The Abyss, page 46
LeMay’s deputy Lt. Gen. David Burchinal later testified that when word reached the chiefs in ‘the tank’ about the lost U-2, McNamara panicked: ‘He turned absolutely white and yelled hysterically “This means war with the Soviet Union. The President must get on the hot line to Moscow!” And he ran out of that meeting in a frenzy.’ This story more vividly illustrates the contempt of the USAF’s brass for the defense secretary than any plausible version of his behaviour, but there is no doubt that Maultsby’s unwanted adventure represented yet another very bad moment of the Crisis.
Over the Kola Peninsula, shortly before 2 p.m. EDT on Saturday the U-2 pilot shut down his engine, cockpit pressurization, heating and electrics. Already airborne for nine and a half hours, he sought to preserve a meagre reserve for a further emergency, and to exploit his aircraft’s extraordinary glide capability, derived from an eightyfoot wingspan, twice its fuselage length from nose to tail. His emergency oxygen supply kicked in, preventing his blood from exploding in the thin air thirteen miles up. He began his ever-so-slow, silent descent until, after an eternity of suspense, he saw ahead a faint glow of dawn that told him he was assuredly heading east. A few minutes later – morning in Alaska – he met the pair of F-102s that had been searching for him, above the snow-covered wasteland which he now glimpsed from twenty-five thousand feet. ‘Welcome home!’ said one of the American pilots on the emergency frequency. They guided him down towards a primitive ice strip at Kotzebue Sound, where a US radar station was based.
At a thousand feet, one of the fighter pilots became convinced that the U-2 would crash and yelled, ‘Bail out! Bail out!’ Maultsby ignored him, triggered his braking parachute, belly-flopped onto the runway and skidded into a patch of deep snow. A huge American in a parka knocked on his cockpit hood, grinned ‘welcome to Kotzebue’, then lifted the numbed pilot out of his seat, out of the plane, ‘and placed me on the snow as if I’d been a rag doll’. Other Americans and half a dozen Inuit people gathered around, while overhead the two F-102s buzzed the strip and waggled their wings before turning for their own home runway. Maultsby had to be assisted to remove his helmet, exposing him to a blast of icy-cold air. He staggered away a few feet, to empty a bursting bladder. He had been airborne for ten hours and twenty-five minutes, the longest-ever recorded flight of a U-2.
It was 2.25 p.m. in Washington. One of the dozen pocket crises within the Crisis was over. Yet again there proved a wanton absence of communication between the two sides. Nobody troubled to tell the Soviets what the U-2 had, or had not, been doing, three hundred miles into their airspace. Khrushchev appeared relieved when Marshal Malinovsky reported to him that the MiGs had been unable to catch the American intruder. ‘The plane was probably lost,’ said the first secretary. ‘There was nothing for him to do over Chukotka’, easternmost region of the USSR. The Vozhd admitted the possibility, however, that the overflight could have been a deliberately provocative act by the USAF’s chiefs, and claimed as much in his next missive to the White House.
2 The Soviets Shoot
And even as the Maultsby drama unfolded over north-eastern Russia, another U-2 had become the focus of an even graver confrontation: above Cuba. Although the Americans now knew much about Soviet deployments, there were still important gaps in their intelligence. They were unaware, for instance, that Luna missiles had been moved into launch positions around Guantánamo Bay. The US Marine garrison of the base had been reinforced to a strength of more than five thousand men, dug in to resist an assault by the Cuban army. Such measures would avail them nothing, however, if the Soviets unleashed the nuclear-tipped Lunas, which could incinerate them in seconds. Thirty-six 2-kiloton warheads were held at a bunker dug into a hill a few miles above the town of Managua, while twelve 1-megaton R-12 missile warheads were cached at Bejucal. Neither site had been identified by the CIA, despite immense efforts being made to do so. The photointerpreters spotted activity at Bejucal, but rejected it as a possible warhead location because it was only carelessly fenced, and approached through an open gate. The analysts assumed that extreme security would surround any nuclear site, which the Soviets must surely regard as the most sensitive of all their secrets in Cuba. The analysts were too rational, and thus wrong.
