Comments by "VisibilityFoggy" (@VisibilityFoggy) on "Nikita Khrushchev – The Man Behind the Missile Crisis" video.

That's a very interesting story. The US Navy crew had no idea that sub was armed with nukes, and the depth charges they were dropping were only the size of small hand grenades and could do no damage at all to the ship. They were purely being used to signal it. Of course, the Soviet Navy had no way of telling this either. Vasily Arkhipov absolutely saved the world that day.
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You also must remember that Turkish leaders could not launch nuclear weapons themselves. It was a deterrent and defensive platform that needed to be activated by the US and NATO in the case of a Soviet invasion of Europe. In the case of Cuba, Castro, an absolute radical madman at the time (who has openly stated he was willing to offensively launch against the US) was in charge and would actually have access to launch packages. These were two very different scenarios. It was bad enough that the USSR was scared to death that Castro would do something stupid and drag them into a nuclear war.
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@samgemsgems7571 - Good luck enforcing that law.
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@SchrodingersCat8813 - Yes, this entire episode started much earlier with Berlin, but the role of Castro in all of this seems to have been forgotten. The nukes in Turkey were used as a bargaining chip, but it was Castro who really wanted nuclear weapons on his soil. In interviews later in life, Castro openly admitted that he advocated for the use of nuclear weapons against the United States and was willing to sacrifice Cuba for the cause of communism – something he said he later regretted and was glad he was stopped from doing. The USSR kept him in check, and eventually removed every last tactical nuke from Cuba because they did not trust him not to start a nuclear war. People forget how much of a true believer and radical Castro actually was. He was not always the sickly old man people view him as today.
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@MLennholm - You're forgetting, of course, that the USS Vincennes was literally in the middle of being attacked by Iranian fast boats and still managed to attempt to contact the Iranian commercial flight multiple times on the radio on both military and civilian channels. The US ship also utilized the international distress channel and received no response. Therefore, it was thought to be an F-14 (the Tomcat has a decently large radar signature, which is one of the reasons it was retired in 2006) as its vector was directly aimed at the ship. Geez, people will twist anything to make the US look bad. It's bizarre. If anything the crew did everything in their power to avoid firing on the plane but needed to ensure their own safety.
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@carpediem6568 - Yes, my understanding was always that the Secret Service said they could not guarantee his safety in a place as large and open as Disneyland and they suggested he not attend. I also read somewhere that he took this as a gigantic insult, saying his counterpart could walk anywhere in Russia and be fine.
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