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Originally Posted by JonnyBGood
I'm not sure about that. Maybe there was a reason we came so "close" but they were never used.
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Sure, but it's fairly easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that we were never in any real danger. But the Vasily Arkhipov incident springs to mind :
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On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, destroyers of the United States Navy near Cuba dropped a set of depth charges near a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine. Allegedly, the captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, prepared to launch a retaliatory nuclear-tipped torpedo.
Three officers on board the submarine - Savitsky, Deputy Political Officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and Second Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov - were entitled to launch the torpedo if they agreed unanimously in favour of doing so. An argument broke out between the three, in which only Arkhipov was against making the attack, eventually persauding Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. The nuclear war which presumably would have ensued was thus averted.
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(from Wiki).
I'm sure that's a simplification, but you get the idea.