One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war (19 page)

A glance at the illuminated screens informed CINCSAC that a B-52 Stratofortress was taking off from a U.S. Air Force base every twenty minutes, with enough nuclear weaponry on board to destroy four medium-sized Soviet cities. Other screens brought news from the rest of his far-flung empire: missile complexes, B-47 dispersal bases, tanker refueling fleets, reconnaissance planes. Clocks recorded the time in Moscow and Omsk, two of the Soviet cities targeted for annihilation.

A gold telephone linked Power with the president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A red telephone allowed him to communicate with lower-level commanders, who would relay his orders to 280,000 SAC personnel scattered around the world. The man in charge of America's nuclear arsenal had to be able to answer a phone call from the president within six rings, whether he was at SAC headquarters, at home sleeping, or relaxing on the golf course.

To reach his command post, Power had descended three floors underground via a circular ramp. He had passed through several sets of thick steel doors on rollers, each protected by armed guards. The control room could withstand conventional bombs, but could not take a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. If destroyed, its functions would immediately be taken over by a series of backup facilities, including three EC-135 "Looking Glass" planes, one of which was in the air at all times with an Air Force general on board. Everybody understood that Building 500 was a prime target for a Soviet missile attack.

Power had ordered his forces to DEFCON-2--one step short of imminent nuclear war--at 10:00 a.m. Washington time, just as the naval quarantine of Cuba came into effect. Never before in its sixteen-year existence had SAC been placed on such a high state of readiness. By the time SAC reached its maximum strength on November 4, Power would command a force of 2,962 nuclear weapons, either in the air or on fifteen-minute alert. SAC's "immediate execution capability" would consist of 1,479 bombers, 1,003 refueling tankers, and 182 ballistic missiles.

A total of 220 "high priority Task 1 targets" in the Soviet Union had been selected for immediate destruction. The targets ranged from missile complexes and military bases to "command-and-control centers" like the Kremlin, in the heart of Moscow, and "urban industrial targets," such as steel mills, electrical grids, and petroleum facilities. Many targets were scheduled for attack several times over, by plane and missile, just in case the first bombs failed to get through.

At 11:10 a.m., Power addressed his forces over the Primary Alerting System, the same communications network that would be used for launching a nuclear attack. His subordinates had been ordered back to their command posts to hear his message. Each SAC base was represented by a little white bulb on a console in front of the commander in chief. As the distant operators picked up their phones, the lights blinked out. Power deliberately chose to broadcast his message in the clear, over high-frequency radio waves that were monitored by the Soviets.

"This is General Power speaking." His voice echoed across dozens of Air Force bases and missile complexes around the world. "I am addressing you for the purpose of reemphasizing the seriousness of the situation this nation faces. We are in an advanced state of readiness to meet any emergencies."

Contrary to some later accounts, Pentagon records show that Power was acting on presidential authority when he took his forces to DEFCON-2. But his decision to address his commanders over open communications channels was unauthorized and highly unusual. As Power expected, the message was promptly intercepted by Soviet military intelligence. It was received loud and clear in Moscow.

The Strategic Air Command was largely the creation of Curtis LeMay--an offshoot of his experiences as a bomb fleet commander in World War II when he ordered low-altitude nighttime attacks against Japanese cities. In a single night, March 9-10, 1945, LeMay's B-29 bombers had incinerated sixteen square miles of downtown Tokyo, killing nearly a hundred thousand civilians. LeMay later acknowledged that he would probably have been tried as "a war criminal" had Japan won the war. He justified the carnage by arguing that it hastened the end of the war by breaking the will of the Japanese people.

"All war is immoral," he explained. "If you let that bother you, you are not a good soldier."

The object of war, LeMay believed, was to destroy the enemy as swiftly as possible. Strategic bombing was a crude weapon, almost by definition. The idea was to deliver a devastating knockout punch, without worrying too much about precisely what you were going to hit. In dealing with enemies like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or Communist Russia, restraint was not only pointless, it was treasonous, in LeMay's view.

