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Cuban Missile Crisis | HearLore
— Ch. 1 · Background And Causes —
Cuban Missile Crisis.
~11 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
In late 1961, Fidel Castro asked for more SA-2 anti-aircraft missiles from the Soviet Union. The request was not acted upon by the Soviet leadership. In the interval, Castro began criticizing the Soviets for lack of revolutionary boldness and began talking to China about agreements for economic assistance. This shift alarmed Moscow and raised fears of a possible US invasion. As a result, the Soviet Union sent more SA-2 anti-aircraft missiles in April, as well as a regiment of regular Soviet troops. Historian Timothy Naftali writes that Escalante's dismissal was a motivating factor behind the Soviet decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. According to Naftali, Soviet foreign policy planners were concerned that Castro's break with Escalante foreshadowed a Cuban drift toward China, and they sought to solidify the Soviet-Cuban relationship through the missile basing program.
The United States had provided weapons, money, and its authority to the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista that ruled Cuba until 1958. The majority of the Cuban population had tired of the severe socioeconomic problems associated with US domination of the country. With the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War, the US government sought to promote private enterprise as an instrument for advancing US strategic interests in the developing world. It had grown concerned about the expansion of communism. In December 1959, under the Eisenhower administration and less than twelve months after the Cuban Revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency developed a plan for paramilitary action against Cuba. The CIA recruited operatives on the island to carry out terrorism and sabotage, kill civilians, and cause economic damage.
At the initiative of the CIA Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Bissell, and approved by the new President John F. Kennedy, the US launched the attempted Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961 using CIA-trained forces of Cuban expatriates. The complete failure of the invasion, and the exposure of the US government's role before the operation began, was a source of diplomatic embarrassment for the Kennedy administration. Former President Eisenhower told Kennedy that the failure of the Bay of Pigs would embolden the Soviets to do something they would otherwise not do. Following the failed invasion, the US massively escalated its sponsorship of terrorism against Cuba. Starting in late 1961, using the military and the CIA, the US government engaged in an extensive campaign of terrorism against civilian and military targets on the island.
Secret Deployment And Discovery
In early 1962, a group of Soviet military and missile construction specialists accompanied an agricultural delegation to Havana and met Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro. According to one report, the Cuban leadership expected that the US would invade Cuba again and enthusiastically approved the idea of installing nuclear missiles on Cuba. By May, Khrushchev and Castro agreed to place strategic nuclear missiles secretly in Cuba. The deployment included short-range tactical weapons with a range of 40 km, usable only against naval vessels, that would provide a nuclear umbrella for attacks upon the island. The Soviets maintained their tight secrecy, writing their plans in longhand, which were approved by Marshal of the Soviet Union Rodion Malinovsky on the 4th of July and Khrushchev on the 7th of July as Operation Anadyr.
Operation Anadyr entailed elaborate denial and deception known as maskirovka. All the planning and preparation for transporting and deploying the missiles was carried out in the utmost secrecy, with only a very few knowing the exact nature of the mission. Even the troops detailed for the mission were given misdirection by being told that they were headed for a cold region and were outfitted with ski boots, fleece-lined parkas, and other winter equipment. A total of 43,000 foreign troops would ultimately be brought in. Chief Marshal of Artillery Sergey Biryuzov led a survey team that visited Cuba. He told Khrushchev that the missiles would be concealed and camouflaged by palm trees. The Soviet troops arrived in Cuba heavily underprepared. They did not know that the tropical climate would render ineffective many of their weapons and much of their equipment. In the first few days of setting up the missiles, troops complained of fuse failures, excessive corrosion, overconsumption of oil, and generator blackouts.
As early as August 1962, the US suspected that the Soviets were building missile facilities in Cuba. During that month, its intelligence services gathered information of sightings by ground observers of Soviet-built MiG-21 fighters and Il-28 light bombers. U-2 spy planes found S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile sites at eight different locations. CIA director John A. McCone was suspicious. Sending antiaircraft missiles into Cuba, he reasoned, made sense only if Moscow intended to use them to shield a base for ballistic missiles aimed at the United States. On the 10th of August, he wrote a memo to Kennedy in which he guessed that the Soviets were preparing to introduce ballistic missiles into Cuba.
