Caribbean crisis 55 years watch. Two steps away from the new world. The hawks were for hitting Cuba

55 years ago, on September 9, 1962, Soviet ballistic missiles were delivered to Cuba. This was the prelude to the so-called Caribbean (October) Crisis, for the first time and so close put humanity on the brink of nuclear war.

Myself Caribbean crisis, or rather its most acute and decisive phase, lasted 13 days, from October 22, 1962, when American political circles almost agreed on a missile attack on Cuba, where by that time an impressive Soviet military contingent was stationed.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the eve published a list of official losses of Soviet citizens who died on the island from August 1, 1962 to August 16, 1964: there are 64 names in this mournful register.

Our compatriots died while saving Cubans during the strongest hurricane Flora that swept over Cuba in the autumn of 1963, during combat training, from accidents and illnesses. In 1978, at the suggestion of Fidel Castro, a memorial to the memory of Soviet soldiers buried in Cuba was built in the vicinity of Havana, which is surrounded by maximum care. The complex consists of two concrete walls in the form of mournfully bowed banners of both countries. Its content is supervised in an exemplary manner by the country's top leadership. By the way, the Soviet military, who, together with the Cubans, were involved in the coastal defense of the island in the fall of 1962, were dressed in Cuban uniforms. But on the most stressful days, from October 22 to 27, they took out vests and peakless caps from their suitcases and prepared to give their lives for a distant Caribbean country.

Khrushchev's decision

So, in the autumn of 1962, the world faced the real danger of a nuclear war between the two superpowers. And the real destruction of humanity.

In the official circles of the United States, among politicians and in the media, at one time the thesis became widespread, according to which the cause Caribbean Crisis was the alleged deployment by the Soviet Union of "offensive weapons" in Cuba, and the Kennedy administration's response, which brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war, was "forced." However, these statements are far from the truth. They are refuted by an objective analysis of the events that preceded the crisis.

"Metallurg Anosov" with deck cargo - eight missile transporters with missiles covered with tarpaulin. During the Caribbean crisis (blockade of Cuba). November 7, 1962 Photo: wikipedia.org

Sending Soviet ballistic missiles to Cuba from the USSR in 1962 was an initiative of Moscow, and specifically Nikita Khrushchev. Nikita Sergeevich, shaking his shoe on the podium of the UN General Assembly, did not hide his desire to "put a hedgehog in the pants of the Americans" and waited for a convenient opportunity. And this, looking ahead, he brilliantly succeeded - Soviet lethal missiles were not only located a hundred kilometers from America, but the United States did not know for a whole month that they had already been deployed on Freedom Island!

After the failure of the operation in the Bay of Pigs in 1961, it became clear that the Americans would not leave Cuba alone. This was evidenced by the ever-increasing number of acts of sabotage against the Island of Freedom. Moscow received almost daily reports of American military preparations.

In March 1962, at a meeting in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, according to the recollections of the outstanding Soviet diplomat and intelligence officer Alexander Alekseev (Shitov), Khrushchev asked him how Fidel would react to the proposal to install our missiles in Cuba. “We, Khrushchev said, must find such an effective deterrent that would deter the Americans from this risky step, because our speeches at the UN in defense of Cuba are clearly not enough anymore.<… >Since the Americans have already surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of their military bases and rocket launchers for various purposes, we must pay them with their own coin, give them a taste of their own medicine, so that they can feel for themselves what it is like to live at gunpoint. nuclear weapons. Speaking of this, Khrushchev stressed the need for this operation to be carried out in strict secrecy so that the Americans would not discover the missiles before they were put on full alert.

Fidel Castro did not reject this idea. Although he was well aware that the deployment of missiles would entail a change in the strategic nuclear balance in the world between the socialist camp and the United States. The Americans had already deployed warheads in Turkey, and Khrushchev's retaliatory decision to place missiles in Cuba was a kind of "missile leveling". A specific decision on the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba was made at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU on May 24, 1962. And on June 10, 1962, before the July arrival of Raul Castro in Moscow, at a meeting in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, USSR Minister of Defense Marshal Rodion Malinovsky presented a project for an operation to transfer missiles to Cuba. It assumed the deployment of two types of ballistic missiles on the island - R-12 with a range of about 2 thousand kilometers and R-14 with a range of 4 thousand kilometers. Both types of missiles were equipped with one-megaton nuclear warheads.

