Writers, historians, politicians and scholars rarely go back to set the record straight even after learning the truth about what really happened in historically significant world crises. Such was the case with the Cuban Missile Crisis. We continue to hear the same version of the event reported at the time, which was that the Soviets were caught with their pants down trying to sneak nuclear offensive missiles into Cuba, and have them armed and ready to launch toward Charleston, Norfolk, Washington and New York before the U.S. woke up to the fact. The story then, and now, was that a U-2 spy plane flying over Cuba discovered the missile sites under construction, that President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade that stopped the Soviet ships from unloading more missiles,and that Kennedy and Khrushchev stood toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball, and it was Khrushchev that blinked, and backed down, and removed their missiles.
What came to light later, but not well publicized, was that Khrushchev extracted from Kennedy an agreement to also pull U.S. offensive missiles from Turkey and Italy. As part of this deal, Kennedy had insisted the Soviets keep this part of the deal quiet for at least 6 months. Khrushchev also insisted, and got from JFK, an agreement to keep hands off Castro and Cuba in the future. Kennedy’s acquiescence thus has led to the longest Communist dictatorship in history.What we learned forty years later, after the Cold War, when the American and Russian participants in the Crisis sat down together to share what really went on, made the hair on the back of our necks stand up. We had no idea, until then, how close we had come to a nuclear holocaust. What we called the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets called Anadyr, one of their many covert actions. We might better call it the world’s largest, and most dangerous, covert action since it went well beyond anything the U.S. ever considered, including the CIA’s Bay of Pigs.Just why Khrushchev decided on Anadyr remains a matter of conjecture, but we do know that the Soviets had long placed spies throughout the U.S.Government, who had stolen every secret we had. Roosevelt had ceded Soviet dominance over all Eastern Europe and most everything was going their way. Further, Khrushchev had sized up Kennedy, in an earlier meeting in Vienna, as young, inexperienced and an eager-to-please pushover. But Khrushchev was also smarting from the CIA’s U-2 having roamed freely over Russia for four years,unlocking Soviet secrets and weaknesses, and then having to back down in the Berlin face-off in 1960 because the U.S. had clear military superiority over the Soviets. He saw the U.S. as the only road block to Russia’s world domination plan. Anadyr would be a quick and easy way gambit to turn the tables and checkmate us. It was a magnificent gamble, well-worth the risks, and Russians were the better chess players.
Anadyr called for emplacing Surface-to-Air defensive missiles around the planned strategic missile sites, eighty strategic missiles with three megaton nuclear warheads, seven ballistic nuclear missile submarines, short range missiles with 100 kiloton warheads, cruise missiles with nuclear capabilities, a fleet of IL-28 bombers with 12 kiloton bombs, two cruisers, two missile destroyers, two squadrons of mine warfare ships, four long-range diesel attack submarines equipped with nuclear torpedoes, and 40,000 Soviet soldiers disguised as Cubans. The cover for the shipments was to be ‘massive aid to Cuba.’ Had Anadyr been completed, the island would surely have glowed in the dark and be clearly visible from Key West.
The early shipments from the Soviet Union went unnoticed. Nonetheless, there were early clues that the Soviets were up to something. A U.S. Navy ship had spotted a Soviet freighter in the Mediterranean and signaled, ‘What is your ship, your cargo and where headed?’ ‘We are taking agriculture machinery to Havana.’ The Americans could clearly see the IL-28 bombers on deck. The CIA also had reports from their agents in Cuba regarding large objects, 20 meters in length that required removal of street lamps to tow around tight street corners.
And Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli, a French intelligence officer, told the Directorof CIA, John McCone, that he had visited Cuba and learned that the Soviet buildup there included strategic nuclear missiles. There was no hard evidence, however, as from aerial photographs, since Kennedy had forbidden U-2 overflights of the island for fear of a political flap. The National Security Agency intercepted Soviet and Cuban communications and caught them discussing highly secret cargo unloading, under heavy guard at Mariel, and the extraordinary precautions to keep it secret.