When LeMay took over command of SAC in October 1948, it consisted of little more than an assortment of demoralized bomb wings. Discipline was poor and training inadequate. As an initial exercise, LeMay ordered his pilots to conduct a simulated attack on Dayton, Ohio, under conditions resembling live combat. It was a disaster. Not a single plane accomplished its mission.

LeMay spent the next few years transforming SAC into the most potent military weapon of all time. He meted out collective discipline to his pilots and airmen, promoting successful crews and demoting unsuccessful ones. SAC pilots were evaluated according to a strict rating system that made no allowances for technical problems or adverse weather conditions. Everything was determined by success or failure. For LeMay, there were only two things that mattered in the world: "SAC bases and SAC targets."

Anecdotes about LeMay became the stuff of Air Force legend. Crude and petulant, he used to show his contempt for his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff by belching loudly and leaving the door open when he visited their private toilet. When a crew chief asked him to extinguish his ever present cigar to avoid igniting an explosion on board a fully fueled bomber, LeMay growled: "It wouldn't dare." Asked for a policy recommendation on Cuba, he replied simply: "Fry it." Soon after the missile crisis, LeMay would became the inspiration for Buck Turgidson, the out-of-control Air Force general in Stanley Kubrick's movie
Dr. Strangelove.

While respecting LeMay's abilities as a commander, other military leaders resented his empire-building tendencies. For LeMay, the Air Force could never have too many nuclear weapons. More weapons were always needed to guarantee the destruction of an ever-expanding list of targets. His bureaucratic rivals complained of "overkill." The chief of naval operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, accused the Air Force of attempting to dominate the other services just as the Soviet Union was attempting to dominate the rest of the world. "They're smart and they're ruthless," said Burke, referring to an alleged power grab by Air Force nuclear planners. "It's the same way as the communists. It's exactly the same techniques."

When LeMay became vice chief of staff of the Air Force in 1957, he was succeeded as SAC commander by Power, his longtime deputy. Power had the reputation of being even more of a disciplinarian than LeMay. He seemed to take a perverse delight in ridiculing his subordinates in public. One of his deputies, Horace Wade, described Power as "mean," "cruel," and "unforgiving," and wondered whether he was psychologically "stable." He worried that his boss "had control over so many weapons and weapons systems and could, under certain conditions, launch the force." LeMay was "kind-hearted" compared to Power, Wade thought.

Power, who had flown bombing raids over Japan, shared LeMay's views about the virtues of a devastating first strike, even if it led to horrifying retaliation. "Why are you so concerned with saving their lives?" he asked one of McNamara's civilian whiz kids, who was trying to develop a no-cities, limited war strategy known as "counterforce." "The whole idea is to
kill
the bastards." For Power, if there were "two Americans and one Russian" left alive at the end of the war, "we win."

You had better make sure that the "two Americans" are "a man and a woman," McNamara's aide replied.

The McNamara aide who tangled with Power was William Kaufmann, a Yale-educated historian who had written his doctoral dissertation on nineteenth-century balance-of-power politics. A short man, with a high-pitched voice and a dour sense of humor, he now sat in a Pentagon office trying to answer one of JFK's bottom-line questions: what difference would Soviet missiles on Cuba make to the balance of nuclear terror? The Joint Chiefs believed the impact was considerable; McNamara felt that the missiles did little to change the big picture.

Using maps and charts, Kaufmann analyzed the likely consequences of a no-warning Soviet attack on the United States. He noted that thirty-four out of seventy-six SAC bomber bases were within range of the Soviet MRBMs on Cuba, and most of the remaining bases could be hit by the longer-range IRBMs. On the other hand, most of the hardened U.S. missile sites and the Polaris submarines would survive a Soviet attack. According to Kaufmann's calculations, a Soviet first strike
without
the Cuba-based missiles would still leave the United States with a minimum retaliatory force of 841 nuclear weapons. If the Soviets fired their Cuba-based missiles as well, the United States would be left with at least 483 nukes.

