Both of these accounts are widely at variance with that in Peter Huchthausen's book October Fury.
According to Huchthausen (who was a CIC Talker on USS Blandy (DD 943) with the Essex CVBG at the time), the most tense period was when Captain 2nd Rank Savitsky requested bread and cigarettes from USS Cony (DDE 508) acting as close escort after B-59 surfaced. A bosun on Cony fired a line gun over to B-59, something that was outside of the Soviet sailor's experience and was initially mistaken for a hostile shot. The Russian's used a bolo to heave lines.
Later a Navy P2V Neptune dropped some "incendiary devices" on B-59 while she was sailing in tandem with Cony and the former maneuvered to place the American destroyer escort in the arcs of her forward torpedoes but Cony apologized to B-59 by searchlight and sent a snot-gram to the Neptune squadron commander. He quotes one member of Cony's bridge watch as commenting this incident was "pretty exciting".
There was apperently tension between Savitsky and Arkhipov after B-59 was detected and the Americans were dropping hand grenades to get the Soviet boat to surface but if Huchthausen's account is accurate (and his primary sources are far more extensive than the wiki article), there was never a real threat of B-59 shooting first even though nuclear release had been delegated to her commanding officer before they left base as part of the operation order.
Captain 1st Rank Arkhipov was not B-59's captain, he was chief of staff of the Red Banner Northern Fleet's 69th Submarine Brigade, the submarine component of Operation Anadyr. The Brigade Commander, Captain 1st Rank Agafonov traveled in B-4.
I have no idea which is the authoritative account of these events, the the wiki certainly has greater drama but Huchthausen's more prosaic version of events rings truer to me.
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