The Cold War (34 page)

October 20–21. The great mobilization was under way. Ammunition and supplies were moving by rail and road from all parts of the country. Truck after truck left the Letterkenny Ordnance Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and began to roll to Florida loaded with ammunition. Several ordnance plants were placed on three-shift, seven-day weeks to produce the 20mm strafing ammunition required for the fighter aircraft. The war plans called for the use of napalm as well as conventional ammunition. Hundreds of napalm drop tanks began arriving at the naval and tactical airfields, where they were stacked, according to one observer, like “mountains of cordwood.” Ammunition for naval gunfire against Cuban installations was also shipped to bases in Florida. Food
rations came from such inland storage depots as Bonner Springs, Kansas. Army boat units, which would be needed for an invasion, were ordered to go to Fort Lauderdale and Port Everglades in Florida.

Military hospitals—especially those along the East Coast, previously devoted primarily to treating service dependents—were prepared to receive war casualties. Blood supplies were monitored, and troops not involved in the movement to Florida were asked to give blood. One hospital unit was sent to Florida on chartered buses. Presuming that this movement was another exercise, the buses had stopped at several liquor stores along the way. When it arrived in Florida, the unit itself was a casualty.

Billeting of the troops arriving in Florida was already becoming a problem. At some airfields, the bachelor officers' and enlisted men's quarters were operated on the “hot bunk” principle: Three men would be assigned to each bunk, with someone sleeping in it at all hours. Mess halls remained open around the clock. Later, after the president announced that missiles were in place in Cuba, the owner of the Gulfstream Park at Hallandale, Florida, invited the army to bivouac some of the troops of the 1st Armored Division at the racecourse. The army accepted, and soon military police were placed at all entrances; 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.

According to Contingency Plan 316, the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions would be the first to land on Cuba. Large numbers of transport aircraft would have to be diverted to support the operation; more than eight hundred Lockheed Hercules flights would be needed to execute the invasion plan. Plans for deployment of the airborne divisions had been rehearsed and tested again.

Drops would be made at altitudes of 700 to 900 feet. Airborne commanders knew conducting military operations on Cuba in October would not be easy. It was the season of rain and hurricanes, clouds and high winds, certainly not the best jump weather. Some drop zones would be in valleys containing sugarcane fields and cattle ranches. By the end of October, the cane fields would reach their maximum heights of seven to ten feet. The cane stalks not only posed a landing hazard for the parachutists but also presented problems in rallying and maneuvering—and provided the Cubans with sites that were ready-made for conducting guerrilla operations and harassing the airborne troops.

Those troops were issued a number of instructions about the treatment of
any prisoners. They were specifically told that “Sino-Soviet bloc personnel” were to be carefully handled and taken into protective custody. At this point the United States was still trying its utmost to avoid a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union.

To assure proper interrogation of prisoners of war, Spanish-speaking military intelligence personnel were assigned to both division and regimental headquarters. Crash courses on interrogation techniques were offered to the airborne divisions. Prisoners of war were one thing, but it soon developed that the State Department had no specific plan for the handling of Cuban refugees. Although there were generalized plans for the occupation and a military government, there was no detailed plan for the recruitment of indigenous Cuban administrators. Nor were there plans to prevent starvation, disease, or civil unrest. When asked whether it had the funds to deal with such likely calamities, the State Department replied that “none had been budgeted.” This enormous potential for trouble would never really be solved, and other matters were more pressing.

One of the first issues President Kennedy raised during the crisis had been whether U.S. dependents at the Guantánamo Bay U.S. Naval Station on the southeastern end of Cuba should be evacuated. At the time there were more than 2,800 women and children living on the base. The navy had strong feelings that the Soviets and Cubans might regard removal of the dependents as a sign of weakness rather than a matter of practicality. More to the point, it also might tip them off that the United States knew about the missiles, and the Soviets and Cubans could respond by upgrading their military and naval defenses. But Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had insisted that the dependents be removed. It had not yet been established that McNamara was reflecting the president's views. In an attempt to convince McNamara of the value of keeping the dependents at Guantánamo, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Paul Nitze, and the Second Fleet commander, Admiral Alfred G. Ward, met with him. Ward was in charge of the blockade and the navy's role in any invasion. Nitze pointed out various reasons why it would be inadvisable to pull out the American civilians. After listening patiently, McNamara stood up and said, “Mr. Secretary, you have your instructions to get the dependents out of Guantánamo Bay. Please carry out those instructions.”