The text of the agreement on the supply of missiles was handed over to Fidel Castro on August 13 by the USSR ambassador to Cuba, Alexander Alekseev. Fidel immediately signed it and sent with him to Moscow Che Guevara and the chairman of the United Revolutionary Organizations, Emilio Aragones, ostensibly to discuss "topical economic issues." Nikita Khrushchev received the Cuban delegation on August 30, 1962 at his dacha in the Crimea. But, having accepted the agreement from Che's hands, he did not even bother to sign it. Thus, this historic agreement remained formalized without the signature of one of the parties.

By that time, Soviet preparations for sending people and equipment to the island had already begun and were irreversible.

Operation Anadyr

Operation Anadyr for the transfer of people and equipment across the seas and oceans from the USSR to Cuba is inscribed in golden letters in the annals of world military art. Such a jewelry operation, carried out under the nose of a super-powerful enemy with his exemplary tracking systems at that time, world history does not know and did not know before.

Equipment and personnel were delivered to six different ports Soviet Union, in the Baltic, Black and Barents Seas, allocating 85 ships for the transfer, which made a total of 183 flights. Soviet sailors were convinced that they were going to northern latitudes. For the purpose of secrecy, camouflage robes and skis were loaded onto the ships in order to create the illusion of a “sailing to the North” and thereby exclude any possibility of information leakage. The captains of the ships had the appropriate packages, which had to be opened in the presence of the political officer only after passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. What can we say about ordinary sailors, even if the captains of the ships did not know where they were sailing and what they were carrying in the holds. Their astonishment knew no bounds when, after opening the package after Gibraltar, they read: "Keep a course for Cuba and avoid conflict with NATO ships." For camouflage, the military, who, naturally, could not be kept in the holds for the entire trip, went out on deck in civilian clothes.

The general plan of Moscow was to deploy in Cuba a group of Soviet troops as part of military formations and units of the Rocket Forces, Air Force, Air Defense and Navy. As a result, more than 43 thousand people arrived in Cuba. The basis of the Group of Soviet Forces was a missile division consisting of three regiments equipped with R-12 medium-range missiles, and two regiments armed with R-14 missiles - a total of 40 missile launchers with a range of missiles from 2.5 to 4.5 thousand kilometers. Khrushchev later wrote in his Memoirs that “this force was enough to destroy New York, Chicago and other industrial cities, and there is nothing to say about Washington. Little village. At the same time, this division was not tasked with delivering a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States, it was supposed to serve as a deterrent.

Only decades later, some, until then secret, details became known. Operation Anadyr who speak of the exceptional heroism of Soviet sailors. People were transported to Cuba in cargo compartments, the temperature in which, at the entrance to the tropics, reached more than 60 degrees. They were fed twice a day in the dark. The food spoiled. But, despite the most difficult conditions of the campaign, the sailors endured a long sea passage of 18-24 days. Upon learning of this, US President Kennedy declared: "If I had such soldiers, the whole world would be under my heel."

The first ships arrived in Cuba in early August 1962. One of the participants in this unprecedented operation later recalled: “The poor fellows came from the Black Sea in the hold of a cargo ship that had previously transported sugar from Cuba. The conditions, of course, were unsanitary: hastily knocked together multi-storey bunks in the hold, no toilets, under the feet and on the teeth - the remnants of granulated sugar. From the hold they released to breathe air in turn and for a very long time. a short time. At the same time, observers were posted on the sides: some watched the sea, others watched the sky. The hatches of the holds were left open. In the event of the appearance of any foreign object, the “passengers” had to quickly return to the hold. Carefully camouflaged equipment was on the upper deck. The galley was designed for cooking for several dozen people who make up the crew of the ship. Since there were much more people, they were fed, to put it mildly, not very well. Of course, there was no question of any hygiene. In general, they lay in the hold for two weeks with practically no daylight, without minimal amenities and normal food.

The failure of American intelligence

Operation Anadyr was the biggest failure of the American intelligence services, whose analysts kept counting how many people could be transported to Cuba by Soviet passenger ships. And they got some ridiculously small number. They did not realize that these ships could accommodate significantly more people than it should be for a regular flight. And the fact that people can be transported in the holds of dry cargo ships could not even occur to them.

