That Time That The World Almost Ended In Nuclear Disaster
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- In this episode we're talking about Able Archer 1983.
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The views and opinions expressed in this video are those of the content creator only and may not reflect the views and opinions of the Battleship New Jersey Museum & Memorial, the Home Port Alliance for the USS New Jersey, Inc., its staff, crew, or others. The research presented herein represents the most up-to-date scholarship available to us at the time of filming, but our understanding of the past is constantly evolving. This video is made for entertainment purposes only.
Hi Ryan. I wanted to mention that while the Germans themselves didn't have nuclear weapons, the Nato allies that were in West Germany did. In the case of tactical nuclear weapons, they were administered by the Army, and in the even of a fulda gap incident, they would be handed over to the Bundeswehr who would be the ones to use the weapons. During my grandfather's service in the 1980s, he was attached to a German field artillery battery who would in the event of a hot war, be givin stewardship over the 155mm W48 nuclear shells.
Sir, you are making me feel old -- I was busy rearing my first child in the early eighties, having already completed a military tour.
I'm 62 years old - back in the 60s and 70s and 80s - both the USA and the Soviets would make it very clear to each other that they were conducting major, military operations - just so we could stop each other from thinking it was an invasion or nuclear strike.
We looked on the Soviet exercises as a cover for the start of war - and they looked on our exercises as a cover for the start of a war. We both kept close tabs on what each other were doing 🙂
Thanks Ryan.
I couldn't help but notice the Ghostly turning of the top most Reel of the Tape deck with no Tape on it..
can track all the edits by watching that reel jump. :D
Thanks, Ryan!!
There is a german TV series called Deutschland 83 that's about this. It's worth a watch.
according to a PBS program, a Russian agent in London told the brits what was happening in real time. Able Archer was immediately stopped and word was sent to Moscow that this was only a exercise. But it had already ran for a week. When Reagan found out he nearly had a heart attack. That program is prolly somewhere on you tube.
If you're referring to the documentary titled _1983: The Brink of Apocalypse_ , I'm afraid that it may have disappeared from TH-cam due to copyright.
EDIT: Found it!
th-cam.com/video/7ciy5R-tLiE/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared
What is the most dangerous day for New Jersey? When Halsey guessed wrong and drove his task force right into the teeth of Hurricane Cobra. It is only the skill of the designers and shipwrights in Philadelphia that kept her from following the destroyers to the bottom. Oh, and the skill of the sailors aboard.
I was an M1 Abraham’s tank crew member in the 1/11 Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed on the border of East Germany. In both instances ( Flight 007 and Able Archer) we were mobilized and immediately sent to our fighting positions for war. We were not told what was happening but I never saw my platoon Sargent so serious and hyper focused. We stayed in the tank all night buttoned up and hatches closed .
Air tight I'm guessing for fallout protection?
I was a 19D with the 3rd ACR at the time, active duty. I didn't even hear about it until a couple years later. I remember the airliner getting shot down, though.
Thank you for your service!!
During Able Archer you were not sent anywhere for war, it was an exercise you participated in. 🤝
Nothing was moved in place for actual combat on the side of NATO in Europe, not even when the Warsaw Pact moved its pieces in position for war because the Kremlin misread the unusual Able Archer 83 exercise for a ruse to start a war. It was Lt. Gen. Perroots who advised against this when it became apparent the Soviets were beginning to panic due to a misunderstanding.
There have many a books been written about this incident and even new information was declassified as recently as 2021.
I call bull shit. It is a well known fact that Able Archer 83 was a CPEX. No units were in the field. The only thing they had were vehicles maneuvering simulating the various command post of the units involved. They were putting out communications simulating an actual war. That is what the Russians were keying on. This was not a REFORGER exercise.
Awesome video.
I participated in the Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 86. The DSDP was an international science organization that did scientific drilling with the GLOMAR Challenger drillship. In June 1982, just a few months before the shoot-down of Korea Flt. 007. We drilled a deep borehole just a few kilometers from the gap the Soviets used to sail their Pacific submarine fleet from the Sea of Okhotsk into the Pacific. We cased that hole and installed "seismic sensors" which were paid for by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration). All of this was highly unusual for the DSDP and we not so coincidentally did not have any Soviet scientists onboard which was common on every other drilling leg. While onboard when drilling was underway we darkly joked about watching for torpedoes.
