The Cold War

by Robert Cowley

  Fifteen minutes before the president's address, the nation's railroads were also put on alert. The Pentagon asked the Association of American Railroads for the immediate use of 375 flatcars to move air-defense and air-warning units to Florida. That evening the 1st Armored Division began the 1,100-mile trek from Texas to an intermediate staging base at Fort Stewart. This division alone would require 3,600 flatcars, 190 gondola cars, 40 boxcars, and 200 passenger cars. In all, over 5,000 men, 15,000 vehicles, and thousands of tons of supplies would be loaded on 38 trains, some up to 150 cars long. At the height of the crisis, normal rail movement in the Southeast practically came to a halt. Another 10,000 men would be airlifted in 135 commercial flights.

  October 23. The president authorized the use of low-level aerial photoreconnaissance and of the navy's F8U Crusaders; later, air force RF-101 Voodoos began flying from Florida at treetop level over the Cuban missile sites. The low-altitude photography, transferred immediately to Washington for analysis, added a new dimension to NPIC's reporting. Each piece of missile equipment could be identified precisely and its function in the missile system determined. Rather than taking the interpreter's word, as they had with the U-2 photography, policy makers now could see clearly what the interpreters had seen and were reporting.

  October 24. The JCS ordered Defcon 2—maximum alert before war with the optimum posture to strike either Cuba or the U.S.S.R. or both. With this change of status, 1,436 U.S. bombers loaded with nuclear weapons and 134 ICBMs were now on constant alert: One eighth of the bombers were in the air at all times, and aircrews were waiting near the rest of the bombers, prepared for takeoff on a moment's notice.

  Both the White House press secretary and the news desk at the Pentagon were being besieged by reporters demanding to know more about the reported build-up for an invasion of Cuba. Although the president felt that the Washington press would exercise control in reporting military information, he was appalled by reports that local television crews throughout the United States had stationed themselves near military bases and were making public the sort of details that would never have been leaked during World War II and the Korean War.

  Kennedy decided that a nationwide reporting guideline had to be established for the news media, and he asked the Department of Defense to draft it. While he made it clear he was not imposing censorship, he did want to restrict information on the deployment of forces, degrees of alert, defenses, dispersal plans, vulnerabilities, and air- and sea-lift capabilities.

  Late that evening, the president called McNamara to confirm when U.S. forces would be ready to invade Cuba. The secretary replied, “In seven days.” When Kennedy pressed him on whether all the forces would be well prepared, McNamara replied that they would be “ready in every respect in seven days”: Wednesday, October 31, Halloween.

  October 25–26. Photo interpreters at NPIC had identified four camps suspected of housing Soviet armored combat groups. All were in the vicinity of the missile sites, which would tend to indicate that their main function was to protect them. But other intelligence analysts had maintained that they were simply camps where Cubans were being trained to handle Soviet arms—or that they were temporary equipment transfer points, places where, as one U.S. general put it, “The Cosmoline was removed.” NPIC kept insisting that these were more likely to be Soviet combat facilities, since the equipment observed was parked in neat formations, characteristic of the Soviet army, rather than in the haphazard ones typical of Cuban installations. That equipment, of the most sophisticated recent vintage, included T-54 tanks, assault guns, tactical rocket launchers, antitank weapons, and personnel carriers. It wasn't until October 24 that the intelligence community agreed with the photo interpreters that these were Soviet installations and that they did house combat troops, as many as 1,500 each.

  The next day a low-altitude reconnaissance aircraft brought back absolute confirmation. At the Santiago de las Vegas installation, Soviet ground-force-unit symbols and insignias were seen implanted in the flagstone and flowers in front of garrison areas. One unit proudly displayed the Elite Guards Badge, the Soviet equivalent of the U.S. Presidential Unit Citation. These four camps were quickly targeted, and ordnance, including nuclear, was selected for their destruction in the event of an invasion.

