Unbeknown to the U.S., said Huchthausen, each one carried a nuclear tipped torpedo. "They were told they must come to an easterly course (on the surface) or be subject to attack, and this got their attention real fast." One escaped, but Huchthausen's and two other destroyers trapped the others and they were forced to the surface by the need to recharge batteries. "Instead, they sent four diesel subs, which got caught just north of the Bahamas." "They could have stayed down there forever," Huchthausen said. Had they sent nuclear subs, they could have eluded our blockading armada by diving to the ocean bottom. He said the Soviet plan, called "Operation Kama," called for sending submarines - each armed with three, 350-mile range nuclear missiles - to the Cuban port of Mariel as part of the Soviet missile buildup on Cuba. "Because of what happened to the K-19, they (the Soviets) had no nuclear submarines out in the Atlantic," said Huchthausen, who has written an account of the submarine action in the 1962 crisis called "October Fury." "They emphasized the unknown aspect of what would have happened had they blown up," Huchthausen explained.įar more interesting, though not in the movie, is the role K-19 inadvertently and actually played in the following year's Cuban Missile Crisis, which Huchthausen witnessed as a young ensign on a blockading destroyer. would have launched a nuclear attack and started World War III. Worse than the bare behinds and imaginary helicopter is the film's climactic premise: If K-19 had gone kablooie, taking the destroyer with it, the U.S. The only departures from the real fact are what the movie's director and producer thought they had to do to make it a little more sensational." "We depicted everything we knew had happened. "I told them we didn't have helicopters on destroyers in 1961, but they kept it," Huchthausen said. destroyers in 1961 didn't carry helicopters. ![]() Stealing a scene from "Braveheart," they have the Russian crew bare their behinds to the chopper to show contempt (is this going to become a cliche of all war movies?). destroyer, shadowing the surfaced K-19, launch a helicopter to take a look at it close up. ![]() In a long sequence, the producer and director have a U.S. ![]() But Hollywood couldn't resist a few embellishments.
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