Additional info can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

Summarized:

• Soviet Navy officer Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998)

• Thomas Blanton (then director of the National Security Archive) said in 2002 that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".

• He was born into a peasant family near Moscow.

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

  • The incident on K-19 is depicted in the American film K-19: The Widowmaker.
  • During the nuclear accident, he backed Captain Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev during the potential mutiny.
  • While assisting with engineering work to deal with the overheating reactor, he was exposed to a harmful level of radiation. This would contribute to his death later on.

• On 27 October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph located the diesel-powered nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 near Cuba.

• During the incident Arkhipov was second-in-command of submarine B-59, however he was commander of the entire flotilla of submarines, including B-4, B-36 and B-130, which made him equal in rank to Captain Savitsky on B-59.

• Despite being in international waters, the Americans started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface

• There had been no contact from Moscow for a number of days, and once B-59 began attempting to hide from the U.S. Navy, it was too deep to monitor any radio traffic, so those on board did not know whether war had broken out.

• The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo.

• On board the B-59 three officers had to agree unanimously to authorize the launch: Captain Savitsky; the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov; and the second-in-command Arkhipov.

• An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch.

• Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. The reputation Arkhipov gained from his courageous conduct in the previous year's Soviet submarine K-19 incident also helped him prevail in the debate.

• If the torpedo had been fired nuclear warfare which most likely would have ensued, and the cold war would turn hot.

Fun fact:

Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev, commander of the submarine K-19 at the time of a nuclear accident aboard, died nine days later than Arkhipov, on 28 August 1998; both men were aged 72 at the time of their deaths.