![]() on 24 October, as the blockade came into effect, news reached Washington that the Russians had stopped all ships heading for Cuba. Publicly, however, the Soviet leader continued to bluster and threaten, and for another few days the world feared the worst.įinally, at 10.25 a.m. He knew that his nuclear arsenal was heavily outgunned by the Americans’, and that he could not “win” a thermonuclear exchange. Khruschev’s supine response was to inform the presidium that the missiles had to go. After six days of increasingly acrimonious debate and discussion, he announced the dramatic news to the world, insisting that the weapons were removed and imposing a naval blockade to prevent more coming in. Either course of action might have ended in disaster if relatively junior Russian officers on Cuba had responded by using tactical nuclear weapons.įortunately, JFK was dissuaded by wiser counsel, notably his defence secretary Robert McNamara. Kennedy’s military chiefs, and not a few of his civilian advisors, saw an opportunity to topple Cuban’s communist leader Fidel Castro by invading the Caribbean island or, at the very least, destroying its military infrastructure from the air. “Those sons-of-bitches Russians.”įor much of the next 13 days, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear catastrophe as Kennedy and his advisors tried to force the Soviets, led by Stalin’s successor as Chairman of the Presidium, Nikita Khruschev, to withdraw the missiles. His brother Robert, US attorney general, was no less shocked by the news. ![]() “We’re probably going to have to bomb them,” said Kennedy. Bundy had sensational news to impart: the CIA had “hard photographic evidence” that the Soviet Union had secretly placed long-range nuclear weapons on Cuba, just 90 miles from the US mainland. ![]() ![]() During the morning of October 16, 1962, National Security Advisor Mac Bundy entered the president’s bedroom in the White House and found John F Kennedy still in his pyjamas, while his children watched TV. ![]()
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