Hay guys have y’all thought about partnering up with strem time live earth web cameras the BB would be a great idea for a camera
Ryan have you ever visited the uss Alabama?
12:53 Don't. Touch. The. Boats.
Ryan, are you related to Dick Szymanski, the Baltimore Colt center?
And I was just 3 years old, just being a kid and not knowing how close we were.
For the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was just learning how to walk. For this, I was in uniform and on duty and yeah, things got hairy and close. Also got close in '85 when a Pershing II caught fire and exploded and initially was thought it might be an opening Soviet move.
Interesting question to answer.
Excellent synopsis of a complicated issue 🤠
I was Chief PO of my Royal Canadian Sea Cadet Corps back in '83, we all of us thought we'd be at war with the Russians soon... it was an interesting time and most of us planned to join the Navy if the war started then.
During the Norwegian rocket incident, also known as the Black Brant scare in January 25, 1995 the scientists at Andøya in northern Norway almost started nuclear war when one of their rockets came a bit out of course and was by Russian radar stations misinterpreted as a submarine-launched Trident missile. At the time the Russians realized what was happening, we was minutes away from a nuclear strike as result of the alert, Russian submarine commanders were ordered to go into a state of combat readiness and prepare for nuclear retaliation.
I think it more likely that the Battleship would have been attacked using torpedoes from a Soviet bloc attack sub, and not necessarily with a nuclear tipped fish. As Ryan points out, a nuclear exchange would be something the Soviets would avoid if at all possible.
Besides New Jersey there would also be a carrier in the area though not as close to shore and the Soviets always knew within a few miles where EVERY Nato carrier in the Mediterranean was. These "tattletail" vessels were either submarines, destroyers, frigates or even Intelligence "trawlers."
Big miss on Germany not having nukes. The 56th FA Brigade Pershing had three Battalions in southern Germany. I was on my first tour of guard duty protecting those weapons when this happened.
Yeah, but I bet the West German government didn't have authority to order their use.
@@ZGryphon As mentioned across this comment section, the doctrine of the time was that, in the event of a hot war, stewardship of those munitions were to be given to the German army.
@KWade-bt4dc I find the idea that American and British generals would _ever_ trust German ones with atomic weapons dubious in the extreme, whatever it said on paper.
That likely was the most serious chance of the New Jersey being sunk by an enemy attack. I suspect there might have been times that New Jersey might have been lost due to congress in an effort to save money.
wait a second - are or aren't you saying that Congress is an enemy? I will agree either way (depends on the day and what they just did)
Thankfully the "we begin bombing in five minutes" gaffe wasn't until the following year.
Ryan, November 1983 I was stationed at Ellsworth AFB, SD. I helped maintain the 465L SACCS Computer System. This system was one of several systems that could pass the Presidential Order to use SAC's manned nuclear armed bombers and ICBMs. At Ellsworth we had the 28th Bomb Wing of B-52s and the 44th Strategic Missile Wing of Minuteman I missiles. A lot of kick butt!!!
The downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was not the first time that the Soviet union shot down a passenger jet as back in 1978, the USSR shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 902, a Boeing 707-320C which had gone off course due to the earth's magnetic field
And while we're at it, lets remind ourselves that USS Vincennes shot down Iranian Air Flight 655 on July 3rd 1988 - over Iranian territorial waters. 290 people died.
Let us remind ourselves that the 007 (call sign James Bond?) aircraft was shot down in Russian airspace after repeatedly not responding to challenges from the military aircraft. What would the US do in similar circumstances? Oh and the dastardly Soviets shot down a U-2 also flying over Russian airspace.
Nevada: "really? A battleship of your talents possibly losing to one nuke? I took two!" Neverminding crew casualities...
Well, what's a few megaton difference between friends. Nevada was hit by two 23 kt devices, in '83, well, nukes were a wee bit louder and ruder.
Didn't a German battleship also take two hits?
@@DavidJones-me7yr The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, she survived the tests and was towed to shallow water where she eventually capsized and sank.
@@timsimms65707 Beautiful ship - whatever the politics of the day....the germans built some good looking ships. Given her history would have really been cool if somebody (either us or Germany) had preserved her (NOT sent her to the atolls).
@@Matt-xm9nd I agree, she would be popular today if she had been saved. The Turks offered Germany the old WWI battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim in the early 70's but the Germans didn't want her so she was scrapped sadly.
