THE END WAS NEAR

o
It was one minute before high noon on Oct. 27,1962, the
day that later became known as "Black Saturday" More
than 100,000 American troops were preparing to invade
Cuba to topple Fidel Castro's communist regime and
destroy dozens of Soviet intermediate- and medium-range
ballistic missiles thought to be aimed at targets in the
United States. American reconnai.ssance aircraft were drawing
enemy fire. The U.S. Strategic Air Command's missiles and
manned bombers bad been ordered to DEECON-2, one step
short of nuclear war. In the Caribbean, U.S. Navy destroyers
were playing a cat-and-mouse game with Russian submarines
armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes.
And then, at 11:59 a.m., a U-2 spy plane piloted by Captain
Charles W. Maultsby unwittingly penetrated Soviet airspace
in a desolate region of the Chukot Peninsula opposite Alaska.
Flying at an altitude of 70,000 feet, the 11-year Air Force
veteran was oblivious to the drama below. He bad been
on a routine mission to the North Pole, gathering radioactive
air samples from a Soviet nuclear test. Dazzled by tbe
aurora boreahs, he'd wandered off course, ending up over
the Soviet Union on the most perilous day of the Cold War.
air-defense tracking network. But there was little they could
do with this information: The ability to "read the mail"
of Russian air defenses was a closely guarded Cold War
secret. Pentagon records show that Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara was not informed about tbe missing U-2 until
1:41 p.m., 101 minutes after Maultsby first penetrated Soviet
airspace. He briefed President Jobn E Kennedy by phone
four minutes later.
"There's always some sonofabitch who doesn't get the word,"
was Kennedy's frustrated response.
At 2:03 p.m. came news that another U-2, piloted by Major
Rudolf Anderson Jr., was missing while on an intelligencegathering
mission over eastern Cuba. Evidence soon emerged
it had been shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile
near the town of Banes. Anderson was presumed dead.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the Cuban Missile
Crisis "the most dangerous moment in human history." Scholars
and politicians agree that for several days the world was
the closest it has ever come to nuclear Armageddon.
But the nature of the risks confronting Kennedy and
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have been widely mis-
THE END WAS NEAR
NEW INFORMATION ABOUT THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
SHOWS JUST HOW CLOSE WE CAME TO NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON
He was completely unaware the Soviets had scrambled
MiG figbters to intercept him, and not until he heard balalaika
music over bis radio did he finally figure out where
he was.
A former member of tbe Air Force's Tbunderbirds fligbtdemonstration
team, Maultsby bad enough fuel in his
tank for nine hours and 40 minutes of flight. That was
sufficient for a 4,000-mile round trip between Fairbanks'
Eielson Air Force Base and tbe Nortb Pole, but not enough
for a 1,000-mile detour over Siberia. At 1:28 p.m. Washington
time, Maultsby shut down his single Pratt & Whitney
J57 engine and entrusted his fate to his U-2's extraordinary
gliding capabilities. The Air Force's Alaskan Air Command
sent up two F-102 figbters to guide bim back across tbe
Bering Strait and prevent any penetration of American
airspace by the Russian MiGs. Because of the heightened
alert, the F-102s were armed with nuclear-tipped air-to-air
missiles, sufficient firepower to destroy an entire fleet of
incoming Soviet bombers.
On the ground, SAC commanders were frantically trying
to retrieve their wayward reconnaissance plane. They knew
Maultsby's location, as they had tapped into the Soviet
\ MILITARY HISTORY
BY MICHAEL DOBBS
understood. Eor decades, the incident was taught in war
colleges and graduate schools as a case study in the art
of "crisis management." A young American president went
"eyeball to eyeball" with a Russian chairman and forced
him to back down through a skillful blend of diplomacy
and force. Accorditig to Scblesinger, Kennedy "dazzled the
world" through "a combination of toughness and restraint,
of will, nerve and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so
matchlessly calibrated."
Tbanks to newly opened archives and interviews with
key participants in the United States, Russia and Cuha, it is
now possible to separate the mytb from the reality. The real
risks of war in October 1962 arose not from the "eyeball-toeyeball"
confrontation between Kennedy and Khrushchev,
but from "sonofabitcb" moments exemphfied by Maultsby
and his wandering U-2.
The pampered son of the Boston millionaire and the
scion of Russian peasants had more in cominon than they
imagined. Having experienced World War II, both were
horrified hy the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse. But neither
leader was fully in command of his own mihtary machine.
As the crisis lurched to a climax on Black Saturday, events

Photographed from a low-flying U.S. Navy
patrol aircraft in November 1962, the Soviet
freighter Anosov carries tarpaulin-shrouded
ballistic missiles on her fore and aft decks.