Many of Gen. Pliev’s men on the island had become exasperated by their commanders’ passivity, as US reconnaissance aircraft repeatedly streaked through the sky above them. Some Russians were taunted by Cubans, demanding ‘Why have you come, then?’, if not to shoot down yanqui intruders. Castro himself had been visiting the San Antonio de Los Baños command post on 25 October when it was overflown by two US F-101s, prompting from the dictator expressions of indignant anger at their impunity.
Tens of thousands of Cubans manning the defences were keyed to the highest pitch of excitement and expectation. At 3.41 p.m. on Saturday six more US Navy Crusaders took off on Cuban reconnaissance missions. Having crossed the sea low enough to meet bursts of spray, they climbed above their photo targets – and met Cuban AA fire. Scores of the defenders began firing at them with every weapon to hand, and nearby Russians joined in. ‘I pulled out my pistol,’ recorded Lt. Dmitry Senko later, ‘and started shooting. Of course my bullets could never reach, but one of the planes started bleeding smoke and lost height.’ This was almost certainly an illusion, but no matter. Elsewhere Vasil Voloshchenko’s tank unit had been on full alert since the previous day. Asked afterwards the Russians’ feeling towards the Americans in those hours, he said: ‘What feeling could you have, when we were living on top of a barrel of gunpowder? We saw their planes skimming the palm tree tops, tracked by our AA guns. We weren’t scared – we just thought of the Americans trying to tell everybody everywhere what to do.’
Within the hour word was passed to the White House that an American plane had been hit by a 37mm shell. This was untrue, but caused Excom – not wrongly – to perceive a Cuban escalation. Nonetheless, the president and McNamara, still deeply alarmed by news of the U-2 intrusion deep into Soviet airspace, decided that this was no moment further to excite their own country’s media. It was agreed that nothing should be said about the Crusaders coming under fire. At that stage, both the White House and the Kremlin were still oblivious of the much more serious episode, which had taken place hours earlier.
Soviet air defence headquarters for eastern Cuba was based in a former church at the centre of the old colonial town of Camagüey, its interior now dominated by a massive screen showing aerial movements in the region. Since the system was belatedly activated on Friday night, Russian monitors – still incongruously clad in civilian check shirts and slacks – had been watching take-offs from Guantánamo, together with US Navy activity off shore. The local commander Col. Georgi Voronkov had passed the night on duty, in constant expectation of a US amphibious assault.
During the hours of darkness nuclear warheads continued to be trucked across country to several Soviet IRBM missile-launch sites, despite repeated obstacles and hazards, and at least twenty-four hours after Moscow had sent orders to Pliev to prepare for the return of these weapons to the Soviet Union. The explanation must lie partly in the chaos attending many Soviet military operations throughout history, and into 2022; the general’s poor state of health; and, above all, the shared expectations of Soviet and Cuban forces on the island that an American assault was imminent. Russian personnel were exhausted by heavy labour and hours of apprehension. American communications to and from ‘the sharp end’, about developments both in the air and at sea, were often badly delayed. It is thus unsurprising that the same was true on the Soviet side. Gen. Pliev’s order, that his forces should fire only if they came under direct attack, was issued at 8 a.m. on the 27th following the new instructions received from Moscow. But there appears to have been no discussion with his subordinates about the exact interpretation of the words ‘under direct attack’ – whether US reconnaissance aircraft should be considered attackers – before the general left his command post at El Chico to catch up on some sleep. He was ailing, driven to exasperation by successive changes of directive. His grip on his forces and subordinates was weak.
Major Anderson’s U-2 was tracked by Camagüey from the moment it approached the Cuban coast, passing over the town at 9.22 a.m. local time without responding to an electronic challenge. In the operations centre, this pulsating dot on the screen was designated Target 33. Its presence was also noted at El Chico, by the overall air defence commander Lt. Gen. Stepan Grechko and his deputy Maj. Gen. Leonid Garbuz. Both men, like all Soviet officers in Cuba, were keyed to the highest pitch of tension. They tried to alert Gen. Pliev to the intruder, but were unable to raise him by telephone.
