18 Facts About Vasily Arkhipov

Vasily Arkhipov was promoted to rear admiral in 1975 and became head of the Kirov Naval Academy.

Vasily Arkhipov was promoted to vice admiral in 1981 and retired in the mid-1980s.

Vasily Arkhipov subsequently settled in Zheleznodorozhny, Moscow Oblast, where he died on 19 August 1998 due to kidney cancer, which might have been induced by his occupational radiation exposure.

Vasily Arkhipov was born into a Russian peasant family in the town of Staraya Kupavna, near Moscow.

Vasily Arkhipov transferred to the Azerbaijan Higher Naval School and graduated in 1947.

In July 1961, Vasily Arkhipov was appointed deputy commander and therefore executive officer of the new Hotel-class ballistic missile submarine K-19.

Unlike other Soviet submarines armed with the "special weapon", where only the captain and the political officer were required to authorize a nuclear launch, three officers on board the B-59 were required to authorize the launch because Vasily Arkhipov was the chief of staff of the brigade.

Vasily Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface and await orders from Moscow.

Olga, Vasily Arkhipov's wife, said that "he didn't like talking about it, he felt they hadn't appreciated what they had gone through".

In 2002, retired Commander Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, a participant in the events, held an interview revealing that the submarines were armed with nuclear torpedoes and that Vasily Arkhipov was the reason those weapons had not been fired.

Vasily Arkhipov continued in Soviet Navy service, commanding submarines and later submarine squadrons.

Vasily Arkhipov was promoted to rear admiral in 1975, and became head of the Kirov Naval Academy.

Vasily Arkhipov was promoted to vice admiral in 1981 and retired in 1988.

Vasily Arkhipov settled in Kupavna, where he died on 19 August 1998.

The radiation to which Vasily Arkhipov had been exposed in 1961 may have contributed to his kidney cancer, as it did for the illnesses of many others who served with him in the K-19 accident.

Vasily Arkhipov recalls walking in on Vasily burning a bundle of their love letters inside their house and that he claimed that keeping the letters would mean "bad luck".

In recognition of his actions onboard B-59, Vasily Arkhipov received the first "Future of Life Award", which was presented posthumously to his family in 2017.

In 2002, Thomas S Blanton, then director of the US National Security Archive, said that Arkhipov "saved the world".