COLD WAR INCIDENTS THAT WERE CLOSE CALLS

With the invasion of the Ukraine by the Russian military, and the corresponding sanctioning by the West, it appears that another Iron Curtain may be falling over Europe bringing with it another cold war.  So far, the conflict has been limited to the Ukraine and potentially Belarus from whose territory part of the Russian Invasion came from.  As tensions in the region grow, taking a look at what happened in the 1950’s through the 1980’s should be worthwhile history.  The Cold War that followed World War II had several incidents that could have caused the militaries of the United States and the Soviet Union to grapple, possibly with nuclear weapons.  The most famous of these incidents was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962.  However, there were several other close calls that may also have led to war between the nuclear superpowers as described below. 

A Second U-2 Spy Plane Incident:  On May 1, 1960, A United States U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union while on a reconnaissance mission.  The incident created a furor in the already touchy U.S.- Soviet bilateral relations.  However, another incident involving a U-2 spy plane in Soviet Airspace took place on October 27, 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

The U-2 took off from its base in Alaska for a reconnaissance mission in the vicinity of the North Pole.  The pilot was set to use celestial navigation to cover the route, but was unable to accurately see the night sky owing to the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis).  He inadvertently strayed off his course and crossed into Soviet airspace, prompting Soviet air defenses to scramble interceptor aircraft.  The U.S. Air Force saw what had happened and scramble two fighters armed with nuclear tipped missiles to retrieve the U-2 and escort it out of Soviet airspace.  The U-2 pilot, Charles Maultsby, completely out of fuel managed to regain his bearings and glide the U-2 out of Soviet airspace before it would be intercepted.  The incident was at the crux of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and might have derailed the peaceful outcome.

The B-59 Submarine Incident:  Also during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an incident involving the two navies nearly lead to the usage of nuclear tipped weapons during the naval quarantine of Cuba.  A Soviet diesel electric submarine, B-59, left its base in Northwest Russia with a small detachment of submarines, and was sent to support Russian shipments to Cuba that were being blocked by the U.S. naval quarantine.  On October 27, 1962, B-59 was detected below the surface by U.S. warships, which dropped light weight, non-destructive depth charges used in training in an effort to force the submarine to surface and be identified.  The captain of the submarine had not been in contact with his base for several days, but did have access to civilian news broadcasts in the U.S. that were describing the standoff.  The captain of the submarine was convinced that World War III had begun, and his submarine was under attack.  He aimed to use the nuclear tipped torpedoes.

However, the commander of the submarine detachment was on board B-59 at the time, and any attack on a U.S. target with the nuclear tipped torpedoes had to be approved by him.  He opposed the attack and required the captain of B-59 to surface and wait for further orders from their base.  B-59 was nearly out of electrical power anyway, so they surfaced in the midst of the U.S. Navy and began the trip back to base.

The 1979 NORAD Computer Glitch:  By 1979, both the U.S. and Soviet Union relied upon computer systems to provide their early warning air defenses with the information they would need.  On November 9, 1979, technicians at NORAD, the North American Early Warning System, received an alert that the Soviets had launched a missile barrage at North America.  The U.S. air defense system responded with the launch of fighter inceptors and the president’s doomsday aircraft.  They also alerted launch control that war was imminent and to prepare to launch the retaliatory strike.  Luckily, the technicians realized that the alert was a false alarm.  One of the technicians had accidentally triggered a training program that simulated a Soviet missile attack.

The 1983 Soviet False Alarm:  On September 26, 1983, in a Soviet bunker that monitored a satellite-based warning system, an alarm suddenly sounded that the U.S. had launched five missiles at the Soviet Union.  The Soviet commander in the bunker was required to report any incident immediately to the Soviet high command as war appeared to be imminent.  But the commander was skeptical that the warning was for real as other false warnings had occurred, and he believed that any attack the U.S. would have made against the Soviet Union would be a massive number of missiles and not just five.  He chose to ignore the warning and another one later that purported another four U.S. missiles being launched at the Soviet Union.  He proved to be correct in that no missiles were ever picked up on radar, and none arrived.  The problem was traced to sunlight reflecting off high altitude clouds that fooled the detection system into thinking a missile launch had taken place.  The incident came at an acute time in already strained U.S.- Soviet relations, as earlier in the month the Soviet air defenses shot down a Korean airliner that had accidentally strayed into restricted Soviet airspace killing all passengers on board including a U.S. Congressman.

The Able Archer 83 Exercise:  The year 1983 featured several exercises involving the U.S. Military’s response to a potential Soviet aggression primarily in Europe and the North Atlantic.  One such exercise was NATO’s Able Archer in November, 1983.  The exercise followed a previous war game that had shown Warsaw Pact aggression in Scandinavia after Yugoslavia switched sides in the game to NATO.  The game was designed to deploy nuclear weapons under certain circumstances.  The Soviets understood that the activity was a war game, but some high-ranking officials believed that it could be a pretext to a real war.  The KGB closely monitored the game’s activities and noted that NATO was using realistic methods of communication that had not been used before in an exercise like this.  Further, the KGB detected a rise in U.S. security levels from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1, meaning an attack could be imminent.  The Soviet Military began their pre-war preparations that included arming Eastern Bloc warplanes with nuclear weapons.  This action was detected by the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff in Europe, Lt. General Leonard H. Perroots, but he chose not to respond opting instead to wait until the end of the exercise to see if the war game was the reason for it.  When Able Archer ended on November 11 with no incidents, the Soviet defense mechanism decided to stand down from their alert status.  There has been some debate since 1983 that Able Archer could have led to nuclear war, but other historians have weighed in that war was not that likely, and that the Soviets were simply responding to a perceived threat owing to unique realistic circumstances employed in Able Archer.

Conclusion:  In each of these incidents a deadly clash could have been the outcome, but wiser, cooler heads prevailed and prevented any cataclysmic escalation into a nuclear holocaust.

Sources:         The History Channel, 5 Cold War Close Calls.

                        Wikipedia, Able Archer 83.

                        Wikipedia, Submarine B-59.