American intelligence analysts had tracked the transport of the bombers across the Atlantic by analyzing the shape of the crates on Soviet freighters. Identical crates had been used to ship IL-28s to Egypt several years earlier. When the crates showed up in San Julian, they had requested intensive low-level surveillance to follow the assembly process. What the Americans did not know at the time was that the San Julian planes were never intended for use with tactical nuclear weapons. They were under the control of the Soviet navy, and were equipped with torpedoes and naval mines for use against an invading fleet.
Nuclear-capable IL-28s had been delivered to Cuba, but they were at the other end of the island, at an airfield outside the city of Holguin in Oriente Province. No attempt had been made to unpack them from their crates. The Americans would not become aware of their existence until early November, when they sent a low-level reconnaissance mission over the field. The Holguin squadron consisted of nine bombers under the command of the Soviet air force. Six of them were designed to carry the Tatyana bombs; the remaining three planes would fly in front of the squadron, serving as a decoy to enemy radar systems.
Soviet commanders regarded the IL-28s and the Tatyanas as an unnecessary encumbrance. Khrushchev had sent them to Cuba as an additional means of defense against an invading force. In theory, they could have been used against U.S. troop concentrations. But the Soviets already had more effective tactical nuclear weapons on the island, in the form of the FKR cruise missiles and the Luna rockets. The six Tatyanas were overkill, as the officer responsible for them discovered as soon as he stepped off the Indigirka, the ship that had transported them from Russia. When Lieutenant Colonel Anastasiev asked what he should do with his bombs, he received a dismissive shrug. The officers greeting the Indigirka referred to the Tatyanas as "those things that nobody needs."
After initially taking the Tatyanas to one of Batista's seaside estates, Anastasiev had eventually persuaded his superiors to move them to a more secure location. The new storage place consisted of a tunnel in the nearby mountains protected by some barbed wire and a fence. The security arrangements were rudimentary, but they were an improvement on the padlocked shed by the sea. Equally important, it was easier to control temperature and humidity levels inside the mountain caves. Anastasiev and his men used rounded metal bars to roll the crates containing the 12-kiloton bombs into the tunnel.
Having found a place to store his bombs, Anastasiev went looking for an airfield for the IL-28s. According to the original Defense Ministry plan, they were meant to be based at Santa Clara, in the center of the island. But the Santa Clara field turned out to be totally unsuited to the storage of nuclear weapons. After flying around Cuba for a couple of days, Anastasiev finally settled on the airfield at Holguin. There were earthen bunkers next to the field that could be camouflaged and hermetically sealed. When the IL-28s were assembled, they could be wheeled into the bunkers, along with the Tatyanas.
The next challenge was to transport the Tatyanas from their storage point in western Cuba to Holguin, a journey of five hundred miles. This was the problem that Anastasiev was grappling with on Black Saturday.
If Russian generals had tactical nuclear weapons, American generals wanted them too. The discovery of the Ilyushin light bombers and the nuclear-capable FROG missiles had touched off a new arms race. Even though they had no firm evidence that nuclear warheads had arrived in Cuba, U.S. commanders felt they had to plan for all eventualities. While the rest of the country was focused on the medium-range R-12 missiles, the generals were preparing for a tactical nuclear war, to be fought in and around Cuba.
On Saturday morning, the Joint Chiefs of Staff received a top secret message from the commander in chief of the North American Defense Command describing the threat from the Ilyushins. General John Gerhart was responsible for preventing Soviet bombers from attacking Florida from Cuba. He had deployed HAWK missile batteries along the Florida Keys, but had been forbidden to load the missiles with nuclear warheads. He wanted the policy reversed.
"In the event of an IL-28 raid from Cuba which penetrates U.S. air space, I consider it imperative to use weapons with a maximum kill capability," Gerhart cabled the Pentagon. He asked for clarification of his authority to "declare Cuban/Sino-Soviet tactical aircraft hostile" and advance permission "to use nuclear weapons" against incoming Soviet bombers. The Joint Chiefs assured him that nuclear weapons could be used to destroy hostile aircraft if a "pattern of actions" elsewhere in the air defense system indicated a general "Cuban and Sino-Soviet attack." If the Cubans attacked by themselves, nonnuclear weapons should be used.
The commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Robert Dennison, was worried about the short-range FROG missiles first discovered on October 25 during a low-level reconnaissance flight. If equipped with nuclear warheads, the FROGs could decimate the invading force now heading for Cuba aboard his warships. The admiral proposed equipping "U.S. air and ground forces earmarked for Cuban operations" with "an atomic delivery capability."
The appearance of the FROGs had also alarmed Rear Admiral Edward J. O'Donnell, commander of the Guantanamo Naval Base. He wanted authority to declare "any movement of FROG missiles" into positions threatening the base an "offensive act unacceptable to the United States." The admiral was blissfully unaware of the much more immediate threat from nuclear-armed FKR cruise missiles deployed within a fifteen-mile radius of GITMO.
After earlier discounting the threat from Soviet battlefield nukes, the Joint Chiefs had to rewrite the war plan. They asked for casualty estimates that took into consideration "possibility of enemy use of tactical nuclear weapons." The Cuba invasion force would be supplied with nuclear-capable Honest John rockets, the American equivalent of the Soviet FROG, or Luna. Even though McNamara refused to authorize the deployment of tactical nuclear warheads with the Honest Johns, they could have been delivered very quickly from depots in Florida.
Dozens of Navy and Air Force strike aircraft were already "on call" to attack targets in Cuba with tactical nuclear weapons if hostilities escalated to that level. Two aircraft carriers, the Independence and the Enterprise, were stationed off Jamaica, within 150 miles of Guantanamo Bay. Some forty tactical nuclear bombs were aboard each carrier, ready to load onto A4D Skyhawks. The nuclear cores for the bombs were stored separately on nearby cruisers, a short helicopter ride away. Other nuclear-armed jets belonging to the Tactical Air Command were on fifteen-minute alert at airfields in southern Florida. If all else failed, the Strategic Air Command was ready to obliterate Cuba with 20-megaton weapons dropped from B-47 Stratojets.
The way the Pentagon saw it, these plans were necessary to counter the Soviet reliance on battlefield nuclear weapons. Before becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Maxwell Taylor had made a detailed study of Soviet military doctrine. He was alarmed to discover that the standard Soviet plan of attack called for an army group to be equipped with "250 to 300 nuclear weapons." The general had also received reports of a military exercise in the Carpathian Mountains in Eastern Europe in July 1961 during which Soviet troops planned to use as many as seventy-five tactical nuclear weapons in a "surprise first strike" against NATO. Taylor warned of the "emotional resistance in some quarters" against tactical nuclear weapons. In his view, the real issue was not whether to develop such weapons, but how to make them sufficiently small and flexible to permit "a separate stage in escalation short of the use of weapons of mass destruction."
Other Kennedy advisers believed that a limited nuclear war was a contradiction in terms. They recalled an exchange with Dean Acheson soon after the discovery of Soviet missiles on Cuba. Living up to his hard-line reputation, Acheson advocated an immediate air strike against the missile sites. Someone asked how the Soviets would react to such a strike.
"I know the Soviet Union very well," the former secretary of state replied with his trademark confidence. "They will knock out our missiles in Turkey."
"Well, then what do we do?" someone else asked.
"I believe under our NATO treaty, with which I was associated, we would be required to respond by knocking out a missile base inside the Soviet Union."
"Then what would they do?"
By now, Acheson was becoming a little less sure of himself.
"Well," he said with some irritation. "That's when we hope that cooler heads will prevail, and they'll stop and talk."
Other ExComm members felt a "real chill" descend on the room as they listened to the legendary "wise man" of the Truman era. Unwittingly, Acheson had laid bare a somber Cold War truth: it was impossible to know where a "limited" nuclear war would end.
At the same time that U.S. generals were fretting over the threat posed by the IL-28s in Cuba, they were lobbying the White House for an end to restrictions on loading high-yield thermonuclear bombs onto Quick Reaction Alert aircraft in Europe. On Saturday morning, they finally achieved their goal.
