VIII

…a difficult and dangerous effort …

            On Monday evening, October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy, speaking to the nation, explained his intent to impose a naval blockade around Cuba.  Evidence indicated that the Soviet Union had installed missiles on that island capable of delivering nuclear warheads as far north as Washington D.C. — missiles the President viewed as offensive, first strike weapons.  There was no illusion as to how serious this blockade might prove to be since the United States itself had twice before declared war over the issue of freedom of passage on the high seas.  As the President noted in his address, “Let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out.”

            As the President began his speech, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a coded messages raising the military’s national alert level to DEFCON 3.

            Shortly after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, the Eisenhower administration began a covert war to destroy the new Cuban government.  The intellectual philosophy driving Castro’s revolution was communistic, and the executive branch worried that a Marxist government providing so much as the appearance of a better life for the common people would foment revolution elsewhere.

            The United States, deep in a cold war with Russia and China, tended to support any government in the western hemisphere that suppressed leftist political activities, regardless of that nation’s attitude toward human or political rights.  The amount of hostility this policy created among repressed political and economic groups throughout the Americas suggested our government’s worry about a successful Marxist regime in Cuba being a beachhead to other revolutions was well founded.

            Adding to this worry, in September of 1960 the Soviet Union, taking full advantage of the tensions between the U.S. and Castro, began pouring military aid into Cuba.  And there was little doubt that at least some of this aid would find its way to guerrilla groups beyond the island.

            Before Batista fled Cuba, the Eisenhower administration had provided the dictator with military assistance in his war with Castro’s revolutionaries.  After the revolution succeeded, our executive branch unleashed the CIA with instructions to do whatever necessary to remove Castro and his leftist regime, including forming and supplying counter-revolutionary groups, sabotage of civilian and military targets, and attempting the assassination of key figures in the Cuban government, one being Castro himself.  Kennedy continued this executive policy.

            The CIA proved itself inept at all these tasks.  This became evident to everyone on April 15, 1961, when the CIA, with White House approval, launched the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion.  Within hours, CIA propaganda proclaimed most of the island had already fallen to the returning Cuban exiles.  The fact was the Cuban military had been waiting for the invaders, at least partially aware of their plans.

            After the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs, most observers felt the only option left for toppling Castro was direct invasion by the United States military — and declassified documents indicate that was exactly the option being discussed in Kennedy’s White House.  Historians suspect Castro’s decision to allow Russian nuclear weapons onto Cuban soil was a logical continuation of his strategy of shielding Cuba from an American invasion by placing American troops into a face to face confrontation with Russian troops.

            The Soviet Union and Fidel Castro came to a tentative agreement regarding the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba in late May, 1962.  By August, a high-level interagency group inside our government told the Kennedy administration that there was circumstantial evidence suggesting that short and intermediate range missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads were being shipped to Cuba — a fact that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev denied.  Khrushchev intended to announce the missiles’ existence during a visit to Cuba in December, well after the missiles had become operational.

            On October 14, a U-2 spy plane photographed the first hard evidence of Soviet medium range ballistic missiles in Cuba.

            The scope of the coming confrontation was clearly defined by President Kennedy during his speech of October 22.  “It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

            The leading edge of any retaliatory response would rise from Atlas installations scattered across the continent — including the bunker at Deer Park.

            “I remember we were briefed about the missiles and saw aerial photos of the Cuban sites at least a week before Kennedy’s speech,” Jim Geoghegan said.

            Now that America’s intended response to the missiles had been clearly stated, and a not-to-be-crossed line drawn across the open ocean, the crisis was at hand.

            Master Sergeant Paul Rodrigues recalls October 22, 1962, vividly.

            “My group, the 3901^st Strategic Missile Evaluation Squadron Atlas D and E team stationed at Vandenberg, was flying to Fairchild on an assistance visit to the 567^th Strategic Missile Squadron.  My group was the same team, Ready Zero One, that had conducted the first all Air Force launch of an Atlas missile.  About 30 minutes prior to landing, we were told there would be a C-123 waiting to return us to Vandenberg for launch duty.  By time we got back to California, things had deteriorated to the point that war seemed inevitable.”

