and another incident in 1959 when an American destroyer staged a "hold-down" of a Soviet submarine off the coast of Greenland. The author of The Bedford Incident, Mark Rascovich, had many contacts within the U.S Navy and seems to have learned of the two incidents, which inspired the book. In the film, Munceford talks about how Finlander forced a Soviet submarine to surface during "the Cuban deal". In many ways, the film is similar to other submarine vs. destroyer films, such as Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below, but, unlike those, it is set in peacetime, and the nuclear component greatly raises the stakes. Maloney wrote that "The Bedford Incident is remarkably accurate in its assumptions that Soviet submarines were equipped with nuclear torpedoes on a routine basis". The Caine Mutiny is set during World War II, but its picture of a destroyer commanded by an officer who has lost his mind greatly influenced several novelists during the Cold War, who speculated about the possibility of a crazed naval officer trying to start World War III, either intentionally or by accident. In 1963, the South African novelist Antony Trew published Two Hours To Darkness, a bestselling novel about the HMS Retaliate, a fictional British nuclear ballistic submarine commanded by Captain Shadde, an officer suffering from paranoia caused by undiagnosed post-traumatic stress (like Captain Queeg) who is determined to fire his submarine's ICBMs at the Soviet Union. As in The Caine Mutiny and The Bedford Incident, the other officers aboard the Retaliate have to decide whether to obey a mentally ill commanding officer or reject his authority. Another inspiration for The Bedford Incident was the desire of General Douglas MacArthur to expand the Korean War in 1951 by using nuclear weapons against the People's Republic of China—in defiance of President Harry S. Truman, if necessary. MacArthur's very public defiance led Truman to sack him in April 1951, stating that, as president, he had the final authority over whether to use nuclear weapons, and he had decided not to use them against China. MacArthur argued he was answerable only to God, not the president, and, as there is "no substitute for victory", nuclear weapons should be used against China. These sentiments inspired fears of an "out of control" military leader determined to plunge the world into a nuclear war, either by design, or by acting rashly. Maloney noted that many