In some ways, the F-100 Super Sabre fighter-bombers were analogous to the Ilyushins. They were deployed in front-line NATO countries like Turkey, and could bomb targets inside the Soviet Union with little warning. On the other hand, they were designed to carry much more powerful bombs than the IL-28s and were much faster. A two-stage thermonuclear bomb loaded onto a Super Sabre had several hundred times the destructive power of the relatively crude atomic bombs carried by the Ilyushins. Unlike the three-seater Ilyushins, the F-100s were single-seater aircraft. The bombs were under the physical control of a lone pilot, a violation of the traditional "buddy system."
Concerns about nuclear safety had led Kennedy to refuse permission for loading thermonuclear weapons onto the Super Sabres back in April 1962. Since the weapons were not secured with electronic locking systems, it was impossible to exclude their unauthorized use. The president also worried about inadequate security at some European airfields and the possible theft of American nuclear secrets.
Kennedy's decision frustrated Curtis LeMay and other Air Force generals. They complained it undermined the effectiveness of their war plans. The Super Sabres were responsible for covering thirty-seven "high priority" Soviet bloc targets, mainly airfields in East Germany. Air Force studies claimed that the use of low-yield atomic weapons against these targets would reduce the "average probability of damage" from 90 to 50 percent. This was unacceptable.
As the missile crisis heated up, the generals stepped up their efforts to get the presidential decision reversed, citing "the gravity of the present world situation." This time, they succeeded. Even though electronic locks had still not been installed on the weapons, Kennedy let the Air Force have its way on this occasion. The Joint Chiefs sent a message to the U.S. Air Force commander in Europe authorizing deployment of the weapons.
One of the airfields that hosted the F-100 Super Sabres was Incirlik in Turkey. Nuclear safety at Incirlik was "so loose, it jars your imagination," the commander of the 613th Tactical Fighter Squadron would later recall. "We loaded up everything [and] laid down on a blanket on the pad for two weeks. Planes were breaking down, crews were exhausted." At the time, it seemed inconceivable that an American pilot would fire a nuclear weapon without authorization. In retrospect, "there were some guys you wouldn't trust with a .22 rifle, much less a thermonuclear bomb."
11:46 A.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (5:46 A.M. HAWAII)
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress piloted by Major Robert T. Graff had taken off from Hawaii three hours before dawn. It flew westward to Johnston Island, an isolated atoll in the South Pacific, a federal bird refuge that now served as a nuclear test site. On the other side of the world, dozens of similar airplanes were flying toward the Soviet Union with a full load of nuclear bombs as part of the massive airborne alert known as "Chrome Dome." But this mission was different. The flight crew under Major Graff knew for certain that they would be dropping a live 800-kiloton bomb.
The nuclear airdrop in the Pacific was part of Operation Dominic. Angry at the resumption of Soviet testing, Kennedy had given approval for a series of more than thirty atmospheric tests, including several rocket-launched experiments and a firing of a submarine-launched Polaris missile. A successful high-altitude missile test at Johnston on Friday, October 26, had partially made up for a series of setbacks, including a major disaster in July, when a malfunctioning Thor rocket exploded on the launch pad. The rocket complex and adjoining airstrip were demolished, and the entire island contaminated with plutonium. It took nearly three months to clean the place up. Judging by the results of Operation Dominic, airplanes remained a more reliable delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons than missiles.
It was still dark when the B-52 reached the drop zone in the middle of the Pacific, a hundred miles southeast of Johnston. A tiny slither of moon lay close to the horizon. The test had been choreographed like a ballet, with every move carefully rehearsed and timed. From the cockpit of the bomber, flying at forty-five thousand feet, Graff could see the lights of a dozen warships, assigned to monitor the nuclear explosion. Half a dozen other planes packed with sophisticated cameras and dosimeters were arrayed around the target, a U.S. Navy barge with beacons and radar reflectors anchored to the bottom of the ocean.
As the B-52 began a series of racetracklike runs around the target, the pilot radioed wind information to a ballistician in Hawaii whom everybody knew simply as "Kitty." They were testing a new design from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California that made better use of the available space in the bomb casing. To ensure accurate measurements, it was important that the bomb explode at a precise time, height, and location. Surrounded by navigational charts and overflowing ashtrays, Kitty performed her calculations on a slide rule, and radioed back the necessary offsets for the release of the device.
