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ISSUE
148 - December 2010
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| Be
Careful Who You Vote For |
By David Rose, Contributing
Editor
San Diego, California |
|
You
want to be careful who you vote for. Their decisions may be
consequential.
 I was so happy flying F-86’s straight out of Aviation
Cadets that it never occurred to me it wouldn’t last
forever; and of course it didn’t. Within a year the Air
Force would ground them all.
Disaster!
Worse. The Pentagon decides all ’86 jocks will be available
to General Curtis LeMay to do with as he pleases. SAC was in
the midst of a huge buildup and, desperate for crews, was grabbing
pilots and navigators from whereever they were found. They
did give us our choice of B-52’s, ‘47’s or
KC’s.  I
chose ‘52’s at Robins Air Force Base,
Warner Robins, Georgia. The new SAC wing there was scheduled
to receive the B-52G model which Aviation Week had stated was
having problems getting into production. I reasoned the delay
might give me time to wrangle a transfer back into fighters.
It did eventually, but a year later I was still working on
that idea from the right seat of a brand new B-52G.
Robins
Air Force Base had been built as an Air Material Command Base
and although it had considerable heavy cargo traffic, heavy
cargo aircraft of the day were on the order of maybe a couple
hundred thousand pounds, not three times that amount.
 So when it was decided to move a SAC wing to the base, a new
12,300 foot runway was constructed to accommodate the great
weight of the five hundred thousand pound plus bombers and
the fully laden KC-135 tankers. The thing was that Robins AFB
stands at the edges of the Bond Swamp, Rays Swamp and the Denson
Marsh. I suppose they knew they’d have problems sooner
or later. It turned out to be sooner.
The runway began to go
as soon as the 135’s and 52’s arrived. Not only
did the runway suffer the stresses of normal day to day activity,
but it was also subject to the pounding of the new wing’s
transition training going on day and night.
By summer of that
first year the runway was really getting bad and we learned
the Wing would be moving to Loring AFB while they built us
a new runway. Loring AFB is located just outside beautiful
downtown Limestone, Maine, population in the early ‘60’s,
just a thousand or two hearty folks. 
It
was the summer of 1962. The countryside around Loring was
beautiful and the people were great. There was an amazing steak
house restaurant in nearby Presque Isle and just 40 miles up
the road was Edmundston New Brunswick, Canada. Edmundston,
it turned out, was a hub for world long distance phone traffic.
In
those days that phone traffic was all handled manually by an
army of young Canadian women. Maybe the women to men ratio
in that little town was 8:1 and maybe winter in upstate Maine
wouldn’t be so bad after all.
 And
it wasn’t;
‘Till we went to DEFCON 2.
It’s
the way the nuclear threat level is defined – DEFCON
5 and the world is rosy – DEFCON 1 and you’re actively
engaged in nuclear warfare. The Nation had never been to DEFCON
2 - or even close.
It was and is, Unthinkable.
I defy anyone to conceive the reality
of a megaton explosion. I know – we’ve all seen
the films taken during the nuclear testing off Eniwetok Atoll
in 1952 – 50 ships sunk – huge mushroom clouds – all
that. But the real thing is incomprehensible. You just can’t
get your head around it; and were at DEFCON 2.
At least we
were part of it all; and not having to sit around the living
room waiting for the latest word on the coming destruction
of mankind. That sounds melodramatic, but it was melodramatic.
Surely, we thought, they can’t have lead us to the point
of destroying mankind. And yet there we were. DEFCON 2.
By
October 14th, CIA operated U2 overflights that were providing
hard evidence that the Russians had placed medium-range ballistic
missiles near San Cristobal, Cuba. President Kennedy was notified
and immediately selected 14 advisors from the National Security
Council, forming a group known as ExComm.  The
U2 flights identify the missiles as Soviet SS-5’s with
a range of 2,500 miles. The threat? SS-5’s could reach
Los Angeles and every other major U.S. city!
ExComm, The President of the United
States John Kennedy, brother Robert Kennedy and 14 advisors;
their life experiences, educations, morel fiber and judgment
would determine the survivorship of mankind.
Two days pass
and the President, brother Robert and one or two others, favor
a blockade of Cuba; but most of ExComm’s members favor
immediate military action; a first strike; knock out the missile
sites; Nuke ‘em! The Generals warn that 32 medium range
missiles would be operational within the week and that military
action was needed immediately. The readiness level of all U.S.
Forces would go to DEFCON 3 while SAC goes to DEFCON 2. All
bomb squadrons and ICBM missile crews go on massive alert.
All Polaris nuclear missile submarines presently in port are
dispatched to stations at sea.
Flying out of Loring, some of
us begin flying CIA and DIA intelligence gathering flights
over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Others conduct
airborne alert sorties. B-52’s take up stations along
every border of the Soviet Union. A hundred Bombers are airborne
every hour of the day and night; many carry a pair of massive
25 MegaTon Mark 41 thermonuclear bombs, others are armed with
8 of the 2 MegaTon Mark 28’s. |
|
By the third day the
press is already publishing reports of missiles in Cuba.