If only it were just once.
Wow
Also a film in 1983 was the drama film "The Day After" staring Jason Robards dealing with the beginning of WW III with the Soviet Union. That scared a lot of viewers in the US, esp me. A little 16 year old.
It scared Reagan, believe it or not, to the point that he ordered S.D.I's development be stepped up.
Oh yes. I was 14. We went to see it as a school excursion. Terrified doesn't begin to describe it.
Friendly fact check: in 1983, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union proper.
Although, that said, I wouldn't be especially shocked to learn that the USSR's predominantly Russian masters considered it expendable in the event of a ground war with the western powers. It wouldn't even have been the first time...
Fascinating to look back at that time period with the benefit of hindsight and with information that wasn't available then. But defeating the USSR was a valid American policy and brinksmanship by Reagan got us there.
Ed Helms has an awesome podcast series in this exact thing called “SNAFU” on Spotify
Some research reveals something of technical interest at that time during Able Archer - rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds underneath space based satellites.
I heard about Able Archer from the german tv show Deutschland 83. Great show for Cold War nerds.
both sides have always pushed each others limits.
Which Iowa has been in combat the most?
Question for Ryan: Do you think the Iowa's would have stayed in commission longer had the soviet union not collapsed (effectively ending the cold war) in 1991?
From an outside perspective, no. Not at all. The Iowa class ships were hopelessly outdated by the time missile warfare was common. Most of the massive ship was dedicated to hauling around those massive 16 inch guns that were essentially useless because they have such a short range and poor accuracy compared to missiles. A single ship half the size with a VLS system could take out several Iowa class ships and while staying way outside of the range of the Iowa's guns.
If military budgets had stayed relatively high, then at least Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin might have stayed on. New Jersey maybe not, since she had more mileage on her. There were plans for big 90s refits, adding things like Sea Sparrow missiles and the Mk 23 TAS radar on a new mainmast, along with other odds and ends. Had the USSR remained, I'd bet that at least 2, maybe 3 of the Iowas would have lasted to the end of the century. All academic now, of course.
I was on another ship within sight of Beirut at the time. We heard nothing about this.
Nobody in the West knew anything about any of this until after the soviet union fell.
*One of the times...
Clearly the most dangerous time for New Jersey was when she was towed into dry dock in the Spring of 2024
Well done summary of Able Archer.
I was a teenager at that time period attending MSD near Ft. Detrick which itself was the hotline between USSR and USA. We had people relatively close to the installation at times. (Work study programs for example, civilian side etc) Our buildings were nuclear resistant but not nuclear proof.
Washington DC had it's problems in those days.
SAC was pretty active in those days.
Ultimately it was "Star Wars" a fantasy space situation that broke the USSR Financially and other ways because they could not keep up. And the entire situation simply just went away one day in 89' The wall fell and so on.
I thought seriously that year theres no more need for ww3, NATO or any of this stuff. Throw it away, send everyone home and enjoy the peace. What does washington do? Double down deeper. How deep? Even to this day we are still finding out.
I believe the Reagan quote is “… you will relegated the to dustbin of history”
There have been snakey moves on both sides. For those of us forward deployed at that time, we were always ready to fight when ordered to do so. I think you may be giving the rooooskies more credit than they are due.
Nothing says earth-shattering freedom pellet dispenser more than the sound of a battleship gun you got to love it
In 1963 on the afternoon of Kennedy’s assassination, the only thing between a flight of B58 bombers in Alaska and Moscow was a MP in a jeep blocking the path to the runway. The pilots were not told why they were on full alert until it was canceled several hours later.
Boomers Nov 67 to Aug 77. See USS Pueblo and guess what condition of readiness we were in.
I don't think any particular battle was the most perilous moment for _New Jersey._ Sarcastic allusions to various Congressional budgetary decisions aside, I'd say it was probably Typhoon Cobra.
Where was Battleship New Jersey when the Westfold fell?
I was in the Hornburg by Erkenbrand. Dark days indeed...
Peaceful Skies
Operation Crossroads showed just how survivable WWII era and older warships were against Nukes, ISTR a German Battlecruiser surviving two tests? A US BB survived tow close range blasts, however, the radiation would have been lethal.
