One minute to midnight

by Michael Dobbs

  "I can see Orion about fifteen degrees left of the nose of the aircraft," Maultsby radioed back.

  There was a pause as navigators aboard Duck Butt and at Eielson consulted almanacs and star charts to figure out the position of the missing U-2. After some hurried calculations, the Duck Butt navigator called back with an order to steer ten degrees left.

  Shortly after receiving this instruction, Maultsby got another call over his sideband radio. This time, the voice was unfamiliar. Whoever it was used his correct call sign, and told him to steer thirty degrees right. Within the space of a few minutes, Maultsby had received calls from two different radio stations, ordering him to turn in opposite directions.

  "What the hell is going on?" he asked himself.

  The befuddled pilot did not know it yet, but he had flown over the border of the Soviet Union at 7:59 a.m. Alaska time (11:59 a.m. in Washington). He had hit landfall on one of the most desolate places on earth, on the northern shore of the Chukot Peninsula, more than one thousand miles off course.

  As he crossed the border, at least six Soviet interceptor jets took off from two different airfields in Chukotka. Their mission: to shoot down the intruder plane.

  More than four thousand miles away, at the White House in Washington, President Kennedy walked down the hallway from the Cabinet Room to meet with a delegation of state governors concerned about civil defense. He was still focused on how to reply to the latest message from Khrushchev and had no idea about the drama unfolding in the skies above Chukotka. He struck the assembled governors as "unusually somber and harried," but this did not stop them from wondering aloud whether he was being "forceful enough" with the Soviet leader.

  Governor Edmund Brown of California was particularly blunt. "Mr. President," he asked. "Many people wonder why you changed your mind about the Bay of Pigs and aborted the attack. Will you change your mind again?"

  Kennedy made clear that he was irritated by the second-guessing. "I chose the quarantine because I wondered if our people are ready for the bomb," he replied evenly.

  Many governors felt that the federal authorities had not done enough to protect Americans from the threat of the bomb. "It was all so empty," one of them complained, referring to the U.S. civil defense program. After years of propaganda about "Duck and Cover" and bomb shelters in everyone's backyard, Americans were almost numb to the dangers facing them. The mere mention of "civil defense" at a McNamara press conference earlier in the week had triggered chortles of laughter from the assembled journalists. Bert the Turtle, the cheery cartoon character invented by the Truman administration to help children defend themselves against the atomic bomb, had become a national joke.

  There was a turtle by the name of Bert

  And Bert the turtle was very alert;

  When danger threatened him [firecracker goes off]

  He never got hurt

  He knew just what to do...

  He ducked! [whistling sound]

  And covered! [Bert retreats into shell]

  Civil defense films showed pictures of children diving under their desks and rolling themselves into a ball. Adults were taught similar drills in offices and factories, but many people questioned their effectiveness. "Upon seeing the brilliant flash of a nuclear explosion, bend over and place your head firmly between your legs," advised a poster pasted to the walls of student dorms. "Then kiss your ass goodbye."

  Despite a massive public relations campaign promoting shelters, little had been accomplished by the fall of 1962. Civil defense officials reported to the governors that shelter signs had been posted on fewer than 800 public buildings across the country, providing a total of 640,000 spaces. Emergency food supplies were located in only 112 buildings. If the Soviets attacked that weekend, there was shelter and rations available for just 170,000 Americans.

  The possibility of Soviet retaliation against American civilians worried the president as he reviewed plans for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. There was a risk that the Soviets would fire their missiles rather than permit their capture. By White House calculations, 92 million Americans lived within range of the missiles already deployed on the island. Earlier in the week, Kennedy had asked his top civil defense official about the feasibility of evacuating Miami "before attacking the missile sites." Assistant Defense Secretary Steuart Pittman felt that an evacuation was impractical and would only create "a hell of a mess." The idea was dropped.

  In the absence of government action, ordinary Americans were left to fend for themselves. Waves of panic buying swept through some cities, but bypassed others. Residents of Los Angeles rushed to local supermarkets following a rumor that they would be closed if war began. Grocery stores reported a 20 percent jump in sales in Miami after a local official said everyone should maintain a two-week supply of food. There was a run on bottled water in Washington; the dean of the National Cathedral ordered the basement to be flooded as an emergency reservoir. Gun stores in Texas and Virginia recorded brisk sales of rifles and handguns. A Richmond gun dealer explained that Virginians were arming themselves not against Russians, but against "city dwellers who might seek shelter in rural areas."

  12:15 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

  While the president was closeted with the governors, his spokesman called a dozen journalists into his West Wing office. Kennedy was worried that Khrushchev's offer of a Cuba-Turkey missile swap would go down well with international public opinion, undercutting the American negotiating position. The White House needed to get something out quickly.

  Reading from a hastily prepared text, Salinger told reporters that the latest Soviet message was just one of "several inconsistent and conflicting proposals" made by Moscow within "the last twenty-four hours." The crisis had been caused by Soviet actions in Cuba, not American actions in Turkey. The "first imperative" was to stop work on the Soviet missile bases and make them "inoperable." After that had been accomplished, anything could be discussed.