By that point Anderson’s plane had passed over Guantánamo; was heading north again, his camera laden with exposed images of Soviet installations. He would soon be out of Cuban airspace. While Grechko and Garbuz were still deciding their course of action, the U-2 passed through the zone of the Soviet 701st AA Regiment. Only when Anderson had already been over Cuba for more than an hour did Soviet Central Command in Havana – Pliev’s two senior subordinates – message 27th AA Division at Camagüey: ‘Destroy Target No. 33’. This formation’s commanding officer, Col. Voronkov, promptly ordered the 507th Regiment, commanded by Col. Yuri Guseinov, to launch a salvo of missiles. The U-2 was then flying at an altitude of more than thirteen miles over Banes, formerly a United Fruit Company town, where Fidel Castro celebrated his first wedding on 11 October 1948 . . . in its American club.
The US aircraft had been tracked for several minutes by the 507th’s No. 4 missile battery, commanded by a Major Gerchenov. US eavesdroppers off shore reported that a ‘Big Cigar’ or Soviet ‘Fruitset’ fire control radar was locked onto an aircraft above the island. Target officer Lt. Aleksei Ryapenko and three corporals had only recently relieved the night watch in the radar cabin of the battery when their commander gave an order such as none of the Russians had ever before received in earnest: ‘Locate target azimuth 130, range 110, altitude 23 [km].’ When the range closed to 60 kilometres – 36 miles – Ryapenko ordered his crew to engage electronically: ‘The tracking was stable, equipment was working fine. I felt absolutely confident we would hit the target, and ordered the crew to switch to automatic tracking.’
As the American plane entered the SAM launch zone, it lost some height. The regimental chief of staff was repeatedly demanding from headquarters confirmation of the shootdown order, and hearing nothing. The heat in the control cabin was intense, and in Ryapenko’s words, ‘so was the situation. Still no instructions.’ Major Gerchenov demanded down the telephone: ‘What do we do? Fire?’ Sweat trickling down their faces, the missile crew watched the U-2 enter their firing zone, monitored by the Automatic Launch Apparatus. Suddenly Gerchenov called out ‘Destroy target with a salvo of three [missiles]!’ Ryapenko electronically armed his SAMs, and pressed the firing button. As the first missile soared skywards and the tracking beam locked on, he reported ‘target engaged’. Ten seconds later, the second SAM fired, then the third. A torrential rainstorm descended as crews at the launch pad raced to manhandle missiles onto the ramps, to replace those streaking towards the intruder.
In the stifling cabin, the Russians could neither see nor hear what was happening in the sky. Then, on their radar screens, they were mesmerized by the sight of a cloud replacing the previously sharp image, as the plane disintegrated. After the second missile exploded, the broken fragments lost altitude rapidly, and Ryapenko reported laconically, ‘Target destroyed.’ ‘There were no more targets in our zone,’ he recorded later. ‘Major Gerchenov reported to the command post of the regiment that target No. 33 was no more. He gave everybody the news over our loudspeaker system, then applauded me for performing confidently and calmly.’ The crew, stunned and also thrilled, emerged from the control cabin. ‘The rain had stopped. All the officers and operators assembled on the launch pad, chattering excitedly. Our CO said: “Well done everyone!” Then they picked me up and started tossing me into the air, which wasn’t hard as I weighed just fifty-six kilos. My crew had also done a great job.’ Both Gerchenov and Ryapenko were awarded combat decorations for their achievement – but not until 1 October 1964, more than two years after the event. The U-2’s tail fell into Banes Bay, while the pilot’s corpse and other wreckage smashed into a cane field at Veguitas, six miles south-east of the SAM launch site.
Lt. Gen. Stepan Grechko had made the spontaneous decision to authorize the launch of SAM missiles in the knowledge that the Cubans were already firing promiscuously at US aircraft. He said later that he chose thus to assume that war had broken out; that all constraints were lifted, despite the absence of an order to that effect from the summit of the Soviet military command chain. Gen. Gribkov later excused his subordinates: ‘These officers did not so much disobey orders as react, in a reasoned military manner, as they understood the situation required.’ It is more plausible that, in the atmosphere of extreme stress prevailing among Soviet and Cuban forces, he found it irresistible to prick the balloon of American arrogance that he, like so many of his compatriots, perceived in the overflights. As Cubans demanded of a host of local Russians: if they were not to shoot at intruding Americans, why had they come? This was precisely why Kennedy, especially, and Khrushchev in lesser degree, feared losing control of vastly more dangerous weapons than the SAMs, which could also be launched at the discretion of their respective generals in Cuba.