Executive Committee Deliberations
On the 15th of October 1962, the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center reviewed the U-2 photographs and identified objects that appeared to be medium range ballistic missiles. This identification was partly on the strength of reporting provided by Oleg Penkovsky, a double agent in the GRU working for the CIA and MI6. That evening, the CIA notified the Department of State and at 8:30pm EDT, Bundy chose to wait until the next morning to tell the President. McNamara was briefed at midnight. The next morning, Bundy showed Kennedy the U-2 photographs and briefed him on the CIA's analysis of the images. At 6:30 pm EDT, Kennedy convened a meeting of the nine members of the National Security Council and five other key advisers, in a group he named the Executive Committee of the National Security Council after the fact on the 22nd of October.
EXCOMM discussed several possible courses of action including doing nothing, using diplomatic pressure, launching an air strike, or invading Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously agreed that a full-scale attack and invasion was the only solution. They believed that the Soviets would not attempt to stop the US from conquering Cuba. Kennedy was skeptical. He concluded that attacking Cuba by air would signal the Soviets to presume a clear line to conquer Berlin. Kennedy also believed that US allies would think of the country as trigger-happy cowboys who lost Berlin because they could not peacefully resolve the Cuban situation. McNamara disagreed with the military assessment. An extra 40 missiles, he reasoned, would make little difference to the overall strategic balance. The US already had approximately 5,000 strategic warheads, but the Soviet Union had only 300. McNamara concluded that the Soviets having 340 would not therefore substantially alter the strategic balance.
It was agreed that the missiles would affect the political balance. Kennedy had explicitly promised the American people less than a month before the crisis that if Cuba should possess a capacity to carry out offensive actions against the United States, the United States would act. Further, US credibility among its allies and people would be damaged if the Soviet Union appeared to redress the strategic imbalance by placing missiles in Cuba. Kennedy explained after the crisis that it would have politically changed the balance of power. It would have appeared to, and appearances contribute to reality.
The Week Of Confrontation
At 7:00 pm EDT on the 22nd of October, Kennedy delivered a nationwide televised address on all of the major networks announcing the discovery of the missiles. During the speech, a directive went out to all US forces worldwide, placing them on DEFCON 3. The heavy cruiser was the designated flagship for the blockade, with as Newport Newss destroyer escort. On the 23rd of October 1962, US Air Force RF-101A/C Voodoos and US Navy RF-8A Crusaders began flying extremely hazardous low-level photo reconnaissance missions over Cuba. Only once did the Cuban Air Force scramble a MiG-19 to attempt a shoot-down, but the attempt was unsuccessful.
On the 25th of October at 10:00 pm EDT, the US raised the readiness level of Strategic Air Command forces to DEFCON 2. For the only confirmed time in US history, B-52 bombers were put on continuous airborne alert. One-eighth of SAC's 1,436 bombers were on airborne alert. Some 145 intercontinental ballistic missiles, some of which targeted Cuba, were placed on alert. Air Defense Command redeployed 161 nuclear-armed interceptors to 16 dispersal fields within nine hours, with one third on 15-minute alert status. Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52 bombers were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union to demonstrate that the US was serious. Jack J. Catton later estimated that about 80 per cent of SAC's planes were ready for launch during the crisis.
At 7:15 am EDT on the 25th of October, an attempted interception of Bucharest failed. Fairly certain that the tanker did not contain any military material, the US allowed it through the blockade. Later that day, at 5:43 pm, the commander of the blockade ordered the destroyer to intercept and board the Lebanese freighter Marucla. That took place the next day, and Marucla was cleared through the blockade after its cargo was checked. At 5:00 pm EDT on the 25th of October, William Clements announced that the missiles in Cuba were still being worked on. This was later verified by a CIA report that suggested there had been no slowdown.