Hi Ryan, I too have read about Able Archer , but do not believe the Soviets would have targeted New Jersey as they could not be sure she did not have her missiles on board. Also I am sure a Carrier Battle Group of the Sixth Fleet with Anti - Air warfare capable ships within supporting range of New Jersey was standing by. In regards to the deployment of minuteman missiles in Europe this was to counter Soviet SS - 20 intermediate range missiles already deployed in Western Russia. Reagan was implementing his Peace Thru Strength policies to counter the " Detente " era of the 1970's.
It was the deployment of Pershing missiles, not Minuteman. The new version of Pershing was much more accurate than earlier IRBMs, which made the Soviets regard it as a first strike weapon.
@@tomhalla426 Pershing I had a CEP of 150m. Pershing II CEP 30m and range ~2,400km.. The Pershing II missile could fly from West Germany to Moscow in about six minutes.
That brought Ivan to the table JIFFY darn quick. Too bad about the INF...
Peaceful Skies
I agree with your assessment of the probability of targeting, however other targets may have had higher priority in the list of targets.
Don't forget that on September 1st 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by the Soviet Air Force off Sakhalin killing all 269 aboard
Clinton gave KAL007 as the reason he ordered GPS Selective Availability to be turned off, saying if they'd had accurate GPS, they wouldn't have gone so far off course. I remember watching my GPS go from about 170ft accuracy to about 2ft accuracy. Edit: and my GPS was pretty much the size of my shoe.
@@GeneCash I remember the days of selective availability. I had a Delorme GPS receiver and Automap running on a Toshiba laptop in my vehicle. Every now and then you’d be teleported on the computer screen one or two city blocks from where you actually were. Automap had an inertia setting that was supposed to reject clearly spurious readings which were too far from its prior good readings, but if SA went on too long, the program would be bluffed anyway. It was very frustrating when it happened while driving in an unfamiliar area.
@@GeneCash GPS Selective Availability only added jitter of 100 meters. That puts the lie to that rumor mongering and conspiracies. Clearly a commercial airliner having a CEP of 100m is not going to "magically" fool you into enemy air space.
Aviation Today --- By William Reynish | July 1, 2000
Never been to Germany, Ryan?
Cold War history with Ryan S!
so you're telling me Red Storm Rising, Team Yankee, Red Dawn, and World in Conflict aren't documentaries? 😰
12:27 - Ukraine was very much a SSR of the USSR (with a lot of nuclear missile silos and Tupolevs)
Don't forget Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis.
And the nukes were Soviet, not Ukrainian, just as the nukes in Dakota are US nukes, not Dakota nukes.
It would be interesting to know if there is any data left on those old computers - reports, logs, schematics, inventories, etc.
⚓️
It is a miracle that we are all still here with humans being dumb humans and the various technology glitches.
They were on high alert because we did deploy the intermediate nuclear Pershings after they deployed an intermediate range missile which got us talking and both sides decided maybe we should not do that! I was there army.
We were using the double path strategy to try to convince the Soviets to drop nuclear IRBM's in exchange for our doing so as well. End result being the first treaty to do so.
They were and remain an Evil Empire.
Absolutely true, but also absolutely a provocation.
I remember not only Soviet missiles being a concern, but also the French Exocet missile, which France sold to countries like Argentina who used it to sink a British ship.
If one of the british ship had the air defenses I remember it as. Its a forward over the bow system. One was with another while manuvering in combat under attack. One crossed the "Path eyes" of the other's AD Missile boxes and radars etc. So they masked themselves.
More modern AD systems as proven when Defender was attacked by several dozen soviet era fighter jets in the black sea some years ago would have cleared the skies in a few moments. Then more fighters would have arrived then what?
at that time I was stationed at Ft Benning in the 197th Infantry brigade as a 63 B In HHC 1st of the 58th
Interesting time for this thinktrue :)
The Ash Heap of History
I don’t believe Soviet Cruise missiles or ballistic ones were accurate enough from distance. Plus I think the JFK was in the area of Lebanon too & the F-14 would’ve intercepted any Soviet bombers🤔
I thought the nato control bunker was in west German NOT in Belgium?
NATO headquarters is in Belgium, therefore a control bunker is there as well. There isnt just one, but there is certainly not a top priority one in Germany, which would have been THE frontline of a war.
Did you do a video on the Cuban missile crisis?
