The Cuban Missile Crisis

Thirteen Days on an Atomic Knife Edge, October 1962

Phil Carradice

• Editorial: Pen & Sword Military
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526708083
• Categoría: Geschichte
• Categoría: Militär- & Seefahrtsgeschichte

This gripping Cold War history chronicles the events that brough the world to the edge of nuclear war—and the political drama that averted disaster. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the closest the world has yet come to nuclear war, a time when the hands of the Doomsday Clock really did inch towards the witching hour of midnight. By placing nuclear missiles on the Caribbean island of Cuba where, potentially, they were able to threaten the eastern seaboard of the USA, Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Union escalated the Cold War to a level that everyone feared but had never previously thought possible. In a desperate and dangerous game of brinkmanship, for thirteen nerve-wracking days Premier Khrushchev and President Kennedy held the fate of the world in their hands. Kennedy, in particular, wrestled with a range of options – allow the missiles to stay, launch an air strike on the sites, or invade Cuba. In the end, he did none of these. But the solution to one of the deadliest dilemmas of the twentieth century proved to be a brave and dramatic moment in human history.

1. A PERSONAL REMEMBRANCE

In the autumn of 1962, I had just begun working for my O level examinations, studying subjects like history and Latin which, in due course, would lead to A levels and then university. But in October 1962, all that seemed a long way ahead.

I remember sitting, disinterestedly staring into space, as our history teacher stumbled into the classroom for the after-lunch session that we all called the graveyard shift. His arrival, in itself, was unusual. He normally flounced everywhere, black gown flowing like an Atlantic wave behind him. His first words, that afternoon, were not just unusual, they were terrifying.

‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to teach you history,’ he declared, ‘by this time next week we’ll all be dead.’

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and for weeks now the newspapers had been droning on about growing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Americans had imposed new regulations: any ships carrying cargo to and from Cuba would no longer be allowed to dock at US ports.1 Britain and many other European countries objected – their vessels would not be carrying arms or ammunition to Cuba. It all added to the tension.

The possibility of war between the two global superpowers was suddenly quite real and, as somebody remarked, if the next war was fought with nuclear missiles, the one after that would be contested with clubs and axes. Unadulterated fear was suddenly rampant, and now it seemed the Soviets had placed guided missiles on the island of Cuba.

Castro and Guevara parade through Havana, after taking power, 5 March 1960.

For one reason or another, the build-up or escalation of the crisis seemed to have escaped the self-interested teenage minds of my friends and me. The nightly news programmes were just something that delayed Bonanza, The Avengers or, for the more intellectually minded, The Sky at Night. Therefore what was happening in the world rarely disturbed our equilibrium.

That afternoon, however, reality hit home. After his dramatic opening line, our history teacher went on to tell us about the missile crisis. With the Cold War at its height, this was the age of ‘Ban the Bomb’ marches, fallout shelters and Tom Lehrer singing, ‘We Will All Go Together When We Go.’

So, with the phantom of communism hovering above everything like a shroud, we were prepared to listen. At the very least it meant escape for an hour or so from the boring rigours of the Agrarian and Industrial revolutions, and we willingly spent the entire lesson discussing the crisis in the Caribbean. By the end, several of the girls were in tears and I was pretty much in a similar state myself.

Those next weeks were a time of intense introspection. With typical teenage self-concern – or perhaps that should be self-deception – I thought that such feelings were limited just to me. But years later, writers are still detailing the angst they felt that bitter October:

What was the point of continuing the human race when nuclear self-immolation seemed to be such a real and imminent possibility? That was the question that occurred to Florence as she was admitted to the delivery ward of a small country hospital in Norfolk. American air bases lay not far away, making that part of England a prime target.2

The Cuban Missile Crisis quickly became our sole topic of conversation. We talked about it in the playground, we debated the issues in lessons, and we loudly proclaimed our opinions on the bus during our journeys to and from school. I tried to persuade my then girlfriend that, if we were going to die, the best place was in bed – together. She quickly vetoed that idea and suggested church instead.

Of course, my father and I had discussed the missile crisis already, but I was mainly interested in playing rugby for the school and wondering what position Billy Fury’s new record would reach in the charts. My father, an undisguised and unapologetic hater of all things American, was virulent in his opinions and, after a while, I usually switched off.

As the crisis deepened, however, we talked more often and in more depth. Despite myself, I actually began listening to what he had to say. Not that I always agreed with him.