Secret Negotiations And Resolution
On Saturday, October 27, USAF Major Rudolf Anderson took off on his sixth mission over Cuba in a U-2F Dragon Lady from a forward operating location at McCoy Air Force Base in Orlando, Florida. A few hours into his mission, at approximately 12:00 pm EDT, he was shot down over Banes, Cuba, by one of two Soviet-supplied S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missiles. The aircraft crashed, and Anderson was killed. Before giving this order, they attempted to obtain authorization from their superior officer Army General Issa Pliyev, but after finding that Pliyev was unreachable, they decided to authorize the shoot-down themselves. Kennedy recalled members of EXCOMM to the White House and ordered that a message should immediately be sent to U Thant asking the Soviets to suspend work on the missiles while negotiations were carried out.
Emissaries sent by both Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to meet at the Yenching Palace Chinese restaurant in the Cleveland Park neighbourhood of Washington DC on Saturday evening, the 27th of October. Robert Kennedy had been meeting the Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington to discover whether the intentions were genuine. The new plan called for him to ignore the latest message and instead to return to Khrushchev's earlier one. Rusk added one proviso that no part of the language of the deal would mention Turkey, but there would be an understanding that the missiles would be removed voluntarily in the immediate aftermath. At 8:05 pm EDT, the letter drafted earlier in the day was delivered. The message read that the US would agree to remove these weapons systems from Cuba under appropriate United Nations observation and supervision. In exchange, the US would agree to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and give assurances against the invasion of Cuba.
Aftermath And Legacy
On the 28th of October 1962, Khrushchev told his son Sergei that the shooting down of Anderson's U-2 was by the Cuban military at the direction of Raúl Castro. The Soviets dismantled their offensive weapons in Cuba, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement not to invade Cuba again. The United States secretly agreed to dismantle all of the offensive weapons it had deployed to Turkey. All Thors in the UK were disbanded by August 1963. While the Soviets dismantled their missiles, some Soviet bombers remained in Cuba, and the United States kept the naval quarantine in place until the 20th of November 1962. The blockade was formally ended on the 20th of November after all offensive missiles and bombers had been withdrawn from Cuba.
The compromise embarrassed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of US missiles from Italy and Turkey was a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev, and the Soviets were seen as retreating from a situation that they had started. Khrushchev's fall from power two years later was in part because of the Soviet Politburo's embarrassment at both Khrushchev's eventual concessions to the US and his ineptitude in precipitating the crisis. According to the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, the top Soviet leadership took the Cuban outcome as a blow to its prestige bordering on humiliation. William Taubman wrote in 2004 that this perception contributed significantly to Khrushchev's removal from office.
The evident necessity of a quick and direct communication line between the two powers resulted in the Moscow-Washington hotline. A series of agreements later reduced US-Soviet tensions for several years. The crisis lasted from 16 to the 28th of October 1962. The confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.
What caused the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles in Cuba during 1962?
The Soviet decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba was motivated by Fidel Castro's dismissal of his foreign minister Escalante and fears that Cuba would drift toward China. Historian Timothy Naftali notes this shift alarmed Moscow, prompting them to solidify the Soviet-Cuban relationship through a missile basing program.
When did the United States discover Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba?
On the 15th of October 1962, the CIA National Photographic Interpretation Center identified medium range ballistic missiles from U-2 spy plane photographs. President John F. Kennedy convened the Executive Committee of the National Security Council on the 22nd of October after receiving these images.
Who shot down Major Rudolf Anderson during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down over Banes, Cuba, by one of two Soviet-supplied S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missiles on the 27th of October 1962. The order to fire was given by Cuban military forces at the direction of Raúl Castro without authorization from Army General Issa Pliyev.
What agreement ended the Cuban Missile Crisis between the US and USSR?
The crisis ended when Khrushchev agreed to dismantle offensive weapons in Cuba under United Nations verification in exchange for a US public declaration not to invade Cuba again. The United States secretly agreed to remove all offensive weapons it had deployed to Turkey as part of this deal.
How long did the Cuban Missile Crisis last and what were the dates involved?
The confrontation lasted from the 16th of October 1962 until the 28th of October 1962. The blockade was formally ended on the 20th of November 1962 after all offensive missiles and bombers had been withdrawn from Cuba.