At the beginning of August American intelligence agencies We received information from our West German colleagues that the Soviets were increasing the number of their ships in the Baltic and Atlantic almost tenfold. And the Cubans who lived in the United States learned from their relatives who were in Cuba about the importation of "strange Soviet cargo" to the island. However, until the beginning of October, the Americans simply "passed this information past their ears."

Hiding the obvious for Moscow and Havana would mean even greater American interest in sending cargo to Cuba and, most importantly, in their contents. Therefore, on September 3, 1962, in a joint Soviet-Cuban communiqué on the stay in the Soviet Union of the Cuban delegation consisting of Che Guevara and E. Aragones, it was noted that "the Soviet government met the request of the Cuban government to provide Cuba with arms assistance." The communiqué said that these weapons and military equipment intended solely for defense purposes.

The fact that the USSR delivered missiles to Cuba was an absolutely legal matter and permitted by international law. Despite this, the American press published a number of critical articles about the "preparations in Cuba." On September 4, US President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would not tolerate the deployment of surface-to-surface strategic missiles and other types of offensive weapons in Cuba. On September 25, 1962, Fidel Castro announced that the Soviet Union intended to establish a base in Cuba for its fishing fleet. At first, the CIA did believe that a large fishing village was being built in Cuba. True, later Langley began to suspect that, under his guise, the Soviet Union was actually creating a large shipyard and a base for Soviet submarines. American intelligence surveillance of Cuba was strengthened, the number of reconnaissance flights of U-2 aircraft, which continuously photographed the territory of the island, increased significantly. It soon became obvious to the Americans that the Soviet Union was building launch pads for anti-aircraft guided missiles (SAMs) in Cuba. They were created in the USSR several years ago in Grushin's highly classified design bureau. With their help, in 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, piloted by pilot Powers, was shot down.

On October 2, 1962, John F. Kennedy orders the Pentagon to put the US military on alert. It became clear to Cuban and Soviet leaders that it was necessary to accelerate the construction of facilities on the island.

Here, Havana and Moscow, who were concerned about the speedy completion of ground work, played into the hands of bad weather. Due to heavy cloud cover in early October, U-2 flights, suspended for six weeks by that time, did not begin until 9 October. What they saw on October 10 amazed the Americans. The photographic reconnaissance data showed the presence of good highways where until recently there was a desert area, as well as huge tractors that did not fit in the narrow country roads in Cuba.

Then John Kennedy gave the order to activate photo reconnaissance. At that moment, another typhoon hit Cuba. And new pictures from a spy plane loitering at an extremely low altitude of 130 meters were taken only on the night of October 14, 1962 in the San Cristobal area in the province of Pinar del Rio. It took days to process them. U-2 discovered and photographed the starting positions of the Soviet missile forces. Hundreds of photographs showed that not just anti-aircraft missiles, but ground-to-ground missiles were already installed in Cuba.

On October 16, presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy reported to Kennedy on the results of the overflight of Cuban territory. What John F. Kennedy saw fundamentally contradicted Khrushchev's promises to supply Cuba with only defensive weapons. The missiles discovered by the spy plane were capable of wiping out several major American cities. On the same day, Kennedy convened in his office the so-called working group on the Cuban question, which included senior officials from the State Department, the CIA and the Department of Defense. It was a historic meeting in which the "hawks" put pressure on the US president in every possible way, persuading him to an immediate strike on Cuba.

General Nikolai Leonov recalled how then Pentagon chief Robert McNamara told him at a conference in Moscow in 2002 that the majority in the US political elite in October 1962 insisted on a strike on Cuba. He even clarified that 70 percent of the people from the then US administration held a similar point of view. Fortunately for world history, the minority view prevailed, which was held by McNamara himself and President Kennedy. “We must pay tribute to the courage and courage of John F. Kennedy, who found a difficult opportunity to compromise in defiance of the overwhelming majority of his entourage and showed amazing political wisdom,” Nikolai Leonov told the author of these lines.

There were only a few days left before the culmination of the Caribbean crisis, which RG will tell about ...