My father’s dislike of America stemmed from his time in Burma during the recent war. He and his comrades emerged from those steaming jungles to find that the USA, courtesy of Errol Flynn’s film Objective Burma, was claiming to have defeated the Japanese single-handedly.

His dislike knew no bounds. I tried to tell him Flynn was actually an Australian, not American at all. And it was, after all, just a film.

‘That’s not the point,’ he would say. ‘Films like that? American propaganda, that’s all they are.’

Fidel Castro meets the writer Ernest Hemingway who, for a time, lived in Cuba.

And then he would be off on his pet hate.

‘All those missiles on our east coast,’ he’d declare, ‘are pointing the wrong way. They should be aiming out over the Atlantic.’

Amazingly, during that dramatic thirteen-day period of the Cuban Missile Crisis, my father began to modify some of his opinions. Not on America and her values, but about the persona and performance of the young president, John F. Kennedy. Armageddon might be close but JFK was, he felt, the one man who might just be able to prevent the disaster.

‘How come?’ I asked. ‘He’s a Yank, isn’t he?’

‘Sweeping statements like that won’t help anything,’ said Dad, laying down his pipe and fixing me with a penetrating stare.

A classic portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

‘Kennedy is clever. He won’t do anything stupid – which is more than can be said about his Chiefs of Staff. I met lots of American soldiers in India and, believe me, they’re all the same. If they had the opportunity to nuke the Russians they would. Gung-ho, the lot of them.’

I disregarded the obvious riposte about his own sweeping statements and went back to that day’s issue of the Telegraph.

Over the coming fortnight, we worried and we feared, plotted and planned what we would do if there was ever a missile strike on Britain. I even went so far as to draw up plans for a makeshift nuclear shelter in the garden. It would probably have lasted two seconds.

And when the crisis was finally ended, my father continued with his dislike of America and Americans – with the sole exception of JFK and, maybe, his brother Bobby.

Castro and Khrushchev embracing and pledging eternal support for each other.

‘Good lads,’ he would say. ‘I hope they’ll be around for a long while yet.’

How close the world came to wiping itself out in October 1962 remains a moot point. It would not have taken much for the USA and the USSR to resort to blows, and that would, undoubtedly, have cost millions of lives. Whether it would have spelled the end of the world is another matter.

The ‘what-if?’ scenario is rarely useful, but if ever there was a situation that demanded – and continues to demand – the asking of the question, it has to be the Cuban Missile Crisis. That crisis was one of the high (or low) points of the Cold War, history in the making.

When I first set foot upon Cuban soil in 2008, beyond the immediate pleasures of the Hemingway sites, and the sweeping beaches and the classic cars of Havana, the outstanding impression was one of grinding poverty. Jobs were scarce, the government stores dispensing just the bare minimum of food to enable the poor and their families to survive. The vacant stares of the pointless peasants were chilling.

The USSR had broken up and the days of Russian financial and economic aid were well gone. America remained at a distance, despite President Obama’s conciliatory gestures. It was easy to look back and see the Cuba of 1962 as little more than a pawn in an international game of dubious diplomacy and highly dangerous brinkmanship.

It was a lot harder to remember that this tragic and beautiful island had once terrified us as we lay in our beds at night – conjuring Castro and Khrushchev as a demonic pair of psychotic villains, Kennedy as a knight in shining armour. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, and that is what made the Cuban Missile Crisis such a compelling subject. It still is.

2. BACKGROUND TO CRISIS

The island of Cuba lies just 93 miles off the coast of Florida. This close proximity to mainland USA has made it inevitable that American interest and involvement in Cuban affairs has, over the years, been both significant and constant.

During the nineteenth century, the American government tried, on five occasions, to buy Cuba from Spain. Then, in 1898, fate played into America’s hands. There was an escalation of military activity by rebels who had always seemed to be present, stalking the hills outside Havana. The situation now was more serious than usual. The activities of rebels seeking independence from their Spanish rulers began to cause a threat, possibly more imagined than real, to American investors on the island. The US was quick to take action.

The cruiser USS Maine was sent to Havana to protect American interests. When she blew up and sank only three weeks after her arrival, taking over half of her crew with her to the bottom of the harbour, blame immediately fell on Spain. Nobody could prove who or what had caused the destruction of the Maine, but this did not...