  That day, too, the continuing Soviet denial that offensive missiles were in Cuba was exposed as a lie when Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, confronted the Soviet ambassador with aerial photographs of the missile sites during a Security Council meeting.

  Throughout the crisis, President Kennedy was concerned that an American move on Cuba would provoke a countermove by the Soviets on Berlin. Close watch of Soviet forces was maintained in the Soviet Union and East Germany, but there was no indication of preparations for offensive action. The Soviets were obviously concerned that any such indication might provoke a first-strike response by alerted U.S. forces. Soviet U.N. ambassador Valerian Zorin told a group of neutral African and Asian U.N. delegates that “The Americans are thoroughly mistaken if they think we shall fall in their trap. We shall undertake nothing in Berlin, for action against Berlin is just what the Americans would wish.”

  Khrushchev's overall behavior during this week appeared unsure and erratic. He continued to lie about the missiles after their presence had been established beyond doubt. Even as he attempted to pacify the United States, his soldiers at Cuban bases were working frantically to bring the missiles to operational status. After ordering his ships to turn around, he threatened to run the blockade using submarines. He threatened to fire missiles but took no overt offensive action that might cause the United States to further increase its alert status. U.S. military leaders knew that Khrushchev could be ruthless when desperate. The JCS was wary of what direction the crisis would take, determined, as Admiral Ward later put it, not to be “the Kimmels and Shorts of this generation”—a reference to Admiral Husband Kimmel and Major General Walter Short, who were relieved of their commands after the Japanese surpised them at Pearl Harbor.

  To ensure the success of possible amphibious landings in Cuba, Ward decided that exercises should be conducted in Florida in as realistic a manner as possible. A number of projected landing areas in Cuba were at or near resort areas, so Hollywood Beach, near Fort Lauderdale, was selected to simulate the Havana beach area. In the predawn chill, the sea off Fort Lauderdale was rough, and it was late morning before the marines climbed down nets from the ships offshore into the bobbing personnel landing craft. The bigger landing ship tanks (LSTs) prepared to move toward the shore to disgorge tanks and armored personnel carriers.

  The littoral behind the landing zone, situated along the central portion of Hollywood Beach, was dense with hotels, motels, restaurants, and bars. By the time the men and equipment hit the beach, sunbathers had already gathered under their umbrellas. The tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantrymen soon joined the crowd on the narrow beach. Instead of obeying the instructions of a forward observer who was installed on the roof of a jai alai court, some of the marines began fraternizing with bikini-clad girls on the beach; others posed for tourists' cameras in their combat gear; an even greater number headed for the bars. Admiral Ward later characterized the exercise as about the closest thing to the Keystone Kops that he had ever seen. He never reported the Hollywood Beach fiasco to his superiors, instead emphasizing that the landing exercises the same day at Hutchinson Island, Fort Pierce, and near Fort Everglades had gone as planned.

  At six P.M. on the twenty-sixth, the White House began to receive transmission of a long, rambling polemic from Khrushchev—which did, however, give a glimmer of hope. The Soviet premier hinted that he was prepared to withdraw his missiles if Kennedy would agree not to invade Cuba.

  October 27. This was the day that would be referred to as “Black Saturday” by both the president and members of the National Security Council. Khrushchev remarked that “a smell of burning hung in the air.”

  Just before ten A.M., Soviet pers
onnel fired an SA-2 surface-to-air missile and downed a U-2 reconnaissance plane flown by Major Rudolf Anderson, who was killed. The order to fire was apparently given by General Igor D. Statsenko, commander of the Soviet forces in Cuba. The intelligence community could come up with no reason why the Soviets, who had been tracking the U-2 flights, would select this moment to down one. Most feared that the Soviets were escalating the crisis.

  JCS Contingency Plan No. 312 directed CINCLANT to be prepared to strike a single SA-2 SAM site, or all Cuban SAM sites, within two hours of a U-2 shootdown. The established policy, agreed to by the president, was that any SAM site that fired at a U-2 was to be immediately neutralized. Sixteen armed F-100 Super Sabre fighters stood by at Homestead Air Force Base in southern Florida on thirty-minute alert to attack any firing SAM site.

