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Fewer Americans than ever before even remember the Bay of Pigs disaster. It was a covert CIA operation to depose the communist revolutionary Fidel Castro from power in Cuba. American and Russian relations were near breaking point with Khruschev threatening war. Castro was getting cozier with the Russians and tensions were escalating.

The CIA devised a plan to depose Castro with the approval of President Kennedy. It had to be a covert operation to allow the government deniability. The United States provided training and material support to Cuban revolutionaries against Castro.

Being a government operation, however, politicians got involved, plans changed and were compromised. The invasion was launched April 17, 1961. In short, the invasion turned to disaster.

Tullahoma resident and Lawrenceburg native Russell Fielding remembers it well. He was there. Fielding was a young Navy machinist serving aboard the USS Cony DDE508, one of the support ships sent to Cuba. The Cony was a destroyer escort with an anti-submarine squadron. As it was a covert operation, he remembers shipmates lowering themselves over the side of the ship and painting over part of the ships identifying number. They covered up the “5”.

The ship was close enough to the shore he remembers the ship taking small arms fire from Castro’s men. Even so, he said he never felt afraid. They were there to do a job. The mission was a failure for a number of reasons, but with the Cuban revolutionaries being vastly outnumbered they surrendered within 24 hours.

Emboldened by the failed invasion, Castro sought and received more support from Russia. Through intelligence the United States found that Cuba was building missile bases, and Russia was supplying short and medium range missiles. These missiles could reach most of America if used.

This news becoming public started a craze of backyard bomb shelters, dehydrated food, canned water, and bomb drills in schools. President Kennedy refused to let it stand that there were armed missiles 90 miles off the coast of America, and ordered a Naval blockade of Cuba in let October or 1962.

The Cony was one of the ships sent, again with Russell Fielding aboard. This time the ships were fully identifiable. While in the blockade, four Russian submarines were identified, with one of them less than 40 miles off the coast of Miami. Unknown to American forces, every one of the subs were armed with a “special weapon.” The special weapon was a nuclear missile with the same destructive power as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Even one would have caused worldwide disaster.

The commander of the four submarines, Vasili Arkhipov, was the only Russian officer who knew exactly what the special weapon was. To engage the weapon, it took agreement of three officers on the commander’s sub, the B-59, to agree to deploy the missile. Arkhipov refused to deploy the missile, despite the other two officers’ insistence.

Once discovered, it was the Cony that sat directly above Arkhipov’s submarine. The two were unable to communicate, and again, unknown to the Americans, the subs were unable to communicate with Russia. Fielding tells that at that time when enemy ships encountered one another and were not able to communicate, there was a “peace course” that could be taken. If a ship (or sub) turned 60 degrees east, that meant it would not fire. That is what the B-59 did. The Cony then followed with the same move.

President Kennedy ordered that the subs not be attacked, but forced to surface instead. The subs were diesel electric, meaning that they would eventually have to surface to recharge their batteries. The Cony and other ships dropped practice depth charges to encourage the subs to surface. Arkhipov correctly interpreted the action, while the other officers thought they were being attacked and pressured him to deploy the missile. He stood firm, but with the subs batteries almost drained he knew they would have to surface or die. He ordered the sub to surface.

During the tense standoff the sailors were ordered to battle stations most of the time. When so ordered, they could not leave their stations, often for stretches of 24 hours or more. Finally, with the sub surfacing, the standoff was over. Fielding remembers seeing the crew of the sub coming out a few at a time to get fresh air, armed only with a white flag. The subs were turned around and escorted away from Cuba for several days, the crisis averted.

The closest we have been to nuclear war before or since was averted by one man. Fielding believes that the subs were sent specifically to fire the missiles and start the war. Arkhipov’s determination not to use the missile could have stemmed from an incident the year before. He commanded a Russian nuclear submarine, the K-19, when the nuclear reactor failed. He saw what happened to eight of his men who attempted to fix the reactor. The nuclear subs were mothballed following the incident, but the damage was done. Arkhipov himself died of radiation poisoning not long after the Cuban missile crisis.

The whole crisis was resolved diplomatically in the end. Kennedy promised to remove missiles from Turkey, and Khruschev promised to remove missiles from Cuba. Both parties made good on the deal, and the ice cold war cooled.

Fielding joined the Navy at age 18, in 1958, and was honorably discharged in December of 1964. He returned to his home in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and soon married Carolyn Hollman in 1965. In 1967 they moved to Tullahoma, where he took a position at AEDC in the steam plant and worked there for 37 years. The couple has three daughters and three grandchildren. His story as witness to one of the most pivotal times in American history is riveting. If interested in learning more about that event, he recommends watching “The Man Who Saved the World”, which is available on YouTube.