[Goose]

https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-culture/2...aved-world

https://fas.org/publication/nuclear-weapons-at-sea/ for a further look at the number and scope of tactical nuclear weapons naval deployment by the US. The USSR had similar deployments with arguably fewer safeguards.

What would have happened if the Russian submarine had used its nuclear torpedo is unknown. By itself, it probably wouldn't have started a nuclear war (although not doing the experiment was much better :-).  The weapon was in the same class as the US ASROC. While this weapon was a 10 kiloton explosive, the one time it was tested the water entry point was only 4,000 yards from the destroyer that launched it. https://www.destroyers.org/tcs-ships/ord...ket-asroc/ It is not that big of a bang in other words.

These weapons were not strategic threats. The US would probably have considered the action by the Russian submarine as "messaging", even though as we now know the action would have been without specific approval from the Russian national command authority! What happened next would have been the issue. Russia could have panicked, assumed a US strike was soon  to be on the way, and launched their own strike preemptively. The US certainly might have at that point invaded Cuba or something similar. When you are "eyeball to eyeball" a stupid mistake can become a very dangerous thing. There were lots of misapprehensions by both sides during the Cuban missile crisis. One more might have hurt a lot.

[Goose]

https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-culture/2...aved-world

https://fas.org/publication/nuclear-weapons-at-sea/ for a further look at the number and scope of tactical nuclear weapons naval deployment by the US. The USSR had similar deployments with arguably fewer safeguards.

What would have happened if the Russian submarine had used its nuclear torpedo is unknown. By itself, it probably wouldn't have started a nuclear war (although not doing the experiment was much better :-).  The weapon was in the same class as the US ASROC. While this weapon was a 10 kiloton explosive, the one time it was tested the water entry point was only 4,000 yards from the destroyer that launched it. https://www.destroyers.org/tcs-ships/ord...ket-asroc/ It is not that big of a bang in other words.

These weapons were not strategic threats. The US would probably have considered the action by the Russian submarine as "messaging", even though as we now know the action would have been without specific approval from the Russian national command authority! What happened next would have been the issue. Russia could have panicked, assumed a US strike was soon  to be on the way, and launched their own strike preemptively. The US certainly might have at that point invaded Cuba or something similar. When you are "eyeball to eyeball" a stupid mistake can become a very dangerous thing. There were lots of misapprehensions by both sides during the Cuban missile crisis. One more might have hurt a lot.