The key member of the crew was the bombardier, Major John C. Neuhan. A quiet loner completely absorbed in the details of his craft, Neuhan was rated the best bombardier in the Eighth Air Force. He had an almost perfect record. His colleagues attributed his success partly to luck, partly to an extraordinary familiarity with his hand-driven equipment. A rudimentary on-board computer operated mechanically. Electronics consisted of vacuum tubes. Neuhan would check the filaments one by one, to see if they had to be replaced.
Graff made three passes over the drop zone, timing each racetrack pattern to take exactly sixteen minutes. Crew members flicked a series of switches and locks to arm the weapon and permit its release. On the fourth pass, Neuhan announced the countdown over the emergency frequency so that everybody in the array could hear it.
"Three minutes--NOW."
"Two minutes--NOW."
"One minute--NOW."
"Thirty seconds--NOW."
"Twenty seconds."
"Ten seconds."
The crew felt a jolt as high-pressure hydraulics snapped the bomb bay doors open behind them. A yellow warning light on the flight panel signaled "Bomb Doors Open."
"RELEASE."
The bombardier used his thumb to press a handheld pickle switch, resembling the button of a video game controller. A gleaming 4-ton oval-shaped canister dropped into the slipstream. Within seconds, three parachutes had deployed to slow the descent of the bomb and allow the B-52 plenty of time to fly through the zone. The navigator started the post-release countdown. The crew closed the thermal curtains in the front of the cockpit, leaving a chink in the center. They turned their heads away. At 87.3 seconds after release, a flash of white light from behind the plane made everyone blink. Several minutes later, they felt a series of gentle shockwaves, as if they had hit a patch of slight turbulence.
The mushroom cloud rose to over sixty thousand feet, dwarfing the retreating bomber. Rabbits placed aboard several of the diagnostic aircraft were blinded by the flash. As the B-52 flew away and the light from the flash subsided, Neuhan looked through the bombsight to check his aim. He was right on target.
A giant moonlike sphere appeared in the sky, with green, violet, and purple streamers running off. The brilliant aurora from the event code-named CALAMITY lingered for a while, then faded into t
he warm tropical dawn. Nuclear apocalypse had a strange, almost compelling beauty. It was 5:46 a.m. in Hawaii, 11:46 a.m. in Washington, and 6:46 p.m. in Moscow.
On the other side of the world, in the White House, the morning ExComm meeting was about to break up. And in the sky above the Chukot Peninsula, thirteen miles above the surface of the earth, Chuck Maultsby was about to penetrate the border of the Soviet Union.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Some Sonofabitch"
11:59 A.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (7:59 A.M. ALASKA)
Had Chuck Maultsby kept to his assigned flight track, he should have been landing back at Eielson Air Force Base after a seven-hour fifty-minute return flight to the North Pole. Instead, he was wandering alone through the pitch-black stratosphere in a flimsy airplane, like a blind man stumbling through the dark. The northern lights had disappeared, but the stars had changed positions, and he had no idea where he was. Strange things kept happening to him that he found difficult to explain.
An hour before landing at Eielson, he had been scheduled to rendezvous with the Duck Butt air rescue plane circling above Barter Island, off the northern coast of Alaska. They had promised to "leave a light on in the window" for him to see on his return, but there had been no sign of them at the appointed time. He was unable either to reach Duck Butt or pick up the radio beacon on Barter, even though both should have been within range. He began broadcasting messages in the clear, hoping someone would steer him in the right direction. Perhaps he had never even reached the North Pole. Dazzled by the aurora borealis, his fixes had been based on "wishful hoping" rather than definite sightings of stars.
Suddenly, Duck Butt came on the line, over the single sideband radio. They said they would fire flares every five minutes, starting immediately. The U-2 driver strained his eyes, but he could see nothing. They fired another flare. Still nothing. Alone in the vast blackness, Maultsby had difficulty fighting off "a panic attack." He was "either many miles east or west of Barter Island...but which?"
One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war Page 33