  When word that Anderson had been shot down reached General LeMay, he ordered the F-100s readied to strike. The White House, realizing that there was a standing order for this operations procedure, frantically contacted LeMay and asked if the fighters had been launched. LeMay replied that they were being readied. He was admonished not to launch the fighters until he received direct orders from the president. Angered, LeMay hung up. “He chickened out again,” he said. “How in the hell do you get men to risk their lives when the SAMs are not attacked?” When an aide said he would wait at the phone for the president's order, LeMay disgustedly replied, “It will never come!”

  The crisis had entered a new phase. A fragile and volatile situation existed that could explode into a major conflict with little or no warning. The CIA now believed that all the MRBM sites in Cuba were operational. Pilots returning from low-altitude flights reported that antiaircraft weapons were firing on them. Analysis of the aerial photography revealed that antiaircraft weapons were being installed around the MRBM sites. There was also a desperate effort by the Soviets to camouflage and conceal those sites. And hundreds of trenches were being dug to protect them from ground assault.

  That afternoon the Executive Committee of the NSC (ExCom) discussed what retaliatory action should be taken. It decided that, beginning the next morning, all low-flying reconnaissance aircraft would have armed escorts. That afternoon, too, McNamara ordered twenty-four troop-carrier squadrons of the air force reserve, along with their associated support units, to active duty. Besides paratroopers, these squadrons would drop supplies to the ground units that would be placed ashore in an invasion of Cuba. And LeMay announced to McNamara that 1,576 bombers and 283 missiles stood poised to strike the 70 principal cities of the Soviet Union.

  In the evening the CIA briefed the president in depth on the startling events of the day. Kennedy had already responded to Khrushchev's message of the previous evening with the suggestion that he would be willing to make a pledge not to invade Cuba if the Soviets met his conditions. But Kennedy decided it was time to deliver an ultimatum. The president's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was sent to meet with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, warning him that the United States had to have a commitment by the next day that the missiles would be removed, or the United States would remove them by force.

  At that moment in Florida, 156 tactical aircraft were ready to strike Cuba. They were backed up by almost 700 more strike planes that were on the ground or at sea. The air force and the navy were prepared to conduct continuous air strikes until all the SAM, MRBM, and IRBM sites, as well as the Cuban Air Force, had been destroyed. If an invasion of Cuba were ordered, a total of 1,190 sorties could be flown the first day.

  U.S. planning for the invasion of Cuba and possible war against the Soviet Union was now going so well that the date had been moved forward: It could come as early as Tuesday, October 30. Military leaders openly admitted, however, that an invasion of Cuba would be as bloody as Korea. The estimate of total U.S. casualties for the first few days of the combined airborne and amphibious operation was about 1,000 a day. The invasion would be opposed by 75,000 Cuban regular troops, 100,000 militia, and 100,000 home guards—not to mention Soviet personnel, then estimated at 22,000. (The Soviets later maintained that there were almost 40,000 personnel in Cuba at the height of the crisis.)

  The aerial and naval bombardment of the island would begin early Tuesday morning. The 82nd Airborne Division would be dropped farther inland than the 101st. The 82nd's objective was to seize the San Antonio de los Baños military airfield and the José Martí International Airfield just outside Havana. The 101st would also take the military airfields at Mariel and Baracoa, along with the port of Mariel. There would be airdrops of humanlike dummies to confuse the enemy. These would not be ordinary dummies: They would be armed with recorded tapes to create the sounds of firefights.