In other words, both the Joint Chiefs and McNamara were right. Deploying missiles to Cuba strengthened Khrushchev's hand, and compensated for his shortage of intercontinental missiles. On the other hand, Khrushchev could not deliver a knockout blow against the United States under any circumstances. The surviving U.S. nuclear strike force would still be able to wreak much greater damage on the Soviet Union than the Soviets had inflicted on America.

The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction--MAD for short--was alive and well even after the deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba.

An army was on the move. To prepare for a possible invasion of Cuba, the president had ordered the greatest emergency mobilization of U.S. troops since World War II. All of a sudden, everybody in the military seemed to be heading toward Florida, by road, rail, and air, accompanied by huge amounts of equipment. There were bottlenecks everywhere.

Just to move the 1st Armored Division, 15,000 men plus tanks, armored vehicles, artillery pieces, required 146 commercial airplanes and 2,500 railcars. The logistics experts decided that tanks and other tracked vehicles should remain on the railcars, in case they had to be moved rapidly somewhere else. Railcars were soon backed up all over the southeastern United States. To store the railcars, the Army needed at least thirty miles of sidings, but only six and a half miles were immediately available. Railroad storage space became a prized commodity, jealously guarded by each military service. SAC commanders refused to release siding space to the Army because it might "interfere" with their own mission.

So many soldiers and airmen converged on Florida that there was no place for them to sleep. Some airfields introduced the "hot bunk" principle, with three men assigned to the same bed, sleeping in eight-hour shifts. The Gulfstream race course at Hallandale, Florida, became a temporary base for the 1st Armored Division. "Soon military police were placed at all entrances," an observer recorded. "Parking lots became motor pools, and the infield was used for storage and mess. Troops were billeted on the first and second floors of the grandstand. Weapons and duffel bags were stacked next to the betting windows. Church services were held in the photo-finish developing rooms."

Ammunition was an additional headache. Several ordnance factories went over to three-shift, seven-day weeks to produce sufficient quantities of ammunition for the fighter aircraft that were expected to strafe Soviet and Cuban troops. Napalm bombs were stacked like "mountains of cordwood" at airfields in Florida.

The British consul in Miami was reminded of the atmosphere in southern England prior to D-Day. Military planes were landing at Miami International Airport every minute, troop trains headed southward to Port Everglades, and trucks trundled through the streets loaded with weapons and explosives. An armada of nearly six hundred aircraft waited for orders to attack Cuba and intercept Soviet IL-28 bombers taking off from Cuban airfields. So much military hardware was in Florida that Air Force officers joked the state would sink into the sea under the weight of all the equipment.

The further south you went, the more imposing the military presence became. The laidback resort of Key West, on the tip of the Florida Keys, suddenly found itself on the front line of the Cold War, like Berlin or the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. Every government agency wanted a piece of the action. The Navy ran reconnaissance and code-breaking operations out of the naval air station; the CIA established safe houses on neighboring islands; the army moved into the venerable Casa Marina Hotel, built at the beginning of the century by the railroad tycoon Henry Flagler. Soldiers in combat fatigues took over the local baseball stadium, the public beach, and most of the city's parking lots. Marines set up machine-gun nests on the beach, surrounded by rolls of concertina wire.

Florida was now the soft underbelly of the United States. Prior to October 1962, military strategists had expected a Soviet attack to come from the North, over the pole. Early warning radar systems all faced northward, toward the Soviet Union. Fighter-interceptor squadrons were trained to deploy along the so-called "pine tree line" in Canada against the heavy Soviet bombers known to NATO as "Bears" and "Bisons." Antiaircraft missile systems with small atomic warheads were deployed around East Coast cities like New York and Washington as a last line of defense against a surprise Soviet attack. Almost overnight, American defenses had to be reoriented from north to south.