Nikolai Leonov, retired lieutenant general of state security, author of biographies of Fidel and Raul Castro:

- The CIA frankly missed the transfer of such a large number people and weapons from one hemisphere to another, and in close proximity to the shores of the United States. To secretly move an army of forty thousand, a huge amount of military equipment - aviation, armored forces and, of course, the missiles themselves - such an operation, in my opinion, is an example of headquarters activity. As well as a classic example of enemy disinformation and disguise. Operation "Anadyr" was designed and carried out in such a way that the mosquito would not undermine the nose. Already during its implementation, it was necessary to make urgent and original decisions. For example, rockets, already transported on the island itself, simply did not fit into the narrow Cuban rural roads. And they had to expand.

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Photos from open Internet sources

The powerful optics of the spy plane snatches out of the predawn jungle an area the size of a football field. It clearly shows the "tubes" of transport containers of ballistic missiles, air defense positions, tents and military depots. In the center is the launch pad. Pilot Major Richard Heizer, not believing his eyes, makes another circle over the wasteland and is finally convinced: nuclear weapons of the USSR appeared on the Island of Freedom. Exactly 55 years ago, on October 14, 1962, a US Air Force U-2 reconnaissance aircraft discovered the positions of Soviet R-12 medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. This incident is considered to be the beginning of the Caribbean crisis, which almost escalated into the Third World War. About the events of the days when the world was on the verge of a nuclear catastrophe - in the material of RIA Novosti.

Do the Impossible

For the first time, the idea of transferring ballistic missiles and a military contingent to Cuba was announced by Nikita Khrushchev on May 20, 1962 at a meeting with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and First Deputy of the USSR Council of Ministers Anastas Mikoyan. By that time, the planetary confrontation between the two superpowers had reached its peak. A year earlier, the Americans transported fifteen Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles to Turkish Izmir, capable of destroying Moscow and other big cities in the European part of the USSR in less than ten minutes. The party elite rightly believed that such a "trump card" in the hands of the United States could deprive the Soviet Union of the opportunity to launch a full-scale retaliatory strike.

At that time, the USSR was seriously losing to the Americans in terms of the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). They had in their arsenals 144 SM-65 Atlas ICBMs and about 60 SM-68 Titan. In addition, 30 Jupiters with a range of 2400 kilometers were deployed in Italy, and 60 PGM-17 Thor missiles with similar capabilities were deployed in the UK. In the Soviet Union, by 1962 there were only 75 R-7 ICBMs, but no more than 25 units could be launched at the same time. Of course, the USSR had at its disposal 700 medium-range ballistic missiles, but it could not deploy them close to the US borders.

The threat was obvious. Already on May 28, a Soviet delegation flew to Cuba. Raul and Fidel Castro did not have to be persuaded for a long time: the revolutionary brothers seriously feared an American invasion of the island and saw an influential and powerful ally in the USSR. And on June 10, Defense Minister Marshal Malinovsky, speaking at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, presented a plan for an operation to transfer missiles. He proposed deploying two types of ballistic missiles in Cuba: 24 R-12s with a range of about 2,000 kilometers and 16 R-14s with a range twice that. Both types of missiles were equipped with megaton nuclear warheads each. For comparison: the intercontinental Topols currently in service with the Strategic Missile Forces have approximately the same power.

Operation Anadyr

In addition to missiles, the group of Soviet troops included a Mi-4 helicopter regiment, four motorized rifle regiments, two tank battalions armed at that time with the latest T-55s, 42 Il-28 light bombers, two cruise missile units with 12-kiloton warheads, several batteries of cannon anti-aircraft artillery and 12 S-75 air defense systems. The transport ships were covered by a naval strike group consisting of two cruisers, four destroyers, 12 missile boats, and 11 submarines. In total, it was planned to involve 50 thousand people in the unique operation. Our country had no experience of transferring such a powerful group to another hemisphere either before or after the Caribbean crisis.

The operation was called "Anadyr". It was developed by the best military strategists of the country of the Soviets - Marshal Ivan Bagramyan, Colonel General Semyon Ivanov and Lieutenant General Anatoly Gribkov. Naturally, the transfer of troops had to be carried out in the strictest secrecy so that Western intelligence would not find out about it. Therefore, it was carried out according to the legend, according to which the personnel were leaving for exercises in the northern regions of the USSR. Soldiers and officers who did not know what exactly they were to do were given skis, felt boots, army sheepskin coats, and white camouflage coats.

