Cold war close calls, when the cold war could have gone hot?

[Lucky13]

....any ideas?
The Cuba crisis is an obvious one, possibly the same with the shooting down of the U-2....

 

[GrauGeist]

There were actually a few seperate situations that happened suring the missile crisis that could have started a slug-fest in their own right, like the "B-59 incident" where the Soviet sub, B-59 was cornered near the Cuban Blockade line by USN destroyers. When the destroyers started a pattern of depth-charges to try and force the sub to the surface, the skipper was convinced these were bomb explosions and tried to arm the sub's nuclear compliment but he was calmed down, eventually surfacing, received orders from Moscow to return and left the scene un-molested by the U.S.

Another that comes to mind, was in '83, when a Soviet monitoring site received launch warnings from one of their satellites. It turns out that the satellite was seeing the bright reflections of sunlight from clouds over the state of Montana and mistook it for multiple launches. The Soviet commander of the monitoring station stood down, however, because he reasoned that the U.S. would launch hundreds of ICBMs from multiple locations, not 5 from a single, isolated location.

 

[nuuumannn]

There were a few all right. In October 1961 there was a stand-off outside Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin between US and Soviet tanks after a US diplomat was refused release from the border because his papers weren't in order, or something as flippant as that. US nuclear bombers in the UK were scrambled and lines of communication were opened between both sides to prevent the unthinkable, all because of an administrative error.

 

[parsifal]

US intention to deploy Tactical nukes in turkey
The departure of the French from NATO in 68 (I think it was 68)
Reagans threat to build ICBM defences ("star wars")
invasion of Czech republic 1968
Assassination of Andropov 1982(???)


Some were a bigger threat than others

 

[tyrodtom]

France left NATO in stages. My sister was with her USAF husband in France, from 64-66.

All non French NATO forces were asked to leave France in 1966. He was stationed in England for the rest of his tour.

 

[fastmongrel]

There were actually a few seperate situations that happened suring the missile crisis that could have started a slug-fest in their own right, like the "B-59 incident" where the Soviet sub, B-59 was cornered near the Cuban Blockade line by USN destroyers. When the destroyers started a pattern of depth-charges to try and force the sub to the surface, the skipper was convinced these were bomb explosions and tried to arm the sub's nuclear compliment but he was calmed down, eventually surfacing, received orders from Moscow to return and left the scene un-molested by the U.S.

The film The Bedford Incident which was partly based on the B59 Incident is a brilliantly tense cold war film The Bedford Incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1979 North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. On the morning of November 9, 1979, technicians at the site received an urgent alert that the Soviets had launched a barrage of missiles at North America. Convinced a nuclear attack was imminent, the U.S. air defense program scrambled planes, ordered the president's "doomsday plane" to take off, and warned launch control to prepare its missiles for a retaliatory attack.The panic soon subsided after NORAD consulted its satellite data and realized the nuclear warning was little more than a false alarm. Upon further inspection, they discovered that a technician had accidentally run a training program simulating a Soviet attack on the United States.

 

[The Basket]

The cold war was certainly the first time 2 power blocs didn't go to war.
Nuclear weapons do that.
Without nuclear weapons Soviet tanks would have rolled out years ago.

 

[gjs238]

The cold war was certainly the first time 2 power blocs didn't go to war.
Nuclear weapons do that.
Without nuclear weapons Soviet tanks would have rolled out years ago.

Soviet T-54 tanks in Budapest, Hungary, 31st October 1956:
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Warsaw Pact tanks invade Prague, Czechoslovakia, August, 1968
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[The Basket]

Hungary ain't the Whitehouse lawn.
The Russians don't mind getting the tanks out when they like it.
Ukraine is a good example.
I wonder what was the time frame from the East German border to the French ports? A week?

 

[Lucky13]

....and what about:

Uprising of 1953 in East Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[fastmongrel]

The Sino-Soviet border conflict sounds pretty scary

Sino-Soviet border conflict - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
I have never heard of this incident I suppose fighting in such a remote area between two paranoid dictatorships who didnt like publicity meant it never hit the western media.

 

[tyrodtom]

It wasn't a secret, it was known about in the west, just the general public didn't know any details.

 

[GrauGeist]

There was also the first and second Taiwan Straight crisis.

The first, was a skirmish between the two Chinas that lasted for about 7 months, starting in 1954.
As the situation started to escelated, the U.S. 7th fleet was positioned in the straights of Formosa to protect Taiwan, and the suggestion and possible use of nuclear weapons being used against Communist China became public knowledge. Communist China backed down but not away.

This left a door open for increasing tensions between the two Chinas and sure enough, the second crisis came about in 1958, when Communist China started shelling Taiwanese possesions again.
The 7th fleet once again moved into position and the ROC forces were supplemented by modern U.S. Army and USMC equipment. Also, ROC F-86 aircraft engaged PRC MiG-15/MiG-17 aircraft, quite a few PRC aircraft being downed as a result. In addition, the AIM-9 equipped ROC F-86 aircraft scored the first successful fighter-to-fighter missile kills in combat.

So while the tensions were certainly high in the second crisis, the first crisis actually saw a serious consideration and debate regarding the use of nuclear weapons...

 

[The Basket]

And how the Soviets copied the Sidewinder as it got stuck up the Wazoo of a Chinese MiG.
Power blocs that oppose always fight in the end. I remember reading about the 2 Roman empires the Byzantine and Rome thinking they bound to go war with each other soon and they did. Far easier to go to war than coexist peacefully.