John F. Kennedy: Cuban missile crisis
U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy announcing the U.S. naval blockade of Cuba, October 22, 1962. © Archive Photos
Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker: The Day Nuclear War Almost Broke Out
In the nearly sixty years since the Cuban missile crisis, the story of near-catastrophe has only grown more complicated. What lessons can we draw from such a close call?
On October 27, 1962, a day that’s been described as the “most dangerous” in human history, a Soviet submarine designated B-59 was churning through the Sargasso Sea when suddenly it was rocked by a series of explosions. “It felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer,” Vadim Orlov, a communications specialist on board the sub, later recalled. “The situation was quite unusual, if not to say shocking, for the crew.”
Four weeks earlier, B-59 had been dispatched from the U.S.S.R. with three other so-called F-class subs as part of Operation Anadyr, Nikita Khrushchev’s top-secret effort to install ballistic missiles in Cuba. (The Anadyr is a river that flows into the Bering Sea; the code name was intended to make even soldiers participating in the operation believe they were headed somewhere cold.) Pretty much from the outset of the voyage, things had not gone well.
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WNU Editor: Over the years I have read many accounts (from both sides) on the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is one of those good accounts.
1 comment:
I remember it barely. We had to take food and water to our kindergarten class in case our homes (two blocks away) were hit by atom bombs. The east coast of Florida saw a steady stream of troop transports heading south to My-am-uh on US1.
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