85 ships were allocated for the operation. Their captains knew nothing about the contents of the holds and about the destination. Each of them was given a sealed package with instructions, which had to be opened already at sea. The papers ordered to go to Cuba and not to make contact with NATO ships.

“The quick and organized preparation of troops for dispatch bore fruit, and this gave reason to report to Khrushchev on July 7 on the readiness of the Ministry of Defense to implement the Anadyr plan,” General Anatoly Gribkov later recalled. “Transportation of personnel and equipment by sea was carried out on passenger and dry cargo ships of the merchant fleet from the ports of the Baltic, Black and Barents Seas.”

It is worth noting that this operation is a real feat of military and civilian sailors of the USSR. Many ships went to Cuba overloaded - in addition to people, they needed to transport over 230 thousand tons of material and technical means. Soldiers and officers huddled in the holds, in a strong tightness and closeness. It was especially hard for the infantrymen and tankers, many of whom had never sailed before, they were tormented by seasickness, which was in the nature of an epidemic. Transportation of goods cost the Soviet treasury 20 million dollars, but the result was worth the money. American intelligence was never able to find out the true reason for the activity of the Soviet merchant fleet near its shores until the discovery of missiles ready for launch.

Nevertheless, the "bustle" in the Atlantic caused serious suspicions in the United States. Since July, NATO reconnaissance aircraft have regularly overflew Soviet ships at ultra-low altitudes. On the twelfth of September, this led to a tragedy: another "spy" approached the dry-cargo ship "Leninsky Komsomol" and, after another call, hit the water and sank. And from September 18, American warships began to constantly ask USSR transports about the nature of the cargo. However, the Soviet captains managed to successfully refuse.

black saturday

Dozens of books have been written about what happened after October 14, 1962. The very next day after Major Richard Heiser's historic reconnaissance sortie, photographs of the launching positions of Soviet missiles were shown to President John F. Kennedy. On October 22, he addressed the nation on television and admitted that the USSR had placed nuclear weapons in the "underbelly" of the United States. The head of state announced a complete naval blockade of Cuba, which came into force on 24 October. Nevertheless, some Soviet dry cargo ships managed to “slip through” and reach their destination.

The next day, President Kennedy, for the first time in the history of the United States, gave the order to increase the combat readiness of the country's Armed Forces to the level of DEFCON-2. Simply put, it's almost a war. For comparison: a less "serious" DEFCON-3 was announced only on September 11, 2001. The situation was rapidly heating up. The UN headquarters became the scene of a bitter verbal battle between American and Soviet diplomats. The United States was preparing to launch an invasion of Cuba, our politicians repeatedly promised to give a serious rebuff. The confrontation reached its peak on October 27, "Black Saturday", when launchers of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division shot down a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Cuba. Historians believe that on this day the world was closest to a global nuclear war.

Oddly enough, instead of escalating, the incident seriously cooled hot heads on both sides of the Atlantic. On the night of October 28, the president's brother Robert Kennedy met with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and gave him a message from the American government, which agreed to give guarantees of non-aggression against Cuba. On the evening of the same day, USSR Minister of Defense Rodion Malinovsky ordered the dismantling of launch sites in Cuba to begin. On November 20, when the Soviet Union removed the last missiles from the island, John F. Kennedy ordered an end to the blockade of Cuba. A few months later, the United States removed its Jupiters from Turkey. The Caribbean crisis was finally resolved.

It is worth noting that in the history of the 14-day confrontation between the two superpowers, there are many white spots left. New details appear extremely rarely. In particular, in September 2017, the Russian Ministry of Defense for the first time published data on losses among Soviet military personnel involved in the “missile crisis” in one way or another. According to the military department, from August 1, 1962 to August 16, 1964, 64 citizens of the USSR were killed in Cuba. Details, of course, were not disclosed. But even according to the available data, 55 years ago, the Caribbean Sea was very hot.