Shortly after eleven A
.
M. on October 21, the Sunday-morning routine at Guantánamo was interrupted by phone calls and messengers hurrying to the
buildings where families were housed. Each family was told to pack one bag per person and be prepared to evacuate within fifteen minutes' notice. Loading on aircraft and naval vessels was completed before four P
.
M. At this point the Cuban military threat was spelled out in only the most general way.

If the Cubans thought the Americans were showing signs of weakness by evacuating service dependents from Guantánamo, they were soon to see an impressive display of strength as cargo aircraft began landing on the airfield. By the evening of the next day, 3,600 marines and 3,200 tons of equipment had been airlifted by the Material Air Transport Service. In a glaring overestimate of U.S. strength, Soviet intelligence reported that “the garrison had been in-creased from 8,000 to 18,000 personnel from the 2nd Marine Division, and reinforced by 150 tanks, 24 antiaircraft missile systems and 70 recoilless guns. The number of airplanes had been increased to 120.” The actual U.S. defense force deployed to Guantánamo, including men and equipment already in place, comprised 5,750 marines, a Hawk missile battery, 155 tanks, several battalions of 105mm artillery pieces, three gunfire support ships, two marine airattack squadrons, and a patrol squadron. Two aircraft carriers were in the area to render support.

The Guantánamo reinforcement was largely a deception, and it worked. While the United States regarded this as a defensive operation, the Soviets and Cubans saw the “uninterrupted intensive reconnaissance along Cuban shores and approaches” as proof that Guantánamo was “actively being prepared as a bridgehead for military operation.” But for the moment, the marines' function was to secure the Guantánamo defensive perimeter; once fighting started, it was to handle the Cuban artillery dug in on the surrounding hills. Only when the main amphibious and airborne forces established themselves on the island would the marines consider moving out.

Kennedy had originally intended to make his speech to the nation that evening, but politics dictated that he inform Congress first, and it proved impossible on such short notice to round up everyone who was out campaigning.

October 22. This was the day, a Monday, when the Cuban Missile Crisis became public. Planes had been dispatched to bring back ranking senators and congressmen. Even so, their briefing took place little more than an hour before the president's speech, and there was considerable anger that he had waited until the last minute to inform them. Just before Kennedy went on the air at seven P
.
M., U.S. jet fighters scrambled into the sky from bases in Florida. The
action was termed an airborne alert—a precautionary measure “in the event of a rash action by the Cubans.” Not just the Cubans: As the president made clear, any offensive action by the Cubans would be considered an offensive action by the Soviet Union.

As Kennedy was speaking, the secretary of defense placed the entire U.S. military establishment on Defcon (defense condition) 3 status (Defcon 5 was all normal; Defcon 1 meant war). In accordance with JCS directives, Strategic Air Command (SAC) B-47 bombers were dispersed to more than thirty predesignated civilian airfields in the United States. At two SAC bases in Spain, three in Morocco, and three in England, B-47 bombers were loaded with nuclear weapons and prepared for takeoff. Simultaneously, a massive airborne alert was begun by U.S.-based B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers. The B-52s were loaded with nuclear weapons and ordered to fly under continuous command control, either far out over the Pacific, deep into the Arctic, or across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. There the planes would wait for instructions either to proceed to the Soviet Union or to return to their home bases. In addition, fighter-bombers at American bases in England, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines were placed on alert and armed with ordnance, including nuclear, for striking targets in the Soviet Union or in Eastern Europe.