CSI
ae.
LU
CO
threatened to spin out of control. Unable to effectively
communicate with each other, the two leaders struggled
to rein in the chaotic forces of history they themselves
had unleashed.
The countdown to Armageddon began on October 16,
when Kennedy learned that Khrushchev had broken
his promise not to deploy "offensive weapons" in
Cuba—a U-2, piloted by Major Richard Heyser, had flown
over the island two days earlier and taken photographs
of intermediate-range Soviet missiles near the town of
San Cristóbal. Kennedy branded the mercurial Russian
leader "an immoral gangster," but the Americati presi-
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and American President John F. Kennedy
share a light moment after a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna,
Austria, in June 1961. Just over a year later, the men, both veterans of
World War II, would bring the world to the brink of all-out nuclear war.
dent bore some responsibility for bringing about the crisis.
His bellicose, but ultimately ineffective, attempts to get
rid of Castro had provoked Khrushchev into taking drastic
action to "save socialism" in Cuba. Kennedy imposed
a military quarantine on the island and demanded the
Soviets withdraw their missiles.
By October 27—tbe 12th day of the crisis—the two superpowers
were on the brink of war. The CIA reported that
morning that five of the six Soviet R-12 missile sites were
"fully operational." All that remained was for the warheads
to be mated to the missiles. Time was obviously running out.
The U.S.Joint Chiefs of Staff presented the president with
a formal recommendation to bomb tbe Soviet missile sites.
MLITA»V HISTORY
A full-scale invasion of the island would follow within
seven days. Marine units and the Army's 1st Annored Division
would hit the beaches east and west of Havana, along a
40-mile front, in an operation modeled after the ]uno 1Q44
D-Day landings in France.
It is impossible to tell what would have happened had
Kennedy accepted the advice of Air Force General Curtis
LeMay and the other joint chiefs. But several things are
certain. The risks of a nuclear conflagration were extraordinarily
high. And the full scope of the danger was not
understood in Washington, Moscow or Havana. None of
the main protagonists—Kennedy, Khrushchev or Castro—
had tnore than a very limited knowledge of events unfolding
on a global battlefield that stretched from the Florida Straits
to the Bering Sea. In sotne ways. World War III had already
begun—aircraft were taking fire, missiles were being readied
for launch and warships were forcing potentially hostile
subtnarines to surface.
As Black Sattirday dawned, Castro wrote Moscow of
his conviction that an American attack on the island was
"almost inevitable" and would take place in the next 24 to
72 hours. Unbeknownst to Kennedy, the Cuban leader had
visited the Soviet embassy in Havana at 3 a.m. and petined
an anguished telegram to Kbrushchev. If the "itnperialists"
invaded Cuba, Castro declared, the Soviet Union should
undertake a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States.
In the meantime, he ordered his anti-aircraft defenses
to begin firing on low-flying American reconnaissance
planes. Castro declared that he and his comrades were
"ready to die in the defense of our country" rather than
submit to a Yanqui occupation.
The Soviet cotnmander in Cuba, General Issa Pliyev,
was also preparing for war. On his orders, a convoy of
trucks carrying nuclear warheads moved out of the central
storage depot at Bejucal, south of Havana, around midnight.
By early afternoon, the convoy had reached the
Sagua la Grande missile site in central Cuba, tnaking it
possible for the Soviets to lob eight 1-megaton missiles
at the United States. Pliyev also ordered the arming of
shorter-range tactical nuclear missiles to counter a U.S. invasion
of Cuba. By àawn a battery of cruise missiles tipped
witb 14-kiloton warheads had targeted the U.S. naval
base at Guantanamo Bay from an advance position just
15 miles away.
Kennedy was blissfully unaware of the nature of the
threat facing U.S. forces poised to invade Cuba. Oti October
23, the CIA estimated that the Soviets had between 8,000
and 10,000 military "advisers" in Cuba, up from an earlier
estimate of 4,000 to 5,000. We now know that the actual
Soviet troop strength on Black Saturday was 42,822, a figure
that included heavily armed combat units. Furthermore,
these troops were equipped with tactical nuclear weapons
intended to hurl an invading force back into the sea. Mc-
Namara was stunned to learn, three decades later, that the
Soviets had 98 tactical nukes in Cuba that Atnerican intelligence
knew nothing about.

