MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · October 14 · 1962
ON THIS DAY · 14 OCTOBER 1962
The missile sites
14 Oct 1962 — A U-2 photographs Soviet medium-range missiles at San Cristóbal — launchers that could reach Washington in minutes. The thirteen days begin.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
Cuba was the Western hemisphere’s safest assumption — a US-aligned island of casinos and sugar — until Castro’s rebels took Havana in January 1959 and Washington’s hostility (embargo, sabotage, the CIA’s farcical exile landing at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 — find the marker) pushed the revolution the rest of the way to Moscow. Watch the island flip to tan in 1962: the Monroe Doctrine’s two-century moat is breached. Khrushchev then reaches for a shortcut to fix his real problem — a 10-to-1 American lead in strategic missiles and US Jupiters newly emplaced in Turkey — by secretly shipping medium-range missiles to Cuba: Kansas-range weapons, 90 miles offshore.
From Chapter 6 — Cuba: To the Brink of The Cold War, 1945–1991 (OCT 1962).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — Khrushchev’s gamble: parity on the cheap. The missile gap ran against Moscow — 26 reliable Soviet ICBMs against hundreds of American bombers and missiles ringing the USSR from Turkey to…
- The turn — 27 October, aboard B-59 — one man’s no. Out of radio contact for days, batteries failing, crew fainting in 45°C heat, bracketed by practice depth charges it cannot know are signals —…
- What it changed — The hotline and the test ban: procedure against apocalypse. Both capitals emerge shaken into sobriety: a direct teletype link (June 1963) so the next crisis can be argued in hours not days, and the Limited…
Then ask the room: Kennedy’s advisers split between airstrike and blockade. The airstrike faction lost — and later evidence suggests the airstrike would likely have triggered nuclear use. Was the outcome good judgment or good luck? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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