  The reporters were as confused as ExComm members had been.

  "There are two messages, then?"

  "That is right."

  "What did the last one say?"

  "We can't give you that."

  "Do you think the two replies will go to Moscow this afternoon?"

  "I can't tell you that."

  On the sidewalk outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, demonstrators were shouting slogans for and against the blockade. Cuban exiles and college students marched up and down in the crisp autumn air chanting: "Invade Cuba, Attack the Reds." A half-dozen American Nazis with swastika arm-bands carried signs demanding an immediate invasion. Peace activists waved signs proclaiming NO MORE WARS.

  12:30 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (8:30 A.M. ALASKA)

  General Power was on the golf course on Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, when news arrived that a U-2 pilot on an air-sampling mission to the North Pole had gone missing. Tracking data intercepted from Soviet air defenses indicated that the spy plane was over Soviet territory, and that at least six Soviet MiGs had been scrambled to shoot Maultsby down. As CINCSAC rushed back to his office, he passed by a large billboard emblazoned with the Orwellian slogan: "Peace is our Profession."

  Nobody at SAC headquarters had paid much attention to the air-sampling missions. One of Power's subordinates called the commander of Maultsby's unit, the 4080th Strategic Wing, to find out "what the hell you are doing with a U-2 over Russia."

  "You'd better ask someone else because I have my hands full down here," replied Colonel John Des Portes, who was more worried about the already overdue Major Anderson. "I don't know of a U-2 being over Russia."

  Back in his command post, Power found SAC intelligence officers plotting Maultsby's flight path on a giant screen, along with the tracks of the Soviet MiGs. The Americans were in effect looking over the shoulders of Soviet military flight controllers as they followed the missing U-2 over Chukotka. The security-conscious Soviets were unable to use a very strong encryption for their air defense net, as the information had to be made avail
able in real time to tracking stations all over the country. The data from high-frequency radio transmissions skipped off the ionosphere and was then picked up by American listening posts thousands of miles away.

  Power was in a quandary. The ability to "read the mail" of the Soviet air defenses was a jealously guarded national secret. If SAC commanders alerted Maultsby to the magnitude of his navigational blunder, they risked tipping the Soviets to a prized intelligence technique. They had to devise a way of steering Maultsby back to Alaska without revealing how they knew his precise location. An additional complication was that the Kremlin was likely to interpret the penetration of Soviet airspace as a highly provocative act. There was a risk that Soviet leaders would view a U-2 overflight as a reconnaissance mission prior to an all-out attack.

  The intelligence officers needed special clearance from the National Security Agency to share their knowledge about what had happened to Maultsby with his operations commander in Alaska. Permission was soon obtained--on condition that nothing be done or said that would compromise the source of the information. Navigators on the Duck Butt air rescue plane and at Eielson were already attempting to steer Maultsby back to Alaska on the basis of astronomical observations.

  Lieutenant Fred Okimoto was the navigator who had plotted Maultsby's flight to the North Pole. After sending Maultsby on his way at midnight Alaska time, he had retired to bed in the officers' quarters at Eielson. He was woken a few hours later by the operations commander, Lieutenant Colonel Forrest Wilson, with the news that the U-2 was missing. "We have a problem," said Wilson, in his usual low-key manner.

  The two men walked through the predawn darkness to the U-2 hangar. They went upstairs to the small office where the mission had been planned. Okimoto went over all his calculations again, checking for mistakes. Everything seemed in order. There were occasional squawks from the high-frequency sideband radio channel that Duck Butt was using to contact Maultsby. Navigational charts and almanacs were spread out all over the office. The fact that the U-2 pilot reported seeing the Belt of Orion off the nose of his plane suggested that he was flying south. The top priority was to get him headed in an easterly direction.

  Looking out the window, the navigator noticed a faint red glow on the horizon toward the east. The sun was beginning to rise in central Alaska. This gave him an idea. He got on the radio, and asked Maultsby if he could see the sun coming up.

  "Negative," came the clipped reply.

  The inescapable conclusion was that Maultsby was hundreds of miles west of Alaska, over Soviet territory. The solution was to get him to swing around to the left, until Orion was off the tip of his right wing. Then he would be heading home.

  Frightened and exhausted, Maultsby was still getting strange calls over his sideband radio. This time, the unfamiliar voice told him to turn right thirty-five degrees, a course that would have taken him deeper into the Soviet Union. The pilot challenged him, using a code that "only a legit operator would know." There was no response.

  The transmissions from Alaska were getting weaker by the minute. The last instruction Maultsby was able to hear was "Turn left, fifteen degrees."

  Maultsby knew he did not have much fuel left, certainly not enough to get back to Alaska. He would probably have to attempt an emergency landing. The transmissions from the unknown source were still strong, but he ignored them. Instead, he selected the emergency channel and shouted: "MAY DAY! MAY DAY! MAY DAY!"

  After yelling frantically for help, he picked up a radio station off the nose of the aircraft, playing what sounded like Russian folk music. The strains of balalaikas, accordions, and Slavic voices came in "loud and clear."

  Maultsby finally figured out where he was.