  There were a total of ten battalions of marines afloat in the vicinity of Cuba. They would come ashore at a number of famous beaches on Cuba's northern shore between Havana and Matanzas and link up with the 82nd Airborne Division. (The Soviets and Cubans suspected the invasion would come ashore at these beaches and had deployed cruise missiles along the coast; they also had dug defensive trenches along those beaches.) Once the beaches and the port of Mariel were secured, the 1st Armored Division would come ashore. They would move along the major highways and isolate Havana; then they would head for the missile sites. Other units of the 1st Armored would strike southward to cut the island in half.

  October 28. That morning at nine o'clock Washington time, the U.S. Foreign Broadcast Intercept Service, while listening to Radio Moscow, began picking up an extraordinary message: It was an open letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy. The Soviets were clearly so alarmed by the speed with which events were moving that they elected to bypass the usual method of sending such a high-level message. Even in the time it would take to encode, decode, translate, and deliver the message, the crisis might have escalated out of control and the invasion might already have begun. So the Soviets decided to broadcast Khrushchev's letter to the president on the radio. “The Soviet government,” the message read, “has ordered the dismantling of bases and the dispatch of equipment to the USSR…. I regard with respect and trust the statement you have made in your message … that there would be no attack or invasion against Cuba.”

  Less than forty-eight hours remained before the invasion was set to begin.

  U.S. military leaders greeted the end of the crisis with relief. No one relished the prospect of heavy casualties, not to mention the threat of nuclear war. The main responsibility now fell on the intelligence community to monitor the dismantling of the missile sites and verify the removal of the missiles from the island. “The military posture of the United States,” Admiral Ward noted in his diary a week later, on November 4, “continued to be one of increased readiness.” Ships carrying twelve thousand marines from the West Coast were on their way, while sizable units of the 2nd Marine Division remained at sea off Florida. Air force and army units were poised for an assault, as were the carriers Enterprise and Independence.

  But by now only Fidel Castro remained belligerent. He threatened to fire on the U.S. reconnaissance planes. Anastas Mikoyan, the first deputy secretary, was dispatched from Moscow to pacify the Cuban leader. When Castro told him that the Cuban people were prepared to fight as they had at the Bay of Pigs, Mikoyan replied, “You won't have a ragtag brigade against you this time. You will have the full might of U.S. forces. If you want to fight, you can fight— but alone.” Mikoyan tightened the screws. He threatened to return immediately to Moscow and cut off all economic aid to Cuba. Grumbling, Castro backed down.

  After the Soviet missiles had been removed from Cuba, but before the troops assembled in the southeastern United States were disbanded, Maxwell Taylor wanted the president to see firsthand the military machine that had been gathered for the projected invasion. On November 26, accompanied by the JCS and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Kennedy arrived at Fort Stewart and reviewed just one of the three brigades of the 1st Armored Division. He looked on, incredulous, at the armor arrayed before him. That incred
ulity only grew as he traveled south that day, ending up on a pier at the Key West naval base. At Fort Stewart he recited a poem, supposedly found in a British sentry box at Gibraltar:

  God and the soldier all men adore,

  In time of danger and not before.

  When the danger is past,

  And all things righted,

  God is forgotten and the old

  Soldier slighted.

  The president added, “The United States forgets neither God nor the soldier upon which we now depend.”

  But three decades later, we have almost forgotten the great invasion that never happened—forgotten it, perhaps, because we never really knew how awesome it would have been.

  EPILOGUE

  Surprises—and for the U.S., the discovery of missiles in Cuba was one—have a way of generating more surprises, not all of them pleasant. What might have happened if American troops had invaded Cuba? American troops probably would have gone in on Tuesday, October 30, had Khrushchev and Kennedy not made their last-minute deal over the previous weekend. Since Cuba was too far from the Soviet Union to be reinforced by conventional means, the only sure protection for the Russian troops on the island was tactical nuclear weapons, in the form of twelve short-range Luna rockets (or FROGS, as they were known in the U.S.) that carried a two-kiloton charge. Their effect on a Cuban beach or an invasion flotilla just offshore would have been awesome. “Assuming that the Luna was aimed to detonate in the air,” the historians Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali write,