The Cuban Missile Crisis
May 1962 – 30 Aug 196351 items
cold warnuclearThirteen days in October 1962
In the summer of 1962 the Soviet Union secretly shipped nuclear missiles to Cuba. On 14 October an American U-2 photographed them. For the next thirteen days Kennedy and Khrushchev bargained, by letter, by radio and through back channels, while ships, bombers and submarines moved into position. This timeline starts with the plan in May 1962, slows to days from 14 October and to hours on Saturday 27 October, the day the crisis came closest to war, and ends with the hotline between the two capitals in August 1963.
For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. — John F. Kennedy, American University, 10 June 1963
By the numbers
42 medium-range R-12 missiles reached Cuba, each able to fly about 2,000 kilometres; the longer-range R-14s never arrived
more than 40,000 Soviet troops were on the island; the CIA estimated about 10,000
about 160 Soviet nuclear warheads were in Cuba by later Soviet accounts, nearly 100 of them short-range tactical weapons Washington never saw
one man killed by enemy fire: Major Rudolf Anderson
Reading it
Bands mark Operation Anadyr, the thirteen days, the naval quarantine and Black Saturday. Filter by command for the decisions in the White House and the Kremlin, diplomacy for the letters and back channels, intelligence for the spy planes and spies, maritime for the ships and submarines, nuclear for the weapons and alert levels, and cuba for Castro’s side of it.
All times are UTC. Washington was on daylight time (UTC−4) until clocks went back early on Sunday 28 October, Havana ran an hour behind Washington (UTC−5), and Moscow seven hours ahead of it (UTC+3). Each note gives the local clock time the sources use.
Items
The Presidium says yes
A U-2 finds surface-to-air missiles
Kennedy draws a line
The first missiles land in Cuba
The warheads arrive on the Indigirka
Heyser’s U-2 over San Cristóbal
Photo-interpreters find the missiles
Bundy tells the President
The ExComm first meets
Gromyko at the White House
LeMay: “almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich”
Kennedy chooses a blockade
No guarantee from the air
Penkovsky arrested
The Presidium sits through the night
Kennedy tells the world
The Organization of American States backs the quarantine
The Aleksandrovsk slips into La Isabela
Kennedy signs the quarantine proclamation
Robert Kennedy at the Soviet embassy
Khrushchev: “an act of aggression”
“Eyeball to eyeball”
Strategic Air Command goes to DEFCON 2
Stevenson and Zorin at the Security Council
Khrushchev decides to back down
The Marucla is boarded
Scali and “Fomin” at the Occidental
Khrushchev’s first letter
Castro’s letter from the embassy
Radio Moscow reads a second letter
Major Anderson’s U-2 shot down
Maultsby’s U-2 strays over Siberia
The ExComm argues over the Jupiters
Robert Kennedy meets Dobrynin at the Justice Department
Kennedy answers the first letter
Air reserves called up
Castro’s five points
Radio Moscow: the missiles will come out
The quarantine is lifted
The tactical warheads go home
- 4 months, 24 days
The last Jupiters leave Turkey
- ≈ 1 month, 10 days
“We all breathe the same air”
- ≈ 1 month, 25 days
The Limited Test Ban Treaty
The hotline opens