The “Eyeball to Eyeball” Exchange As It Never Really Happened

One of the few advantages of the aging process is the development of a cynical eye towards popular mythology. Very little in our kids’ history book is true as written, and even after passage of a decade or so, recent history is mythologized. Examples: The British attack on Washington in 1813 was in retaliation for an American attack on York (now Toronto), and not unprovoked; Alamo wasn’t fought for freedom, but rather for the right of Texans to hold slaves; Reagan played only a small part in the end of the Soviet Union, and Clinton didn’t attack Serbia for the sake of a few Albanian refugees. We sort of make this stuff up as we go. Each day we add new stories.

Here’s one that has just been debunked – the alleged “eyeball to eyeball” confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. Books have been written (one by Robert F. Kennedy), a popular movie made (Thirteen Days, 2001) , all stressing that the U.S. drew a line, stood firm, and at the last moment, the Soviets backed down. That’s the official story, and it makes for good copy and an entertaining movie.

Not so, says National Security Archive, and a new book by Washington Post reporter Michale Dobbs called One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. Dobbs plotted the position of warships on October 23 and 24 of 1962. By the time the Soviets were said to have blinked, they were already 500 miles away from the U.S. line of resistance and headed home.

On the other hand, ships that were within a few hours of Cuba went ahead and headed into port without U.S. interference. This included one ship carrying nuclear warheads:

According to Soviet shipping records, Khrushchev permitted five ships already close to Cuba to proceed to the island. Since these ships were only a few hours’ sailing time from the closest Cuban port, there was little risk that they would be intercepted by U.S. warships. The ships included the Aleksandrovsk, which was carrying nuclear warheads to Cuba, and its escort ship, the Almatyevsk, which arrived at the port of La Isabela at dawn on October 23. The three other ships were the Divnogorsk, the Dubno, and the Nikolaevsk. The Soviet leader also ordered four submarines armed with nuclear torpedoes to remain in the vicinity of the quarantine line. Ships and oil tankers carrying non-military equipment were authorized to proceed to Cuba.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

Adding to the concern at the White House was the presence of a Soviet submarine in the vicinity of the quarantine line. [See the contemporaneous notes of deputy defense secretary Roswell Gilpatric available here.] The Soviet submarine was a Foxtrot class diesel submarine commanded by Nikolai Shumkov. Its Soviet designation was B-130, and it was given the designation C-18 by the U.S. Navy. (Gilpatric uses the designation N-22, which may refer to a still classified NSA designation.) For details on the sightings of C-18 and other Soviet submarines, see U.S. Navy logs here. According to the Navy records, C-18/B-130 was first spotted at 11:04 a.m. on October 23 (1504Z) but it had evidently been picked up earlier by NSA electronic eavesdropping techniques. The submarine bore the number 945 on its conning tower.

At the request of the Pentagon, the State Department had sent a message to Moscow early on October 24 notifying the Kremlin of their intention to bring Soviet submarines to the surface. The signal consisted of practice depth charges dropped on top of the submarines. Information about the signals was never passed on to the Soviet submariners, who were alarmed to hear depth charges exploding around them. B-130 was eventually brought to the surface by the Essex carrier group.

It is here that we learn from Robert McNamara how close we were to a nuclear exchange. Soviet submarine commanders were under orders to launch nuclear weapons, but did not, and were severely criticized back home for failure to do so. From an article about McNamara in the British Guardian:

McNamara did not realise how crucial that exchange had been until forty years later when, a few months ago, he travelled to Moscow for a showing of the film [Thirteen Days]. Afterwards a “man with a straggly beard who looked like Bin Laden” got up to ask a question. It turned out to be one of the Russian submarine commanders, who revealed that the subs approaching the blockade were carrying nuclear-tipped torpedoes. He claimed that they had orders to shoot ‘when they thought it was desirable’ if they were out of radio contact. Several did lose touch with Moscow, and continued preparing to launch for days after Kruschev had ended the crisis. McNamara has since discovered that when these submarine crews returned to the USSR they were severely criticised and disciplined because they had not launched nuclear weapons. He is visibly shaken by this recent discovery: “We had never heard of that until that time. And I was so shocked I lost my cool”.

So the “eyeball to eyeball” showdown never happened, but the U.S. came very close to triggering a nuclear war anyway. Those were indeed dangerous times. More interesting to this cynic – was the U.S. intent on invading Cuba in 1962? Was that why the Soviets were installing missiles?