From what my Father told me (He flew dive bombers in the Pacific and witnessed Pearl Harbor first hand) told me, The kamikazes were the most terrifying thing he ever saw. "A young pilot, the best his country has, is strapped in his plane, ready to die so that you, and everybody else on the ship with you will also die is at the controls of that fuel and bomb-filled plane hurtling toward you as you helplessly watch- you can't be scared seeing it because you can't think. You're frozen there, forced to see it. Does he make it and crash on you, or do the thousand-guns and the million bright spots that are bullets get him? These are what you think when you try to sleep." I'm going to suggest that for those young sailors, whenever they knew their ship was in peril was the most dangerous time for the ship, as felt by her crew.
The soviets probably knew better than to touch our boats.
New Jersey being scrapped. Thank God she wasn't.
The Soviets knew where our carriers were. They had intel gathering ships shadowing them all the time. Probably submarines as well.
You forgot to mention the invasion of Poland by the SU. I was stationed in Germany in an attack helicopter company in 1980-1983. We were loaded with live rounds ant live TOW missiles and moved to our local deployment areas. In addition we were briefed on how our families were going to be evacuated back to the states. It was a real nail biting time for everyone on both sides...
Was in the Fulda Gap when that went down. Lots of "Fun".
Granada is a city in southern Spain.
The Caribbean Island nation near the coast of Venezuela is usually pronounced Gre-nay-da.
If the Soviets wanted to send a nuclear message it would not have been aimed at New Jersey. If it ended up as a single exchange they would cone out on the short emd -- a WWII battleship for the loss more modern assets. They would have gone after thr 6th Fleet carriers who could hurt them very quickly adly.
Is that the plot table you guys just salvaged on your last strip trip?
I was involved in operation Urgent Fury. Troubled times ..leveled heads prevailed.
Was off the coast of Beruit on the uss independence we went to GQ and nukes were loaded on aircraft
I remember the Autumn of 1983 well. At the time I was in my first Air Force enlistment. In late August I PCS'ed (permanent change of station) from Kadena Air Base Okinawa, Japan to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Exactly a week later, KAL Flight 007 was shot down over the near Sakhalin Island (members of my old unit were involved in recovery efforts). Of course, the Marine expeditionary mission in Lebanon and the tragedy of the Beirut Barracks bombing followed the very next day with the invasion of Grenada! To top all that off, (to include the Pershing II deployments to Europe), ABC aired a tv movie the third week of November titled, "The Day After" , a fictionalized account of a nuclear war between NATO and Soviet Union to the residents of Lawrence, Kansas. The Day After had over 200 million viewers when it premiered on November 20, 1983; the most watched TV movie in history.
I'll never forget the late summer and fall of 1983!
Do not touch our boats. Has this not been established?
I'm so excited for part 2😂😂
Deutschland 83 (first series) from 2015 covered that shambles. I saw it in German with English subtitles, typically too hard for American audiences.
I don't think your explanation of what was going on at that time in the Cold War and what had led up to that time was objective. I understand the point that you were trying to make in order to build up to the reason you think this would have been the time New Jersey was most likely to have been sunk. It's just my opinion that someone who wasn't around back then or doesn't know history very well might believe that the Soviet Union was some sort of innocent victim in the Cold War. The Reagan administration used the policies they did in order to win the Cold War. There are some military strategies that don't make sense to someone who doesn't have a military background. I do understand that there were some Soviet military leaders who helped to prevent the Third World War from happening. That has been historically documented. And I do think in the name of objectivity you did start out the video well by explaining that Soviet leaders hadn't visited the West and Western leaders hadn't visited the Soviet Union. That created some of the atmosphere of mistrust between the two sides. Eventually we won the Cold War and the Iowa Class battleships were part of that winning strategy.
That the Soviet Union would have seriously considered nuking the New Jersey while she was close into Beirut, Lebanon is pretty fantastical; farcical even.
I was stationed in Europe then and at my base I was the only one tasked to deal with this exercise. I spent 20 hours per day sitting in the Command Post sending and receiving messages. This was entirely a paper work exercise and no live assets were involved. What is important was that the Soviets were decoding our messages. How could they have broken the code?
Yes, but for the Soviets/Russians expansion was in their ideology. Not so much for the West after WW 1 and 2. As far as Nazi attack on USSR, that comes up in Soviet history, well, if they really wanted peace, probably they shuoldn't have proped up Hitler, especially after he came to power
I disagree Ryan. The USSR knew sinking the New Jersey would not end well and we would sink a Kirov or 2. The USSR did not want a nuclear exchange but their actions were far from benign.