READY BLDGS
U.S. reconnaissance
aircraft, flying at
high speed and
often at low altitude,
took thousands of
images over Cuba,
including, left,
missile equipment
at the port of Mariel;
right, Soviet 11-28
jet bombers at
San Julian Airfield;
and, below, a
medium-range
ballistic missile base.
OXIDIZER VEHIC!'
•MHHHl
PROB HYDROGEN PEROXIDE TANKS
ERECTOR ON LAUNCH PAD
MISSILE READY BLDGS

o
CM
00
BLACK SATURDAY. HOUR BY HOUR
SATURDAY OCT. 271962
• 12:38 a.m. Soviet SAM
missile sites on Cuba activated,
according to transmissions
intercepted by USS Oxford.
• 3 a.m. Fidel Castro visits
Soviet embassy in Havana,
wires Moscow urging
Khrushchev to use
nuclear missiles against
U.S. if Cuba is invaded.
• 4 a.m. U-2 piloted by
Captain Charles W. Maultsby
takes off from Eielson AFB
en route to North Pole to
monitor Soviet nuclear tests.
• 5 a.m. Soviet nuclear
cruise missiles arrive at
launch position. 15 miles
from Guantanamo naval base.
• 6:45 a.m. U.S. Navy
tracks Soviet freighter
Grozny en route to Cuba.
• 9:09 a.m. U-2 piloted by
Major Rudolf Anderson takes off
for mission over eastern Cuba.
• 10:12 a.m. Anderson enters
Cuban air space.
• 10:18 a.m. Radio Moscow
announces Khrushchev offer
to withdraw missiles from
Cuba in return for withdrawal
of U.S. missiles in Turkey.
• 11:19 a.m. Anderson is
shot down, shortly after
overflying Soviet missile
positions near Guantanamo.
• 11:30 a.m. Nuclear
warheads arrive at Soviet
missile base at Sagua la
Grande in central Cuba after
overnight journey from Bejucal.
• U:59 a.m. Maultsby's Ü-2
enters Soviet air space as a
result of navigational error.
III CIISIIIIl
•II« SltBs.
• 12:44 p.m. Soviet
MiG fighters attempt
to intercept Maultsby.
• 1:28 p.m. Maultsby
runs out of fuel.
• 1:41 p.m. SAC informs
Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara that U-2 is
missing off Alaska.
• 1:45 p.m. McNamara
informs Kennedy of missing U-2.
• 2:03 p.m. McNamara
informed that U-2 is
missing over Cuba.
• 2:25 p.m. Maultsby
lands at Kotzebue. Alaska.
• 3:02 p.m. Cuban
radio announces that
U.S. aircraft overflying
Cuba will be fired upon.
• 4:28 p.m. Cuban antiaircraft
guns fire on Navy
reconnaissance planes
near San Cristobal.
• 5:59 p.m. Navy drops practice
depth charges on nuclear-armed
Soviet submarine B-59.
• 8:05 p.m. Robert Kennedy
meets with Soviet ambassador
Dobrynin. offers to withdraw
U.S. missiles from Turkey
"within four to five months"
of Soviet puliout from Cuba.
• 9:52 p.m. ß-59 surfaces
without a fight.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 28
• 2 a.m. Khrushchev
meets with Communist Party
presidium; decides to withdraw
Soviet missiles from Cuba.
• 9 a.m. Radio Moscow
announces withdrawal of
Soviet missiles from Cuba.
(All times Eastern;
! s« I !

