I know the story, and I don't really buy it. Exactly what happened between Arkhipov, Savitsky and Maslennikov will never be known. However, the premise that the

I know the story, and I don't really buy it. Exactly what happened between Arkhipov, Savitsky and Maslennikov will never be known. However, the premise that they didn't know if war had broken out or not is very shaky: the fact that the US Navy was using depth charges and not torpedoes on them was quite a clear message that they were not in "shoot to kill" mode. The wikipedia page on depth charges [1] explains the Cold War usage: "During the Cold War when it was necessary to inform submarines of the other side that they had been detected but without actually launching an attack, low-power "signalling depth charges" (also called "practice depth charges") were sometimes used, powerful enough to be detected when no other means of communication was possible, but not destructive." [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charge#Signaling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charge#Signaling