The shootdown dramatically raised tension, at precisely the moment Khrushchev in the Kremlin had become desperate to de-escalate. As for the Americans, several hours elapsed before the news of Major Anderson’s extinction reached the White House. Even in the late twentieth century, when oblivion was supposedly at the fingertip command of national leaders, long and perilously tenuous communications threads stitched from the battlefield to both the White House and the Kremlin.
13
The Brink
1 Impasse
The Saturday morning intelligence briefing to Excom, as usual given by McCone, confirmed no change in the status of the ballistic missiles in Cuba: they appeared ready for firing. Three Foxtrot-class submarines had been pinpointed, one of these inside the quarantine line. As for sentiment around the world, there had been anti-American demonstrations in Buenos Aires, Caracas and La Paz, but opinion in Europe, increasingly conscious of Soviet recklessness, appeared to be rallying to the United States. The Economist wrote that day: ‘Mr. Khrushchev’s motives for placing in Cuba the missiles which he appears to have withheld from other satellite countries remain alarmingly obscure.’
The British Spectator was strongly supportive of the US stance, asserting that President Kennedy ‘had no real choice in the face of a direct and obvious Soviet testing of American will. The legal niceties of the American [blockade] are not the crux . . . The defence of our liberties, and of peace, depends on our strength. The core of that strength is the power of the United States. A direct threat to that power, if not firmly rebuffed, would mean the crumbling of the sole real guarantee of freedom and law throughout the world.’ This sentiment – essentially, ‘our side in the Cold War, right or wrong’ – commanded significant and still growing European popular support.
As some Soviet cargo vessels continued to steer towards the blockade zone, an American message was dispatched to Moscow, routed via U Thant, to ensure that the Russians knew where this was drawn. At Excom McNamara spotlighted the Grozny, a tanker then six hundred miles out. He recommended that it should be boarded and searched –‘Use force if necessary’ – in a measured toughening of US tactics. At Barksdale, Louisiana, USAF 2nd Air Force staff charged with surveillance of the inbound Russians suffered technical headaches. C-in-C Gen. John Ryan suddenly realized that his pilots might not be able to read the name Grozny in Russian lettering. An officer was hastily dispatched to the nearby liberal arts Centenary College, who found there a Russian-speaker and got him to write out Grozny in Cyrillic script. Then – before the existence of fax machines – the airman painstakingly explained over the telephone to the planes’ home base at Lake Charles, how the name would look on the ship’s side, ‘like you might do with kids’, in the words of 2nd Air Force’s Col. Bill Garland.
Aircraft took off to maintain rotational surveillance of the Grozny, which appeared to the Americans likely to be carrying missiles, though in reality innocent. After the tanker failed to respond to a challenge, Admiral Dennison ordered nearby US warships to load their guns with live ammunition, then clear them by firing in the opposite direction to the tanker. When darkness fell, the warships also lit up the night sky with occasional starshell illuminants. ‘The US Military behaved more and more aggressively,’ wrote Sergei Khrushchev. ‘I would even say insolently.’
At noon in Moscow, early morning in Washington, Khrushchev displayed to the Presidium some of his former ebullience, saying: ‘They’re not going to invade now.’ The fact that Kennedy had responded to U Thant’s proposal indicated that the US would not embark upon military action while still pursuing diplomacy. The Soviet leader had acknowledged, within the Kremlin walls at least, that the missiles in Cuba would have to be withdrawn: he remained nonetheless committed to salvaging redemptive terms for doing so. ‘We won’t be able to liquidate the conflict unless we satisfy the Americans and tell them that our R-12 rockets are indeed there. If we can get them to liquidate their bases in Turkey and Pakistan in exchange, then we will have won.’
This was the moment at which Khrushchev embraced the ‘Lippmann proposition’. He drafted yet another letter to Kennedy, proposing an explicit deal: ‘You are worried about Cuba. You say it worries you because it is only ninety miles across the sea from the shores of the United States. However, Turkey is next to us. Our sentinels are pacing up and down and watching each other. Do you believe you have the right to demand security for your country and the removal of weapons that you considered to be offensive, while not recognizing the same right for us? That is why I make this proposal. We agree to remove these weapons from Cuba that you categorise as offensive. We agree to state this commitment to the United Nations. Your representatives will make a statement to the effect that the United States, bearing in mind the anxiety and concern of the Soviet state, will evacuate its analogous weapons from Turkey.’
