warhead on that torpedo was the RDS-9; it had a yield of between 3 and 10 kilotons.

Moscow retained release authority over the nuclear weapons based in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  But under certain selected circumstances, the Soviet submarine captains of the four submarines deployed in Operation Kama were authorized to use their nuclear torpedo without first obtaining permission from Moscow.

. . .

The danger point came on 27 October 1962 – termed “Black Saturday” of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The “pucker factor” at the beginning of the day was already extreme.  The crisis had been ongoing for over almost 2 weeks; nerves on both sides were hugely frayed.  The entire crisis was nearing resolution, one way or another:  US forces were scheduled to invade within a few days (3 at most) if last-ditch diplomatic efforts failed.  And on that day, several incidents occurred that ratcheted tensions up even higher:

1. Khrushchev received a communications from Fidel Castro that appeared to urge preemptive use of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union if US forces invaded Cuba.
2. Cuban air defense batteries had begun firing at US low-level reconnaissance flights.
3. A Soviet SAM battery downed a US U-2 overflying Cuba piloted by USAF Major Rudy Anderson, killing him.
4. A second US U-2 flying a polar sampling mission ended up several hundred miles off course due to aurora-induced navigation error and overflew several hundred miles of Soviet territory without authority. Soviet aircraft scrambled from Wrangel Island and attempted unsuccessfully to shoot it down; the US scrambled F-102 interceptors equipped with nuclear air-to-air missiles over the Bering Sea in response.
5. And, finally, the incident that nearly caused thermonuclear war: the US attempted to force Soviet submarine B-59 to the surface.

. . .

Soviet submarine procedure of the day required daily contact with Soviet military authorities by all submarines.  However, the prescribed time for contact with higher HQ was also apparently rigidly fixed.  And on 27 October 1962, Soviet submarine B-59 – due to US surveillance – had not been able to make contact with higher HQ for one or more days.

The boat was also in bad shape.  HVAC was inoperative, so the boat had become dangerously hot.  Carbon dioxide levels were extreme.  Due to US pursuit, they’d also been unable to completely charge batteries for some time; battery levels were thus extremely low.

They’d been able to periodically monitor US radio broadcasts, so they knew the Cuban Missile Crisis was both ongoing and worsening.  But without contact with higher HQ, they didn’t know if hostilities had broken out between the US and USSR.

It was at this point that US naval assets attempted to force B-59 to surface.  They closed in and began dropping practice depth charges in the immediate vicinity of the boat.

These charges were nonlethal, having roughly the explosive power of a hand-grenade.  The US had informed the Soviet government earlier that use of these devices was intended to signal submarines in the “naval quarantine” area to surface immediately.  But since B-59 had been out of contact, they’d not received this word.  (It’s unclear if the Soviet Navy advised any of the submarines in the flotilla of this information from the US, as it appears this information may never have been passed to Soviet Naval HQ.)

At this point, B-59’s commander had had enough.  He decided to use his nuclear torpedo to destroy his attackers, notwithstanding the fact that his boat would simultaneously “go out with a bang” as well.

He approached his boat’s political officer, whose agreement was necessary under then-current Soviet Navy procedure to use the weapon under such circumstances.  The political officer agreed.

Normaly this would have been enough.  Under Soviet Navy procedures then in effect, agreement by the ship’s captain and political officer was sufficient under dire circumstances for a Soviet submarine captain to use an onboard nuclear torpedo.

However, B-59 was also the Soviet submarine flotilla’s flagship.  Because of that fact, the flotilla’s commander was also on board.  And under those circumstances agreement of the flotilla commander – Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov – was also necessary to launch the torpedo.

Captain Arkhipov did not agree.  After some time, he persuaded the B-59’s captain instead to surface and await orders from Moscow vice launching the nuclear torpedo – and thereby almost certainly starting a global thermonuclear war.

. . .

Why Captain Arkhipov didn’t allow the use of the weapon is not precisely known.  Even years later, Arkhipov reputedly didn’t discuss the matter much, if at all.  He was reportedly a somewhat shy and quite humble man.

However, Arkhipov‘s personal history may provide a clue.

Fifteen months earlier, Arkhipov had been executive officer of Soviet submarine K-19 – yes, the K-19 of the somewhat-inaccurate film “Widomaker” fame.  This fact had given him immense respect within the Soviet submarine community.

It also meant that Arkhipov had been in a position to see, firsthand, the horrible nature of death due to radiation poisoning.  Indeed, he himself had received a nonlethal (but unhealthy) level of radiation exposure during the incident.  Eight of his shipmates were not so lucky; they all died within 3 weeks.  Another fifteen died within 2 years.

I strongly suspect this factored into his decision.

In any case:  for whatever reason, on 27 October 1962 Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov of the Soviet Navy refused to approve the use of a nuclear weapon against US naval forces.  Had he authorized the use of that nuclear weapon, the world would be a far different place today.

Ideological and political issues notwithstanding, the world owes the man a huge debt.

. . .

Captain Arkhipov did well in his later military career.  He remained in the Soviet submarine service; he was selected to command other submarines, then submarine squadrons.  He was selected as a Rear Admiral in 1975, and afterwards commanded the Kirov Naval Academy.  He was promoted to Vice Admiral in 1981 and retired in the mid-1980s.

Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov died of kidney failure on 19 August 1998, at age 72.  It’s believed his radiation exposure during the K-19 near-meltdown incident in July 1961 likely contributed to the kidney failure that killed him.

His actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis were not revealed until nearly 4 years after his death with the publication of a Russian book in June 2002.  Prior to that time, it was not known in the US that the four Russian submarines involved in Operation Kara possessed nuclear weapons – or that one of them was nearly used.

Arkhipov has been called by “the man who saved the world” for his actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  While that’s normally hyperbole when applied to any individual human, this may well be one case where the phrase is completely accurate.

Rest in peace, Admiral.  Thank you.

 

Author’s Note:  multiple internet and published sources were used in the preparation of this article.  Not all sources are linked above.