So, on October 27, a group of eleven destroyers of the US Navy, led by the USS Randolph aircraft carrier, blocked the Soviet nuclear-armed B-59 diesel-electric submarine under the command of Captain Second Rank Valentin Savitsky in neutral waters near Cuba. The Americans tried to force the boat to surface in order to identify it, and began to bombard the B-59 with depth charges. One can only guess how the submariners felt at that moment, who probably thought that World War nevertheless started. Savitsky gave the order to attack the cluster of ships with a torpedo with a nuclear warhead. However, his first mate, second-rank captain Vasily Arkhipov, managed to convince the commander to show restraint. The boat transmitted the signal “Stop provocation” to the enemy ships, after which the situation calmed down somewhat. The destroyers stopped attacking the B-59 and she continued on her way. And how many of these cases, which ended not so well, are still classified as “top secret”?

© Photo: U.S. air force

Do the Impossible

For the first time, the idea of transferring ballistic missiles and a military contingent to Cuba was announced by Nikita Khrushchev on May 20, 1962 at a meeting with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and First Deputy of the USSR Council of Ministers Anastas Mikoyan. By that time, the planetary confrontation between the two superpowers had reached its peak. A year earlier, the Americans transported fifteen Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles to Turkish Izmir, capable of destroying Moscow and other major cities in the European part of the USSR in less than ten minutes. The party elite rightly believed that such a "trump card" in the hands of the United States could deprive the Soviet Union of the opportunity to launch a full-scale retaliatory strike.

At that time, the USSR was seriously losing to the Americans in terms of the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). They had in their arsenals 144 SM-65 Atlas ICBMs and about 60 SM-68 Titan. In addition, 30 Jupiters with a range of 2,400 kilometers were deployed in Italy, and 60 PGM-17 Thor missiles with similar capabilities were deployed in the UK. In the Soviet Union, by 1962 there were only 75 R-7 ICBMs, but no more than 25 units could be launched at the same time. Of course, the USSR had at its disposal 700 medium-range ballistic missiles, but it could not deploy them close to the US borders.

Operation Anadyr

“The quick and organized preparation of troops for dispatch bore fruit, and this gave reason to report to Khrushchev on July 7 on the readiness of the Ministry of Defense to implement the Anadyr plan,” General Anatoly Gribkov later recalled. “The transportation of personnel and equipment by sea was carried out on passenger and dry cargo ships merchant fleet from the ports of the Baltic, Black and Barents Seas.

Nevertheless, the "bustle" in the Atlantic caused serious suspicions in the United States. Since July, NATO reconnaissance aircraft have regularly overflew Soviet ships at ultra-low altitudes. On September 12, this led to a tragedy: another "spy" approached the dry-cargo ship "Leninsky Komsomol" and, after another call, hit the water and sank. And from September 18, American warships began to constantly ask USSR transports about the nature of the cargo. However, the Soviet captains managed to successfully refuse.

black saturday

Picket under the slogan "Hands off Cuba!" in Moscow during the Caribbean crisis of 1962

Oddly enough, instead of escalating, the incident seriously cooled hot heads on both sides of the Atlantic. On the night of October 28, the president's brother Robert Kennedy met with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and gave him a message from the American government, which agreed to give guarantees of non-aggression against Cuba. On the evening of the same day, USSR Minister of Defense Rodion Malinovsky ordered the dismantling of launch sites in Cuba to begin. On November 20, when the Soviet Union removed the last missiles from the island, John F. Kennedy ordered an end to the blockade of Cuba. A few months later, the US removed its Jupiters from Turkey. The Caribbean crisis was finally resolved.

It is worth noting that in the history of the 14-day confrontation between the two superpowers, there are many white spots left. New details appear extremely rarely. In particular, in September 2017, the Russian Ministry of Defense for the first time published data on losses among Soviet military personnel involved in the "missile crisis" in one way or another. According to the military department, from August 1, 1962 to August 16, 1964, 64 citizens of the USSR were killed in Cuba. Details, of course, were not disclosed. But even according to the available data, 55 years ago, the Caribbean Sea was very hot.