            “Crews were already at the consoles, and countdowns had begun and were holding — which was risky with the older Atlas D series in use at Vandenberg.”

            ”I still don’t believe people understand just how close to war we were.  Nuke laden B-52s were already over-flying Russian territory, and reports of Russian Bear Bombers over our air space had been verified.  This was as close to nuclear holocaust as we have ever been.”

            “The Ready Zero One crew was given a second set of orders.  After we launched our Vandenberg missiles, we were to report to a secret destination in Arizona.  We were issued sidearms, 30 caliber M-1 carbines, ammo, and emergency rations, and were given detailed instruction on how to get to this destination.  Since we would by that time officially be at war, we were to proceed in uniform and were authorized to use absolutely any means necessary to expedite our mission.  We’d be allowed to take our families, but were never told why we were being sent.”

            “After the crisis passed, we returned our weapons, notes, and hand drawn maps, and were told to never mention the indicated destination again.”

            “Many years later, while on vacation in Arizona, I drove past a small, faded tin sign announcing a turnoff to a small desert town 2 miles ahead — to that very same unnamed town.  Curiosity got the best of me.”

            “I checked with the town’s historical society — staffed by a lovely lady well into her eighties.  I asked if there were, or had even been a military installation outside of town in the specified direction.  The only one she recalled was an old cavalry fort from the days of the Indian wars.  After some inquires, she did find one lifelong area resident who recalled that about five or six years after World War II the Army Corp of Engineers did some surveying and blasting in the nearby mountains.  But that was all the locals were aware of.”

            “I guess I’ll always wonder why the military wanted an experienced launch crew at that particular location.”

            On October 24, as Soviet ships approached the Caribbean quarantine line, the Joints Chiefs of Staff order the Strategic Air Command to elevate the Defense Condition once again.  And for the first time in the history of the military’s alert posture, it stood at DEFCON 2 — one step below total war.

            Bob Lemley reported, “I was working my usual site, Launch Facility Number 8 outside of Egypt, Washington,that second change in Defense Condition message was received via the Strategic Air Command network.  Captain Nelson and I were manning the control room when it came through.  We each copied it, then each decoded what we had copied.”

The Deer Park launch complex, site 567-1 'C', prior to activation. North is to the left side of  the  photo. A 'dummy missile' - a strucktural framework used as a stand-in for the real missile - is seen erected on the launcher boom/gantry. The structure in the upper right, moving off-frame, is the microwave communication pillbox. A missile transport trailer can be seen parked on the launch bay accesses ramp.

         With privileged knowledge obtained during each crew’s pre-tour briefing — knowledge as to how close to the brink the world really was — one can only imagine the stress these young men felt.

            Add to that stress the fact that the Atlas ICBM was a difficult missile system.  All liquid fuel rockets are, by nature, terribly complicated applications of physics, chemistry, and engineering.  In the mid 1920s to 30s, rocket design by trial and error began to give way to applied engineering and rigorous data analysis at the hands of men such as Robert Goddard and Werner Von Braun.  Still, advances were most often deduced from mishap.

            Though the inventors responsible for rocketry’s early advances intended the machines for travel through interplanetary space, the device’s practical ballistic applications were obvious to military thinkers — as amply confirmed by the thousand plus German V-2s dropping on England in the last months of World War II.

            As America’s first operational ICBM, the Atlas suffered all the glitches common to new and intricate machines.  Since America was in a race against the intelligence community’s assumption of Russian ballistic missile superiority — superiority in numbers of long range rockets — having scientist go back to the drawing board for a fresh start was the last option.  As systems were developed to solve engineering problems, these systems sometimes contained problems of their own — problems that needed to be addressed by another layer of engineering.  This led to an overlapping complexity the missileers found at times bewildering.  But one thing was certain — if all went well, this machine would definitely fly, would definitely find its target, and would definitely do its job.