There were three intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) systems in the SAC inventory at the time: Atlas, Titan I, and Titan II. A fourth system, the solid-fuel Minuteman, would enter the inventory during the later days of the crisis. There were also 60 Thor IRBMs in England, 30 Jupiter IRBMs in Italy, and 15 Jupiters in Turkey. Late in the evening General Curtis LeMay, chief of staff of the air force, notified McNamara that 91 Atlases and 41 Titans were being readied for firing. Nine missile-carrying submarines capable of firing 144 Polaris missiles had left their bases and taken up stations in the North Atlantic. Matador and Mace cruise missiles deployed in tactical wings were brought to combat status in West Germany; they could strike strategic targets in Eastern Europe.

Fifteen minutes before the president's address, the nation's railroads were also put on alert. The Pentagon asked the Association of American Railroads for the immediate use of 375 flatcars to move air-defense and air-warning units to Florida. That evening the 1st Armored Division began the 1,100-mile trek from Texas to an intermediate staging base at Fort Stewart. This division alone
would require 3,600 flatcars, 190 gondola cars, 40 boxcars, and 200 passenger cars. In all, over 5,000 men, 15,000 vehicles, and thousands of tons of supplies would be loaded on 38 trains, some up to 150 cars long. At the height of the crisis, normal rail movement in the Southeast practically came to a halt. Another 10,000 men would be airlifted in 135 commercial flights.

October 23. The president authorized the use of low-level aerial photoreconnaissance and of the navy's F8U Crusaders; later, air force RF-101 Voodoos began flying from Florida at treetop level over the Cuban missile sites. The low-altitude photography, transferred immediately to Washington for analysis, added a new dimension to NPIC's reporting. Each piece of missile equipment could be identified precisely and its function in the missile system determined. Rather than taking the interpreter's word, as they had with the U-2 photography, policy makers now could see clearly what the interpreters had seen and were reporting.

October 24. The JCS ordered Defcon 2—maximum alert before war with the optimum posture to strike either Cuba or the U.S.S.R. or both. With this change of status, 1,436 U.S. bombers loaded with nuclear weapons and 134 ICBMs were now on constant alert: One eighth of the bombers were in the air at all times, and aircrews were waiting near the rest of the bombers, prepared for takeoff on a moment's notice.

Both the White House press secretary and the news desk at the Pentagon were being besieged by reporters demanding to know more about the reported build-up for an invasion of Cuba. Although the president felt that the Washington press would exercise control in reporting military information, he was appalled by reports that local television crews throughout the United States had stationed themselves near military bases and were making public the sort of details that would never have been leaked during World War II and the Korean War.

Kennedy decided that a nationwide reporting guideline had to be established for the news media, and he asked the Department of Defense to draft it. While he made it clear he was not imposing censorship, he did want to restrict information on the deployment of forces, degrees of alert, defenses, dispersal plans, vulnerabilities, and air- and sea-lift capabilities.

Late that evening, the president called McNamara to confirm when U.S.
forces would be ready to invade Cuba. The secretary replied, “In seven days.” When Kennedy pressed him on whether all the forces would be well prepared, McNamara replied that they would be “ready in every respect in seven days”: Wednesday, October 31, Halloween.

October 25–26. Photo interpreters at NPIC had identified four camps suspected of housing Soviet armored combat groups. All were in the vicinity of the missile sites, which would tend to indicate that their main function was to protect them. But other intelligence analysts had maintained that they were simply camps where Cubans were being trained to handle Soviet arms—or that they were temporary equipment transfer points, places where, as one U.S. general put it, “The Cosmoline was removed.” NPIC kept insisting that these were more likely to be Soviet combat facilities, since the equipment observed was parked in neat formations, characteristic of the Soviet army, rather than in the haphazard ones typical of Cuban installations. That equipment, of the most sophisticated recent vintage, included T-54 tanks, assault guns, tactical rocket launchers, antitank weapons, and personnel carriers. It wasn't until October 24 that the intelligence community agreed with the photo interpreters that these were Soviet installations and that they did house combat troops, as many as 1,500 each.