  Hearing the Russian music over the radio, Maultsby was panicked by the thought of becoming "another Gary Powers." Powers had been shot down over Siberia in 1960 while on a U-2 reconnaissance mission over Soviet nuclear sites. He had parachuted safely to the ground, only to be promptly captured by baffled Russian peasants. After a show trial in Moscow, he spent twenty-one months in prison. The U-2 incident was a huge embarrassment to the United States, and particularly to President Eisenhower. Wrongly assuming that Powers could not have survived the shootdown, Eisenhower authorized a statement claiming that his U-2 had gone down over eastern Turkey "while engaged in a high-altitude weather research mission." A succession of U.S. government statements on the incident were soon exposed as bald-faced lies by a jubilant Khrushchev.

  Maultsby knew what life was like inside a Communist prison. His thoughts went back to a January day ten years earlier when he took off for his seventeenth combat mission over North Korea. He had had a 1,000-pound bomb load beneath each wing of his F-80 Shooting Star, ready to drop on Chinese troop reinforcements at Kunri, an important railroad center. An enemy shell crashed into his fuselage just behind him as he attempted to dive-bomb the railroad line. Diving to earth, out of control, he had just enough time to release the two bombs and yank his ejection seat handle. The pilot chute opened automatically, and he floated down to earth, with jet fighters screaming overhead and bombs exploding around him. He fell into the snow, slipped out of his parachute harness, and tried to run. He did not get very far. He soon found himself looking up into "the muzzles of a dozen rifles, all held by Chinese soldiers."

  It was the start of six hundred days as a prisoner of war. The Air Force listed him as "missing in action." He was kept isolated from American and allied prisoners for many weeks. For much of the time, he was held in a stinking cave, dug into the side of a hill, that was not high enough for him to stand upright. Eventually, he was joined by another captured American pilot. Their bedding consisted of filthy straw, which they shared with rodents and insects. It was bitterly cold. Meals consisted of rice and water. "There was pain, intense pain. The months filled more and more with hunger and privation, with cold, and with interrogations that went on endlessly.... [Maultsby] was dragged and shoved and prodded from place to place, rarely knowing where he or his fellow prisoners were." He was finally released in a prisoner exchange at the end of August 1953.

  The more Maultsby thought about his prison experiences, the more determined he became "to get as far away as possible" from the radio station playing Russian music. He kept on turning left until the signal was directly behind him and Orion was off his right wingtip. He called out: "MAY DAY! MAY DAY!" over the emergency channel of his radio until he was hoarse.

  He was still three hundred miles inside Soviet territory.

  12:38 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (2:38 A.M. SUNDAY, SYDNEY)

  Admiral Anderson had a long-standing engagement in Norfolk, Virginia, to attend the football game between the Naval Academy and the University of Pittsburgh. It was a matter of pride for the chief of naval operations that he could leave his post in the middle of a crisis, and the ship would still be in good hands. The guardian of the traditions of John Paul Jones had total confidence in the men serving under him, whatever his civilian superiors might think. He would remain true to his personal creed: "Leave details to the staff.... Don't bellyache and don't worry."

  He had flown down to southern Virginia earlier in the morning, after making arrangements for a special telephone to be installed in his game box, in case anything truly urgent cropped up. After his argument with McNamara on Tuesday night over arrangements for the blockade, he had not bothered to disguise his frustration with interfering civilians. Rather than setting general guidelines and letting the Navy get on with the job, the White House had insisted on making the final decision about every single ship interception. At least two Soviet ships, the Bucharest and the Vinnitsa, had sailed right through the quarantine line without being inspected. When he learned of the stand-down order from a McNamara aide, the admiral had uttered a stream of salty oaths.

  The football outing meant that Anderson missed the daily crisis meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, coordinating all military actions against Cuba and the Soviet Union. But aides assured him that everything was un
der control. Early Saturday afternoon, a subordinate called the CNO operations room to check on messages for the boss.

  "Tell the admiral to rest easy," Anderson's executive assistant replied confidently. "The boat's on an even keel. He should have a good time, and go to the ballgame."

  With "Gorgeous George" cheering them on, Navy trounced Pitt, 32-9.

  On the opposite side of the world, in Australia, an American college professor named Irvin Doress was obsessed by thoughts of Armageddon. The thirty-two-year-old sociologist was one of a handful of Americans who had chosen to flee the country rather than wait helplessly for "missiles flying through the crisp night air." He packed his suitcases immediately after Kennedy's speech announcing the blockade, and caught the first Qantas flight out of New York for Sydney. His luggage consisted of "a few of my best books, two manuscripts in various stages of disorganization, a couple of suits, and my trusty typewriter."

  He was now sitting in a drab King's Cross hotel room, reviewing his abrupt decision. It was the middle of the night, Sydney time. He thought about the two young children he had left behind in America with an estranged wife, and his students at Union College in upstate NewYork. He had written a hurried note to the head of the sociology department, but had not said any real good-byes. He confided to his diary that he was beginning to feel "shame for having abandoned my loved ones." He asked himself, "Why should I survive and not others, especially younger people."