There's no reason to do the comb-over....natural is more distinguished looking.
That's not a comb over. Ryan always has disshevelled hair. He can't find a comb or belt that fits right.
Nuc-le-ar. Say it with me. Nuc-le-ar. Nuclear.
Aluminum, Aluminum, Aluminum
😂😂😂
nuclear vs nuculur
😂😂😂😂😂😂
It was a very scary time to be 8 yrs old..
Stanislav Petrov basically saved the world. He was actually given a launch order from Moscow (IIRC) but he ignored the order - multiple times.
I should think that the closest Battleship New Jersey has ever come to being sunk is every time the politicians have taken a look at her and said , "you know , I can't justify the cost of having it in the fleet or in mothballs" 😳😳
I think you give the Soviet Union a little too much credit for “keeping the peace”.
Ryan, you can't start with 1983. March 1976 the Soviet Union deploys its SS20 missiles to Eastern Europe. Interesting talk about New Jersey. I also think you are being rather generous with the Soviet Union.
I was in the army when all this happened . You make it sound worse than it was. I had been in east Germany, and that place was a trash can. (Thanks to communism). The Soviet union lied every chance they got. Individuals prevented catastrophe. Not governments. There were several instances during the cold war , that came close. I also lost a friend in the Lebanon fiasco
I think you’re cutting the USSR far too much slack for their decision to shoot down an airliner without working out whether it was an airliner or not.
Do our 'Leaders' ever consider the fact that ALL of us have been living with the tensions of nuclear threat (most of us for our entire lives). The difference being that they have some measure of control, the rest of us just have to live with the threat.
After a time, it takes it's toll on the public psyche. Deliberate escalations of tension, particularly for political gamesmanship reasons, puts an added strain not only on 'The Enemy' .. sorry... 'Enemies', but everyone ... period.
🖖😎👍
(edit) P.S. My Dad's generation got to witness the birth of the 'Doomsday Clock'.
And here we are again, but with a less intelligent leader.
Wow, you are butthurt. The current person in the office of the president has nothing to do with this. You can't even stay on topic.
I'm sorry Ryan but you have your history all wrong. The Soviets were ramping up production of armaments before Reagan was elected. The soviets had invaded Afghanistan before Reagan was elected. The Soviets started to deploy SS20 missiles to threaten Europe which only then led to the development of the Pershing missile. I know you aren't as old as I am but as a historian you need to brush up a little on your history
No, he doesnt.
The things you list there have all been matched in kind or responded to by the previous administration.
Reagan on the other hand, did not just ratchet up hostile rhetoric, he ordered the 600 ship Navy and advertised SDI, that was supposed to make the US immune to a nuclear strike. He genuinely looked like a warmonger to the Polit Bureau. And then Able Archer 83 was modified in two critical ways:
1. The conclusion of the exercise was a full scale nuclear exchange - that never happened before.
2. Civilians/politicians were included in the exercise, most prominently and for the first time ever, Reagan himself.
The sum of all this made the Soviets panic and believe this exercise is a ruse to start the war. And when NATO realized this, one of the steps was to not match the real activity of the Warsaw Pact and remove Reagan from the exercise and instead have him go on TV while playing with his horses.
@@LillyRocket Plus the Cuba missile crisis was a direct response to the US placing first-strike nuke missiles in Turkey. Fortunately (through back channel links betwen Kennedy / Krushchev) it ended with both sides withdrawing their missiles. Kennedy asked Krushchev to go along with the story the 'the Rooskies blinked first' to save Kennedy's ass in domestic politics. Little good that did him in the long run.
Truk is not pronounced Trook.
😂😂
Please not that UDSSR stationed hundreds of SS20 warheads only reaching western Europe without NATO having a like for like counter. US ICBMS could counter, but there was a political problem creating a gap: Why should the US make themself a target if just western europe is being hit. This is why NATO deployed the Pershings and Tomahawks. Pershing was deployed as a counter to SS20 and not as a decapitation first strike weapon.
Good video. I remember 1983 very well, and being scared s***less by "The Day After".
But for the love of god, stop saying "nu-cu-lar"! Do you pronounce the word "clear" as "cu-lar"?