The reports are denied by the Defense Department. President
Kennedy prepares two speeches; one about air-strikes, the
other about a blockade. The President remains unconvinced
by the Generals that only immediate military action can avert
all out war. Eventually ExComm is swayed in favor of the
blockade. President Kennedy abandons the air-strike speech.
 On October 22nd, my crew, consisting of Aircraft Commander
Glenn Mitchell, Radar Bomb Navigator Bill Hinterthan, Navigator
Fred Eubanks, EWO (Electronics Warfare Operator) Hardy Gregory,
our Air Force Sergeant Gunner and I as co-pilot, are given
an intelligence briefing to surveil the progress of two Soviet
ships nearing Cuba. The Gagarin and the Komiles were suspected
of carrying missiles and would be the first ships to test
the blockade line. |
| We found them without difficulty and
were monitoring their track and speed when Bill Hinterthan,
a really excellent Bomb Nav Radar operator, noted something
odd; a really strong radar return in the close vicinity of
the two ships. A hard, bright spot appearing on the screen
and proceeding with the ships. It could only be a Soviet Nuclear
Class Submarine. The sighting went out to CIA and DIA while
we recover to Loring. The club that night was jammed with air
and ground crews assembled to hear the Presidents speech
at 7 PM. |
|
 President
Kennedy informed the nation of the presence of the Soviet nuclear
missiles in Cuba and stated that a "strict quarantine
on all offensive military equipment" is in effect for
Cuba. The President warns the Soviet government that the United
States will "regard
any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in
the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on
the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response against
the Soviet Union." The world stood at the brink of nuclear
war. It was now down to the simplest things. If the Soviet
Government chooses to act militarily, life for us all could end. |
During the president's speech, twenty-two
interceptor aircraft are airborne off the South coast of Florida
to counter any Cuban government military action.
"I
would not be candid and I would not be fair with you if I did
not say that we are in as grave a crisis as mankind has been
in." states Secretary of State Dean Rusk at an assemblage
all foreign ambassadors in Washington.
Over the next two days
Chairman Khrushchev, in an urgent message to President Kennedy
states "I hope that the United States Government will
display wisdom and renounce the actions pursued by you, which
may lead to catastrophic consequences for world peace."
Fidel
Castro places Cuba’s 270,000-man military on its highest
state of alert and warns that anyone from the U.S. had, "better
come ready for combat."
ExComm deliberates the moral acceptability
of nuclear strikes against the Cuban bases.
Then, on the 24th
we receive the Naval intelligence report that the Gagarin and
the Komiles, with the Soviet submarine lying in position between
the two ships, just a few miles short of the blockade line,
are stopped dead in the water.
Dean Rusk is reported to have
commented to McGeorge Bundy that "We're eyeball to eyeball
and I think the other fellow just blinked."
No Soviet
ships crossed the blockade but the 23 Cuban missile sites remained
fully operational and Rudolf Anderson Jr. was killed when his
U2 was shot down over Banes Cuba by two SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air
missiles. The Pentagon continued to refine plans for an invasion
of Cuba and Fidel Castro himself was reported to have climbed
into a MIG and waited for the next overflight, avowing to shoot
down an American spy plane himself. When a U2 out of Elmendorf
AFB, Alaska accidentally flies over Russia and is attacked
by Soviet MIGs, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara exclaims,"...
this means war with the Soviet Union!" President Kennedy
was heard to comment that "There's always some son-of-a-bitch
who doesn't get the message."
Surrounded by America’s
overwhelming Nuclear air and sea forces, sensing the resolve
of our strong government, but over Castro’s strong opposition,
the Soviet Union dismantled and removed all missiles from Cuba.
The Soviet attempt to gain strategic parity with the U.S. had
failed. Khrushchev's later fall from power was linked directly
to his having created the crisis in the first place. Soviet
military commanders were angered at having to back down from
the confrontation. American military commanders were not happy
with the result either. Curtis LeMay told President Kennedy
that they should have invaded Cuba and that it was "the
greatest defeat in our history".
For my part, I can’t
imagine what it must have been like for the Soviet leaders
to live with a hundred nuclear armed B-52’s surrounding
their country. They faced the certain knowledge that their
decisions of the next few days would determine the futures
of all the peoples of the world.
And for my part, I’m
comfortable with the satisfaction that the airborne alert sorties
we flew in October and November of 1962 were the significant
factor in preventing a U.S.-Soviet confrontation.
Interestingly,
now, nearly fifty years later, we know what would have been
the result of the proposed “military response”.
General Anatoly Gribkov, part of the Soviet staff responsible
for their missile operations in Cube states that there were
indeed operational tactical nuclear missiles in place there,
but that the local Soviet commander, General Issa Pliyev, had
strict orders prohibiting him from using them, even if the
U.S. had mounted a full-scale invasion of Cuba.
The recently
available documentation of the decision-making processes on
both sides of “The Cuban Missile Crisis” can be
found at http://www.jfklibrary.org/jfkl/cmc/cmc_intro.html
Read an hour-by-hour account of the entire Cuban Missile Crisis,
including recently declassified transcripts and audio of crisis
meetings, photographic evidence, and people and events at The
National Security Archive at the University of Chicago. |
By David Rose
|
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