accurate to 1/1,000 of a second. Since the signal from Moscow was too weak, they made use of American time signals.
With only primitive computers and calculators, most of the mathematical work had to be done by hand. The calculations were checked and rechecked by two targeteers, working independently. Each R-12 missile regiment had twelve targets: an initial volley of eight missiles, plus four in reserve for a second round. Just when the targeteers thought they had finished their work, they realized that the target assigned to one of the missile sites was out of range. It took more than a week ? and several nights without sleep ? to reassign the targets and redo all the calculations.
Major Nikolai Oblizin was responsible for bringing the targeting cards to Colonel Sidorov's regiment, 150 miles east of Havana. As deputy head of the ballistic department, he had spent most of the last three months at the El Chico headquarters. He had been billeted in a former brothel, complete with swimming pool and luxurious beds.
During his three months in Cuba, Oblizin had formed a strong bond with his Cuban hosts. They greeted him with cries of
Designed by Mikhail Yangel, the R-12 was mobile and easy to launch, at least by the standards of the early sixties. The missile used storable liquid propellants and could be kept fully fueled on a launch pad for up to a month, with a thirty-minute countdown time. The pre-surveyed firing positions were built around a 5-ton concrete slab anchored to the ground with bolts and chains. The slab served as the firing stand for the missile. It had to be firm and flat, or the pencil-shaped rocket would topple over. Once the slabs were in place, it took only a few hours to move the missile from one site to another. Yangel's 'pencil' became the most reliable Soviet ballistic missile of its time.
Once they had the target cards, Sidorov's men could practice aiming and firing the missiles. The layout of the missile sites was very similar to sites in the Soviet Union. Launching the missiles successfully required split-second timing and everybody knowing precisely what they had to do. Before the missiles could be fired, they had to be brought from Readiness Condition 4 (Regular) to Readiness Condition 1 (Full). Officers timed every step with stopwatches to ensure that all the deadlines were met.
The missile crews waited until night before starting the dress rehearsal, to avoid being seen by American reconnaissance planes. When the alert sounded, the crew on duty had exactly one minute to reach their assigned positions.
The real warheads were stored in an underground bunker near a small town called Bejucal, fourteen hours by car from Sagua la Grande. The missile crews practiced with cone-shaped dummies. Soldiers unloaded the dummy warheads from specially designed vans, and placed them on docking vehicles. They then pushed the docking vehicles into long missile-ready tents.
Inside the tents, technicians swarmed around the rockets, checking out the electronics. Cables led from each tent to electric generators and water vans. It took thirty minutes to mate the warhead. Engineers connected electric cables and a series of three metallic bolts, which were programmed to burst in flight at a preset time, separating the warhead from the rest of the missile. The missiles were now at Readiness Condition 3, 140 minutes from launch.
A tractor-trailer pulled a missile out of its tent, dragging it several hundred yards to the launch pads. Soldiers attached metal chain pulleys to the top of the erector on which the missile was lying. The tractor then winched the erector plus missile up to the firing position, a few degrees off vertical. The launch pads were oriented north-south, in the direction of the United States.
The next step was targeting. Engineers aligned the missile with the target, according to the instructions on the targeting card. For maximum precision, they used an instrument called a theodolite, which rotated the missile on the firing stand, measuring azimuth and elevation. The targeting procedures had to be carried out prior to fueling, as it was difficult to move the missile once it was fully fueled.
The missiles were pointed at the night sky, glistening in the moon-light, like stouter versions of the palm trees all around. Instead of feather-like leaves, the rockets sprouted sharpened cones, like the top of a pencil. Rain beat down on the soldiers as they completed the final preparations for launch. Trucks with fuel and oxidizer roared up to the launch positions, and connected their hoses to the rockets.
The control officer clicked his stopwatch, and ordered a halt to the exercise. That was enough for one night. There was no point fueling the rockets until the arrival of the live warheads. The missile crew had shown that they could successfully reach Readiness Condition 2, sixty minutes from launch.
The missiles were hauled back down from the vertical position and dragged back inside the tents. Exhausted soldiers crawled back inside their tents to sleep. The only evidence of the intense nighttime activity was a series of deep ruts in the mud left by fuel trucks and missile trailers driving across the rain-soaked fields.
The rocket forces commander, Major General Igor Statsenko, had moved to his underground command post in Bejucal. He still did not have a secure landline communication link with Sidorov's regiment at Sagua la Grande. If he received an order to fire from Moscow, he would have to retransmit it by radio, as a coded message.
Statsenko had reasons for both satisfaction and concern on the night of October 24. He had nearly eight thousand men under his command. Once supplied with nuclear warheads, Sidorov's missiles could destroy New York, Washington, and half a dozen other American cities. The regiment of Colonel Nikolai Bandilovsky, near San Diego de los Banos in western Cuba, would achieve combat-ready status by October 25. The third R-12 regiment, under Colonel Yuri Solovyev, which was stationed closer to San Cristobal, faced a more difficult situation. One of its supply ships, the
There was only one reasonable solution under the circumstances. Statsenko would have to juggle the equipment that had already arrived in Cuba to allow Solovyev's regiment to become combat-ready as soon as possible. He ordered Sidorov and Bandilovsky to transfer some of their fueling equipment to Solovyev.
One other problem remained. U.S. Navy planes had flown directly over all three R-12 missile regiments. Statsenko had little doubt the Americans had discovered all the launch sites. He had planned for just such an eventuality. He wrote out another order.
'Move to reserve positions.'
CHAPTER FIVE
'Till Hell Freezes Over'
'The Americans have chickened out,' chortled Nikita Khrushchev. 'It seems that Kennedy went to sleep with a wooden knife.'
The other members of the Presidium were accustomed to the first secretary's colorful turns of phrase. Khrushchev often drew on his Ukrainian peasant heritage to sprinkle his conversation with crude language and aphorisms like 'You don't catch flies with your nostrils,' 'Every sandpiper praises his own marsh,' and 'All of us together aren't worth Stalin's shit.' But this time they were mystified.
'What do you mean 'wooden'?' asked Deputy Prime Minister Mikoyan, Khrushchev's closest friend in the leadership.
Like a stand-up comedian whose punch line has fallen flat, Khrushchev had to explain the joke. 'They say that when someone goes bear-hunting for the first time, he takes a wooden knife with him, so it is easier to clean his pants.'
Three days into the showdown with the United States, some Soviet officials were wondering who was most in need of a wooden knife: Kennedy or Khrushchev. A Soviet deputy foreign minister told colleagues that Nikita 'shit in his pants' when he heard that the Strategic Air Command was moving to DEFCON-2. The head of the KGB would