Soviet submarine B-59. Archive photo

So, on October 27, a group of eleven destroyers of the US Navy, led by the USS Randolph aircraft carrier, blocked the Soviet nuclear-armed B-59 diesel-electric submarine under the command of Captain Second Rank Valentin Savitsky in neutral waters near Cuba. The Americans tried to force the boat to surface in order to identify it, and began to bombard the B-59 with depth charges. One can only guess how the submariners felt at that moment, who probably thought that the world war had begun after all. Savitsky gave the order to attack the cluster of ships with a torpedo with a nuclear warhead. However, his first mate, second-rank captain Vasily Arkhipov, managed to convince the commander to show restraint. The boat transmitted the signal "Stop provocation" to the enemy ships, after which the situation calmed down somewhat. The destroyers stopped attacking the B-59 and she continued on her way. And how many similar cases, which ended not so well, are still classified as "top secret"?

Historians are still debating which factor played a major role in the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962: the desire to protect the Cuban revolution, especially after the unsuccessful military operation undertaken in 1960 by the CIA, together with Cuban émigrés to overthrow the Castro regime, or the desire to respond to deployment in 1961 of American PGM-19 Jupiter medium-range missiles in Turkey.

New missiles with nuclear warheads, capable of reaching the European part of the USSR in just 15 minutes, of course, gave even more advantages to the United States, which at that time already surpassed the USSR in nuclear power, especially in the field of warhead delivery vehicles. But the Soviet leadership was not going to disregard the requests of the Cubans for military assistance.

One way or another, in May 1962, at the initiative of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, it was decided to put Soviet missiles in Cuba. The rationale is the need to protect the first socialist state in the Western Hemisphere from the imminent American invasion.

In June 1962 the Soviet General base developed an operation codenamed "Anadyr". It was planned to transfer 40 nuclear missiles to Cuba: 24 R-12 medium-range missiles and 16 R-14 missiles. In addition, 42 Soviet Il-28 bombers, a squadron of MiG-21 fighters, a Mi-4 helicopter regiment, 4 motorized rifle regiments, 2 tank battalions, 2 units of cruise missiles with nuclear warheads with a range of 160 km and 12 ZKR S -75. The naval grouping was to include 11 submarines with nuclear missiles, 2 cruisers, 4 destroyers and 12 Komar missile boats.

The Anadyr operation itself was carried out in strict secrecy, and the crews of ships with missiles on board found out their final destination only at sea, after opening the sealed envelopes. However, it was not possible to hide the movement of weapons from the United States. Already in September 1962, the Americans learned about the deployment of anti-aircraft missiles in Cuba, and on October 14, a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft under the control of pilot Richard Heizer photographed two Soviet R-12 ballistic missiles on the island.

R-12 medium-range ballistic missile

“We must not forget that before that, Cuba, under the control of Batista, was firmly within the zone of influence of the United States of America,” said Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute for the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in an interview with RT.

The United States, until 1959, when the revolution led by Fidel Castro ended in Cuba, treated it as its semi-colony and was shocked to learn that Soviet missiles appeared on the island, which could cover half of the United States.

“It was precisely a reaction bordering on panic,” the expert notes. “And although neither the USSR nor Cuba violated international law, and moreover, the Soviet Union only took symmetrical measures in response to the deployment of American missiles in Europe and Turkey, the United States was ready for any action to eliminate the threat posed by Cuba.” .

panic reaction

The first reaction of the American leadership was to work out scenarios of force. The idea to start bombing Cuba was rejected immediately. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, and General Curtis LeMay, who was in charge of the Air Force Staff, advocated preparations for an invasion of the island. The transfer of troops to Florida began. The invasion was advocated by Congress, which in September 1962 gave the president the right to use Armed forces USA in Cuba.

However, after deliberation, President Kennedy rejected the intervention, believing that the USSR could respond to the attack on Freedom Island. Neither the American leader nor even the CIA knew at that moment that by that time 12 Luna tactical missile systems with nuclear warheads had already been deployed in Cuba, which Soviet troops could be used against the Americans.

According to Vasiliev, the panicked reaction of the Americans, which was noted by many eyewitnesses of those events, was the main reason that the deployment of Soviet missiles near the US coast led to a large-scale crisis, although similar American actions did not cause the same nervous reaction from the USSR.

“The world was on the brink of a nuclear war, because that is how the American military and political leadership reacted,” the expert notes.

As a result, President Kennedy settled on the introduction of a blockade of Cuba, which was called "quarantine". On October 22, 1962, the American leader made a special televised address to the nation, where he spoke about Soviet missiles in Cuba and warned that any missile launch would be regarded as an act of aggression. The USSR, in response, stressed that its ships would not comply with the conditions of the blockade and would take all necessary measures to ensure their safety.

On October 24, 1962, Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy, in which he called the US actions "an act of aggression pushing humanity towards the abyss of a world nuclear missile war."

“In those days, the world was on the verge of a nuclear conflict. Kennedy gave the order to destroy Soviet ships heading for Cuba. Our submarines were ordered to defend themselves, including with the use of atomic weapons, ”said Alexander Panov, head of the MGIMO diplomacy department, in an interview with RT.

From "Black Saturday" to detente

On October 27, the so-called Black Saturday came, when, according to historians, the danger of starting a war between the USSR and the USA was the greatest. On this day, Soviet missilemen shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Cuba, pilot Rudolf Anderson died. The American military at the same time urged Kennedy to launch an invasion of Cuba, and Fidel Castro, confident that this would happen one way or another, bombarded Moscow with calls to launch a nuclear strike on the United States. However, the leaders of the two world powers did not succumb to persuasion.

Fidel Castro
globallookpress.com
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On the night of October 27-28, 1962, the brother of the US president, Senator Robert Kennedy, met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. An agreement was reached that the USSR would withdraw missiles from Cuba if the United States removed its missiles from Turkey, lift the blockade of the island and give guarantees that it would not attack Cuba.

The search for a diplomatic solution to the problem, however, began a little earlier. On October 26, Khrushchev sent the second letter to Kennedy during the crisis, in which he urged his American colleague not to aggravate the situation and offered to dismantle Soviet missiles in Cuba in exchange for the US committing to abandon any attempt to invade the island.

Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy

KGB resident Alexander Feklisov also conducted his negotiations, passing messages from the Soviet special services through ABC News correspondent John Scully, who knew Robert and John F. Kennedy.

Three weeks after reaching agreements between the USSR and the USA, Soviet missiles were withdrawn from Cuba. On November 20, 1962, John F. Kennedy lifted the blockade of Cuba. A few months later, the US withdrew its medium-range missiles from Turkey.

“If we talk about the military side of the issue, then the USSR was forced to remove its medium-range missiles from Cuba, at the same time, the Soviet Union had very few ballistic intercontinental missiles at that time, units. In this sense, the threat to the United States was removed - while the American side had ICBMs. If you count shells, delivery vehicles, etc., it turns out that Washington has received more advantages, ”said Yury Rogulev, director of the Franklin Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States (MSU), in an interview with RT.

But nevertheless, it is not quite right to approach this issue purely statistically - the main thing is that it was possible to prevent a nuclear war, the expert believes.

Lesson learned

“This crisis has demonstrated the need to maintain some kind of interaction between the two powers,” Rogulev believes.

As these events unfolded, information was passed between Moscow and Washington through intermediaries. “Confidential persons from the intelligence agencies met specifically to exchange information almost in safe houses,” the expert notes.

Only after the Caribbean crisis was a direct telephone connection established between the White House and the Kremlin.

“The result of the crisis was the understanding that such events should not be brought to a repetition. Negotiations began on the reduction of nuclear weapons. In particular, a nuclear test ban treaty was signed (in 1963),” Panov said.

These events marked the beginning of an era of negotiations, the result of which was the reduction of weapons, experts say. However, now, according to Rogulev, the era of negotiations on arms reduction is a thing of the past.

As Mikhail Ulyanov, Director of the Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control of the Russian Foreign Ministry, noted on October 20, the United States is not interested in extending the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction and Limitation Treaty (START-3), which expires in 2021.

“The main lesson of those events is that you can’t drive yourself into a corner and you can’t create a situation where the way out of the crisis is nuclear war", - says Vasiliev.

According to the expert, both the leadership of the USSR and the leadership of the United States in the years cold war got it well.

“This lesson is forgotten today in the situation with North Korea, says the expert. - The United States of America has now, thanks to Trump's rhetoric, come to a situation where the way out is the start of hostilities, which can very quickly develop into a crisis with the use of nuclear weapons. And then - a chain of unpredictable events, the consequence of which could be a third world war.