Only two people thought the Soviets were sneaking strategic missiles into Cuba: Colonel John Wright in the Defense Intelligence Agency, and John McCone, the Director of CIA. Even so, the CIA’s Board of National Estimates reviewed the ‘circumstantial’ evidence and concluded that the Soviets would not dare place offensive missiles in Cuba, because ‘it was not logical.’ Later on, when the U-2 confirmed the missiles, the Board released another report that ‘If the missiles are in Cuba, the Soviets wouldn’t dare use them.’ So much for intelligence estimates not based on collected intelligence.Under pressure from McCone, Kennedy finally relented and permitted the Air Force U-2 overflights that confirmed the missiles, and that launch site construction was well along. The Air Force had insisted that its U-2s fly the Cuban missions,rather than the CIA. Unfortunately, the Air Force U-2s were not equipped with electronic countermeasures (ECM) to protect them from the Soviet anti-aircraft missiles. One of the Air Force U-2s was shot down over Cuba, and its pilot, South Carolinian Maj. Rudy Anderson, would be the only fatality during the Crisis. The Air Force then borrowed the CIA’s U-2s, which were outfitted with ECM. The White House, and Congress, needed CIA experts to interpret the U-2 photography for them.This problem was solved by switching to low-flying photo-reconnaissance aircraft, skimming over the missile sites at treetop level. We could now count the rivets on the missiles, and clearly see the Russian technicians’ vulgar hand gestures,something a Congressman could understand. But the Navy and Air Force low-level planes didn’t have ECM protection either, so a couple of young CIA engineers were dispatched to Key West to install CIA ECM in these planes. What went on in Key West and off the Cuban coast will be the subject of a future Charleston Mercury article.
At the peak of the crisis, McCone, a widower recently remarried, was on his honeymoon on the French Riviera, but the vast amount of messages coming from him, called his ‘honeymoon cables,’ caused the White House to question if he knew what he was supposed to be doing on his honeymoon. These cables are now declassified and make a great read.
Before the U.S. showed its hand, the Russians were questioned about the Cuban arms buildup, and the Russians quickly put up a smoke screen of lies and deception. Khrushchev sent ambassador Dobrynin to tell Bobby Kennedy and Presidential counsel Ted Sorenson that they would create no problems for the U.S. during our 1962 Congressional elections. The White House was told that ‘no missile capable of reaching the U.S. would be placed in Cuba.’ Tass, speaking for the Soviet government, stated that Soviet missiles were so powerful ‘there was no need to place them outside the Soviet Union.’ Khrushchev told the American ambassador in Moscow the build-up was purely defensive. Soviet foreign minister Gromyko lied to Kennedy, saying the build-up was ‘by no means offensive.’On October 22nd,Kennedy finally appeared on television and announced the U-2 findings to an anxious public, called for the missiles removal, and placed a naval quarantine around Cuba to block further Soviet shipments and once again called Khrushchev’s bluff as he had in Berlin. But Khrushchev knew, as with Berlin, the U.S. had him outgunned, so he had no choice but to move quickly to find a solution. Glued to our televisions, we watched UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson wave the U-2 photographs of the missiles in the face of the Soviets as the U.S. military went to DEFCON2, the highest alert status short of all out nuclear war. The next day, the fever broke. The Soviet ships en route stopped, were either dead in the water or turning back. But the CIA had an ace up its sleeve. It had earlier obtained the instruction manuals for the Russian missiles from one of their spies, Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. The manuals also included the procedures for launch site construction, which were being followed to the letter in Cuba. By comparing photographs of the Cuban site construction with the instruction manuals, we knew the sites would be completed and ready to launch missiles in about thirteen days; which became Washington’s drop-dead date to end the crisis, one way or another. On the same day that Kennedy announced his naval quarantine, Penkovsky was arrested, exposed, confessed to spying, and later executed. So the Soviets knew what we knew. At the end of the Cold War, when the Americans and Russians [not USSR] sat down together in a series of meetings, the first of which was in Havana, to discuss the Crisis,the Americans were jarred and shocked. The Russians told how their local commanders in Cuba had been given orders that permitted them to use their nuclear weapons if they were to come under attack by the Americans. The reason was that Moscow did not have reliable communications with their forces so far from home, so it was left to the local commanders, on their own, to launch these nuclear warhead missiles into the U.S.A., an unprecedented action.
In a later meeting, the Russians described how the nuclear ‘close encounters’ had occurred at sea, both on the surface and below. The Soviet navy’s budding nuclear submarine force was unreliable and fraught with one major disaster after another. The only reliable submarines they could send to Cuba to protect their shipments were long-range diesel attack submarines based in the Arctic, near Murmansk, and under the command of Admiral Leonid Rybalko.
