SOP also meant, on October 27, that both the U.S. President Kennedy famously remarked about the missing U-2, “there’s always some SOB who doesn’t get the word.” But there was no word for Maultsby to get-standard operating procedure sent his mission up, and only afterwards did Secretary of Defense McNamara cancel these air-sampling flights. Thankfully, the F-102 Delta Daggers did not catch up to the MIGs before Maultsby glided his U-2, out of fuel, to a landing in Alaska. Alert levels had risen to DEFCON 2, and air-to-air nukes were meant for taking out incoming Soviet bombers. Political scientist Scott Sagan was the first to report (in 1993) that the two Air Force fighters scrambled from Galena Air Base in Alaska to protect the Maultsby U-2 on October 27 each carried Falcon nuclear air-to-air missiles under their wings in lieu of their conventional arms. With the constellation observable to his south, Maultsby would be flying westwards, back home toward Alaska. Navigators guided Maultsby out of Soviet air space by ordering him to turn left until he could see Orion's Belt off his right wingtip. eavesdropping capabilities were a closely guarded national secret. But they were unable to share this information with the pilot, as the U.S. was able to track both Maultsby and the Soviet MIGs attempting to shoot him down by intercepting Soviet air defense traffic. ”Ĭaptain Maultsby's U-2 plane, serial number 56-715įormer SAC pilots and SAC headquarters staff told Dobbs that the U.S. But Air Force chief of staff Curtis LeMay instead recommended “a simple paper taking the latest intelligence into account, and again recommending execution of full-scale OPLAN 312 followed by OPLAN 316. Washington time), the Chiefs heard a briefing from their intelligence officers that should have cautioned them that “modern equipment” and “surface to surface missiles” were among the Soviet deployment. These notes were typed up in 1993 and later obtained by the National Security Archive through the Freedom of Information Act.Īccording to the notes, on October 27, 1962, at 1000 (10 a.m. A Joint Chiefs staffer thankfully made handwritten notes from the transcripts in 1976, before the records were destroyed. The catalyst was the Supreme Court decision, in 1974, that President Nixon had to turn over his tapes for the criminal prosecutions of his aides. The JCS notes from October and November 1962 are all that survive after the Chiefs’ decision, in the 1970s, to destroy the tapes and transcripts from over two decades of JCS meetings. Released to the National Security Archive through the Freedom of Information Act. Notes Taken from Transcripts of Meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, October-November 1962, Dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, SECRET. Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting on that day, October 27, provide a six-and-a-half-hour cascade of crises where human error, miscalculation, reckless deployment of nuclear weapons, and testosterone ruled the day. low-level reconnaissance planes-a fateful order that would raise the nuclear stakes later on October 27. could do the same to the USSR. Castro had already ordered his anti-aircraft crews to fire on U.S. The Cuban leader assumed an American wipe-out of Cuba and recommended a Soviet preemptive strike on the U.S. The Soviet ambassador in Havana, Aleksandr Alekseyev, was closeted with Fidel Castro at the Soviet embassy through the wee hours of the morning, while Castro dictated and revised a message to Khrushchev. attack, presaging an invasion, was imminent within 24-72 hours. Seven hours ahead of Washington, the Kremlin had already received an urgent message (9 a.m., Moscow time) from the Soviet commander in Cuba that a U.S. moved closer to attacking Cuba and nuclear-armed flashpoints erupted over Siberia, at the quarantine line, and in Cuba itself-a rapid escalation that convinced both John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev to strike the deal that would stop events from further spiraling out of control. Washington, D.C., OctoThe most dangerous 24 hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis came on Saturday, October 27, 1962, 60 years ago today, as the U.S. FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports.
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