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Portrait of The Cuban Missile Crisis

History · The 20th century

The Cuban Missile Crisis

16–28 October 1962

Cold War confrontation — the closest approach to nuclear war

The thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union came closest to nuclear war. A U-2 reconnaissance flight on 14 October photographed Soviet medium-range ballistic missile sites under construction in Cuba, installed by Khrushchev partly to deter another invasion after the Bay of Pigs and partly to offset American missiles in Turkey and Italy. President Kennedy convened a secret committee, the ExComm, and on 22 October announced a naval quarantine of the island. Soviet ships turned back; on 27 October a U-2 was shot down over Cuba and its pilot killed. The crisis ended on 28 October when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles in return for a public American pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret undertaking to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. A Washington-Moscow hotline followed in 1963, as did the Partial Test Ban Treaty.

How to spot them

  • ▸Thirteen days in October 1962
  • ▸Photographs taken from a U-2 at 70,000 feet over a Caribbean island
  • ▸A naval blockade described as a quarantine, because a blockade is an act of war
  • ▸A secret side deal about American missiles in Turkey, not revealed for decades
  • ▸The confrontation that produced a direct telephone link between Washington and Moscow

What happened

Photographs taken on 14 October by a U-2 flown by Major Richard Heyser (1962)

Analysts identified medium-range ballistic missile sites near San Cristóbal

An ad hoc committee of advisers meeting in secret in the White House (1962)

The Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the ExComm, whose debates Kennedy secretly recorded

A naval cordon announced on television and carefully not called a blockade (1962)

The quarantine announced on 22 October 1962, since a blockade would have been an act of war

Adlai Stevenson telling a Soviet ambassador he was prepared to wait until hell freezes over (1962)

In the UN Security Council on 25 October, before displaying the reconnaissance photographs

Dean Rusk's remark that the other fellow just blinked (1962)

As Soviet ships stopped short of the quarantine line: we are eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked

A Soviet submarine officer who refused to agree to launching a nuclear torpedo (1962)

Vasili Arkhipov aboard B-59 on 27 October, when depth charges convinced the crew war had begun

Quick-fire facts

  • •The crisis ran from 16 October, when Kennedy was shown the photographs, to 28 October 1962
  • •Soviet forces had shipped medium-range R-12 and intermediate-range R-14 missiles to Cuba under Operation Anadyr
  • •Fidel Castro had taken power in 1959; the failed Bay of Pigs invasion was in April 1961
  • •Saturday 27 October is called Black Saturday: a U-2 was shot down over Cuba, killing Major Rudolf Anderson, the only combat death of the crisis
  • •Robert Kennedy met Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to convey the secret assurance on the Jupiter missiles in Turkey
  • •The US Strategic Air Command went to DEFCON 2 for the only time in its history
  • •The settlement was announced by Khrushchev on Radio Moscow on 28 October; Castro was not consulted and was furious
  • •The Moscow-Washington hotline was agreed in June 1963 and the Partial Test Ban Treaty signed in August 1963
  • •Khrushchev was removed from power in October 1964, the handling of the crisis among the charges against him
  • •Graham Allison's Essence of Decision used the crisis to model how governments take decisions

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources