One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

The photo interpreters had identified several possible storage sites, including an abandoned molasses factory protected by an unusual system of double fencing. At several missile sites, construction was proceeding rapidly on bunkers made out of prefabricated aluminum arches, similar to nuclear storage facilities in the Soviet Union. Despite these promising leads, there was no firm evidence of the presence of nuclear warheads on the island.

In fact, the Soviet nuclear arsenal on Cuba far exceeded the worst nightmares of anyone in Washington. It included not only the big ballistic missiles targeted on the United States but an array of smaller weapons that could wipe out an invading army or navy. There were nukes for short-range cruise missiles, nukes for Ilyushin-28 bombers, and nukes for tactical rockets known as Lunas.

An initial shipment of ninety Soviet nuclear warheads had arrived in the port of Mariel on October 4, on board the Indigirka, a German-built freighter designed for transporting frozen fish. That shipment had included thirty-six 1-megaton warheads for the medium-range R-12 missiles, thirty-six 14-kiloton warheads for the cruise missiles, twelve 2-kiloton warheads for the Lunas, and six 12-kiloton atomic bombs for the IL-28s. The Aleksandrovsk was carrying another sixty-eight nukes: an additional forty-four cruise missile warheads, plus twenty-four 1-megaton warheads for the intermediate-range R-14 missiles. (A megaton is the equivalent of 1 million tons of TNT; a kiloton, 1,000 tons. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was around 15 kilotons.)

For the Soviet soldiers and technicians responsible for this huge nuclear stockpile, the assignment was like nothing they had previously experienced. Back home, strict regulations governed the transportation and storage of nuclear weapons. Warheads were usually moved from one secure location to another by special train, with elaborate precautions taken to ensure the correct temperature and humidity. On Cuba, many of these rules were simply impractical. The transportation system was rudimentary and there were no climate-controlled storage facilities. Nuclear weapons had to be dragged in and out of caves on rollers and hauled up winding mountain roads in convoys of vans and lorries. Improvisation was the order of the day.

Lieutenant Colonel Valentin Anastasiev was in charge of the six gravity bombs for the IL-28 airplanes, a plutonium-type implosion device similar to the 'Fat Man' bomb dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945. When he arrived in Mariel with the Indigirka, he was told that a suitable storage place had still not been found for his weapons, nicknamed 'Tatyanas' after the wife of one of the bomb engineers. The Tatyanas were an afterthought on Khrushchev's part. He had taken the decision to send them on September 7, at a time when he was worried that the United States might be preparing to invade Cuba. Although the IL-28s could reach Florida, their main function was to destroy U.S. warships and troop concentrations.

Anastasiev was ordered to unload the Tatyanas from the Indigirka and take them to an abandoned military barracks ten miles down the coast toward the west, in the opposite direction from Havana. When he got there, he was shocked. The property was only partially fenced. It was isolated but, apart from a Cuban artillery post down the road, there was little security. The bombs, which were packed in big metal crates, were placed in a ramshackle shed, locked with a padlock and guarded by a single Soviet soldier.

The Soviet technicians were assigned rooms in the single-story barracks, not far from a seaside cottage that had once belonged to Batista. The nights were stifling. To get some fresh air, they hooked a boat propeller up to an engine, and placed it near the window. The breeze brought some relief, but the motor made a terrible racket, and everybody had trouble sleeping.

Cuba might be a tropical paradise ? 'the most beautiful land that human eyes have ever seen,' in the words of Christopher Columbus ? but for the average Russian soldier it was a strange, even terrifying place, full of wild animals, deadly grasses and insects, and poisoned water supplies. One of Anastasiev's colleagues drowned after being attacked by a stingray.

One day, to distract themselves, the Soviet guards captured a giant barracuda. They kept the fish in Batista's swimming pool, with a rope attached to its belly. When they were bored, they tortured and teased the animal, using the rope to yank it around the swimming pool as it bared its teeth helplessly. It was a 'juvenile' form of relaxation, Anastasiev thought, but better than fighting the much bigger predator ninety miles away.