As the missile crisis deepened, U.S.
forces at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's
southeast coast went on high alert.

As Maultsby glided across the skies of eastern Russia,
a debate raged in the White House over how to respond
to a new message from Khrushchev, delivered over Radio
Moscow. The Soviet leader had offered Kennedy a deal:
The Soviet Union would withdraw its nuclear missiles from
Cuba if the United States agreed to remove its analogous
missiles from Turkey Advisers urged the president to reject
Khrushchev's offer, arguing that acceptance would destroy
NATO, compromise the American negotiating position
and confuse public opinion. Kennedy remained open to
the proffered deal.
"How else are we gonna get those missiles out of there?"
he asked.
Kennedy's decisions on Black Saturday were shaped
by a lifetime of political and military experience,
beginning with his service as a World War 11 U.S.
Navy torpedo boat commander in the Pacific. One lesson
he learned from World War II was that "the military always
screws up." Another was that "the people deciding
the whys and wherefores" had better be able to explain why
they were sending young men into battle in clear and simple
terms. Otherwise, Kennedy noted in a private letter,
"the whole thing will turn to ashes, and we will face great
trouble in the years to come." He was also influenced by historian
Barbara Tuchman's 1962 book The Guns of August,
which described how the great powers had blundered into
World War I without understanding why. Kennedy did not
want the survivors of a nuclear war to ask each other,
"How did it all happen?"
MILITARY HISTORY
Bypassing his executive committee, or FxComm, the president
sent his brother. Attorney General Robert F Kennedy,
to meet Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin
at 8:05 p.m. on Black Saturday. "There's very little
time left," the younger Kentiedy warned Dobt"ynin. "Events
are moving too quickly." If the Soviet government dismantled
its missile bases in Cuba, the United States would end
the Cuba quarantine and promise not to invade the island.
"What about Turkey?" Dobrynin asked.
Tbe attorney general told the ambassador that the president
was willing to withdraw the Ainerican Jupiter missiles
from Turkey "within four to five tnonths" but added that the
U.S. government would not make any public commitment to
do so—that part of the deal would have to remain secret. Although
Bobby Kennedy did not set a deadline for a response
from Khntshchev, he warned that "we're going to have to make
certain decisions within the next 12, or possibly 24, hours....
If the Cubans shoot at our planes, we're goitig to shoot back."
Like John Kennedy, Khrushchev had come to understand
the liinits of crisis management. At 9 a.m. on October 28—
the 13th day of the crisis—the Soviet premier broadcast
another message over Radio Moscow, announcing the dismantling
of the Cuban missile sites. He also expressed his
concern about the overflight of the Chukot Peninsula by
Maultsby's U-2. "What is this—a provocation?" he asked
Kennedy. "One of your planes violates our frontier during
this anxious time we are both experiencing, when everything
has been put into combat readiness. Is it not a fact that
an intruding American plane could be easily taken for a
nuclear bomber, which might push us to a fateful step?"

-T':"sc*Tr:*- -"' ••'-•
Citing national-security considerations, the U.S. Air
Force has yet to release a single document on
Maultsby's adventures. In the book One Minute
to Midnight, this author was able to piece together his
story from a family memoir, interviews with his fellow
U-2 pilots and scraps of information discovered in other
government archives. After switching off his engine,
Maultsby glided for 45 minutes across the Bering Sea and
was eventually picked up by the American F-102s. Maultsby
performed a dead-stick landing on an ice airstrip near Kotzebue,
on the westernmost tip of Alaska. Numbed from
his 10 hour 25 minute ordeal, he had to be lifted out of
Khrushchev's concession triggered the removal of most Soviet military
hardware from Cuba. Top, Kasimov'is outbound with il-28 bomber
fuselages. Above, USS Vesole escorts the missile-bearing Polzunov.
the cockpit like "a rag doll." (Charles Maultsby died of
cancer in 1998.)
The "sonofabitch wbo never got the word" was fortunate
to survive that day the White House called Black Saturday.
So was the rest of humanity. (^
Eor further reading, Michael Dobbs recommends his own
One Minute to Midnight (Knopf 2008).

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