as the Cuban Missile Crisis broke, she operated in the Caribbean from the end of October through November. On 27 October, Randolph and a group of eleven US Navy destroyers entrapped a nuclear-armed Soviet near Cuba and started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. Reportedly, the captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, prepared to launch a retaliatory nuclear-tipped torpedo, but Second Captain Vasily Arkhipov persuaded the captain to surface to await orders from Moscow. After an overhaul at Norfolk, Randolph resumed her station in the Atlantic. Over the next five years, she made two Mediterranean cruises and a northern European cruise, while spending most of her time off the East Coast and in the Caribbean. NASA – Project Mercury In July 1961, Randolph sailed for operations in the Caribbean and served as the recovery ship after splashdown for astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom on America's second manned space flight, a suborbital shot. In February 1962, Randolph was the primary recovery ship for astronaut John Glenn on his flight, the first American orbital voyage in space. After his historic three-orbit flight, he landed safely near the destroyer from which he was transferred, by helicopter, to Randolph. Elevator failure On 1 April 1964, in an unusual accident, the Number Three deck elevator of Randolph tore loose from the ship during night operations and fell into the Atlantic off Cape Henry, Virginia, taking with it a Grumman S-2D Tracker, five crewmen, and a tractor. Three crew were rescued by the destroyer , but two were lost at sea. Decommissioning On 7 August 1968, the Defense Department announced that it would inactivate Randolph and 49 other ships to reduce fiscal expenditures in 1969. Randolph was decommissioned on 13 February 1969 at Boston Navy Yard and laid up in the reserve fleet at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Randolph was stricken from the Navy List on 1 June 1973. In May 1975, the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service sold the ship to Union Minerals & Alloys for $1,560,000. Randolph was towed to Kearny, New Jersey, and broken up for scrap. One of her anchors is located on the river front in Toms River, New Jersey. Another anchor was placed at a Naval Reserve unit in Kingsport, Tennessee. That building was later designated for decommissioning and destruction. With the