Despite controlling an arsenal capable of killing millions of people, Anastasiev felt enormously vulnerable. If the Americans knew where the nuclear warheads were stored, they would go to extreme lengths to capture one. Armed only with a pistol, Anastasiev lived in constant fear of a U.S. commando raid or an attack by anti-Castro rebels.

Ironically, the absence of security fences and armed guards proved to be the ideal camouflage for the Tatyanas. The Americans never did discover where they were hidden.

Like the Indigirka, the Aleksandrovsk was loaded with nuclear weapons at a submarine support base in the Kola inlet of the Barents Sea. By crossing the Arctic rather than the Black Sea or the Baltic, the two ships were able to avoid the chokepoints of the Bosphorus and the Skagerrak Strait between Denmark and Sweden, both of which were closely monitored by NATO.

Three 37mm antiaircraft guns had been installed on the upper decks of the Aleksandrovsk prior to her departure from Severomorsk on October 7. Since this was a merchant ship ostensibly carrying agricultural equipment to fraternal Cuba, the weapons were carefully concealed beneath coils of ropes. If the Americans attempted to board, Soviet troops had orders to rip away the ropes and open fire.

There was enough ammunition on board the modern, Finnish-built vessel for a short but intense firefight. Demolition engineers had placed explosives around the ship, so she could be quickly scuttled, if necessary. The switches for igniting the explosives were kept in a locked room near the captain's cabin. The senior military officer carried the key around with him at all times.

Since the Soviet military had no experience of shipping nuclear weapons by sea, the voyage required careful preparation. Special holds were constructed on both the Aleksandrovsk and the Indigirka to accommodate the warheads, with a double system of winches and safety bindings. The weapons themselves were placed inside metal containers, with a reinforced steel base, and hooks and handles for lashing the equipment to the walls. The coffin-shaped boxes measured six by fifteen feet and weighed up to 6 tons.

Despite the precautions, there were moments of near panic when the Aleksandrovsk ran into heavy storms in the mid-Atlantic, a week out from Cuba. Gale- force winds buffeted the vessel, threatening to smash the warheads against the bulkhead. Nuclear safety officers struggled for three days and nights to avoid disaster, attaching extra straps and hitches to keep the cargo intact. A military report later praised Captain Anatoly Yastrebov and two soldiers for 'saving the ship' and its passengers. For his 'great self-control, steadfastness, and courage,' Yastrebov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Soviet Union's second-highest military medal.

The Aleksandrovsk kept radio silence most of the way across the Atlantic, avoiding unwelcome attention. Communications with Moscow were handled by her escort ship, the Almetyevsk. The CIA located the Aleksandrovsk on October 19, four days out from Cuba, but listed her simply as a 'dry cargo' ship of no particular significance.

Like the Indigirka, the Aleksandrovsk had been scheduled to dock at Mariel. But she was nearly two hundred miles away from Mariel in the predawn hours of October 23 when she received Khrushchev's order to make for 'the nearest port.'

The nearest port was La Isabela, an isolated, hurricane-prone village on Cuba's northern coast.

Surrounded by salt marshes and mangrove swamp, La Isabela was a strange place to hide an enormously powerful nuclear arsenal, even temporarily. It was stuck out on a lonely peninsula, ten miles from the nearest town. La Isabela had enjoyed an economic boom during the early part of the century, thanks to a railroad connecting the port to the sugar plantations of central Cuba. Foreign ships unloaded machinery and wood, and took onboard vast quantities of sugar. But the port lost much of its importance with the decline in foreign trade after the revolution. Goats roamed the streets, which were lined mainly by single-story wooden shacks with tiled roofs.

Because of its isolation, La Isabela had become a favorite place for armed raids by anti-Castro guerrillas, operating out of Florida and Puerto Rico. The sabotage operations approved by JFK on October 16 included 'an underwater demolition attack by two Cuban frogmen against shipping and port facilities at La Isabela.' The previous week, members of the insurgent group Alpha 66 had attacked the town after failing to place a magnetic bomb on the hull of a Soviet ship. The raiders later boasted that they had 'bombed a railroad warehouse and shot twenty- two persons, including five Soviet Bloc personnel.' They retreated after exchanging gunfire with Cuban