Four of these were ordered to sail undetected to the Azores where they would then open sealed orders which sent them on to Mariel, Cuba. In addition to their regular torpedoes, each sub would carry one nuclear tipped, 15 kiloton torpedo, which would wipe out everything within a 15 mile radius. And none of these vessels had ever seen or test-fired such a weapon. Each sub had a nuclear specialist on board who slept by his torpedo, plus the usual KGB political officer, the infamous and dreaded Zampolit, to keep an eye on, and report on, everyone else.
Their orders read, ‘Your rules of engagement are clear. You will use these weapons if American forces attack you submerged or force your units to surface and then attack. Or upon receipt of orders from Moscow.’ Incredibly, the submarine Captains, like the Soviet commanders in Cuba, had been given full authority to start a nuclear war with the United States.The submarine Captains had been told nothing about Anadyr. But as they approached Cuba they received a message from Moscow saying, ‘Abort transit to Mariel and assume combat patrol at (coordinates that corresponded to the U.S. naval blockade).’ They were all shocked since, as submariners are prone to do, raise their antennas to listen to American broadcasts and learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis. They also found themselves in a hornet’s nest of U.S. Navy anti-submarine activity enforcing the blockade.At the time of the blockade, the U.S. Navy flashed a Notice to Mariners (NOTAM) signal,worldwide, that read: ‘U.S. forces in contact with unidentified submarines will signal the submarine to surface in order to be identified, by dropping 4 to 5 harmless explosive sound signals, accompanied by the international code signal IDKCA, meaning to rise to the surface on an easterly course.’
The hide and seek games began between the Navy and the four Russian submarines. Moscow had kept their submarines in the dark about the American NOTAM, but Admiral Rybalko, thinking it unconscionable not to let his submariners know about it, ignored Moscow, and transmitted the NOTAM to his submarines himself. When the submarines were finally forced to the surface, they were on an easterly course, which meant they knew of the NOTAM and would come to no harm from the Americans.
When the USS Cony forced Captain Savitsky’s submarine to surface, they signaled, ‘What ship are you, and do you need assistance?’ Savitsky signaled back that they would like some American cigarettes and bread. When the destroyer moved alongside the submarine, the Cony’s bosun fired a shot line across the conning tower to start the transfer. The submariners ducked, thinking they were about to be attacked. They apparently had never seen a shot line gun.
Captain Edward Kelley’s destroyer, USS Blandy, forced Captain Shumkov’s submarine to the surface, both on an easterly course. Then something went terribly wrong. The Blandy’s gunnery officer swung his 5 inch gun turret around and trained it on the submarine. Shumkov, assuming he was about to fired on, turned his submarine toward the Blandy and ordered his nuclear torpedo readied for firing. His nuclear officer fainted dead away, knowing that if the torpedo was fired, the destroyer, submarine and their crews would be instant toast. Kelley, at the last instant, saw the mistake and ordered the gun turret to point away from the submarine. Shumkov then swung his submarine back to an easterly heading. And the niceties between sailors at sea resumed. Kelley and none of the other Americans knew of the nuclear torpedoes, and how close they, and the world, came to disaster.
As the submarines were forced to surface, all parties relaxed and even became jovial, exchanging greetings and salutes, along with the cigarettes and other gifts. One destroyer had a rag-tag jazz band that performed on deck for their Russian guests. The Russians never forgot that jazz band, especially the trombone player, obviously the ship’s cook, with his white pants and T-shirt, wearing his tall chef’s cap. Some mused that these sailors must have been from Charleston,the city where everyone had music in his bones. Yes, you will have guessed it, the Americans requested vodka from the Russian submariners, who were dismayed to learn the American Navy didn’t allow liquor on their ships.
The Russians limped back to their Arctic base, and were held virtual prisoners on their submarines, for fear their stories would embarrass the Kremlin. And Admiral Kybalko disappeared, never to be heard from, for his having transmitted the Navy’s NOTAM to his submarines that saved their lives.
In the 1970s,the CIA learned that Soviet submarines were indeed equipped with nuclear torpedoes, and quickly informed the Navy. Then three decades later, in our face-to-face meetings, we would learn the Russian commander in Cuba, and the submarine Captains, had the authority to start a nuclear war, on their own.
The USSR would never again allow itself to be militarily inferior to the Americans, and the Cold War would continue, under the rules of MAD (mutually assured destruction) UNTIL President Reagan decided to end the half-century stand-off by reasserting American military superiority, and adding ‘Star Wars’ (the airborne laser weapons system), something Russians could not match. This caused the Soviet Union to finally implode.