several nights with little sleep, wondering if he would see his family again, he was suddenly lighthearted, almost giddy.
It was a gorgeous fall morning in Washington. The leaves on the trees had turned a brilliant red and the city was bathed in golden sunshine. Arriving at the White House, George Ball was reminded of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of 'a rose growing out of an ox skull.' Life had magically emerged from the shadow of death.
Bystanders noticed an extra spring in the president's step as he leapt out of his black limousine at the Church of St. Stephen eight blocks from the White House. Just hours earlier, he had been calculating the odds of nuclear war, putting them at somewhere between 'one in three and even.'
Photo Insert Three 
A Soviet motorized rifle regiment stationed near Remedios parades in civilian clothes. Operation Anadyr was nicknamed Operation Checkered Shirt by Russian soldiers because they were issued very similar civilian clothes in hope of disguising their true identities. [MAVI] 
Previously unpublished U.S. Marine reconnaissance photograph of Tarara beach, east of Havana, renamed Red beach in the invasion plan. The Marines were expecting around five hundred casualties during the first day alone, an estimate that assumed the enemy would not use tactical nuclear weapons. [USNHC] 
Contemporary photograph of Tarara beach. Note the concrete bunker constructed in 1962 against a possible U.S. invasion of Cuba, now used as a lifeguard post for foreign tourists. [Photo by author] 
Previously unpublished photograph of the Bejucal nuclear storage site, taken from raw intelligence film shot by U.S. Navy Crusaders on Blue Moon Mission 5008 on October 25. Note the circular road, nuclear warhead vans, single security fence, and lax security at the main gate. See inset of vertical photograph of nuclear warhead vans, shot on the same mission. [NARA] 
Colonel Nikolai Beloborodov, commander of the Soviet nuclear arsenal on Cuba, at the helm of Indigirka, the first Soviet ship to arrive in Cuba with nuclear warheads. [MAVI] 
Previously unpublished photograph of the nuclear storage site at Managua, south of Havana, which was used to store the warheads for the tactical FROG/Luna missiles. Labels show the single security fence, the entrances to the bunker, and an antiaircraft site on top of the hill. Photograph shot on October 26 by U.S. Air Force RF-101 on Blue Moon Mission 2623. [NARA] 
Previously unpublished photographs of raw intelligence film from Blue Moon Mission 5025 on Saturday, October 27, showing frames before and after the pilot detected enemy antiaircraft fire. Frame 47 shows the San Cristobal MRBM Site No. 2. A fraction of a second later, in frame 48, the pilot turns sharply to the left to escape over the mountains. A photograph of a clock embedded in the film (see inset) shows the precise time of the incident, 20:22:34 GMT, which was 16:22:34 Washington time, or 15:22:34 Cuban time. [NARA] 
The Soviet cruise missile known as FKR, or frontovaya krylataya raketa, was aimed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base during the Cuban missile crisis. The FKR was an unpiloted version of the MiG-15 jet fighter and could deliver a 14-kiloton nuclear warhead. [Cuban government photo produced for the 2002 Havana Conference] 
U.S. Marines guarding Guantanamo Bay Naval Base had no idea that nuclear cruise missiles were stationed in hills fifteen miles away. [Distributed by the Pentagon] 
Photograph of the Banes SAM site, taken by the RF-101 pictured above on October 26. [NARA] 
Previously unpublished intelligence film of a U.S. Air Force RF-101 overflying the Soviet SAM site at Banes on October 26. The following day, October 27, a U.S. Air Force U-2 piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down by two missiles fired from this SAM site. Discovered by the author at the National Archives, the consecutive frames were cut and pieced together with Scotch tape by CIA analysts. [NARA] 
Flying right wing on Blue Moon Mission 2626, this U.S. Air Force RF-101, numbered 41511, took the photograph shown on front page from its left camera bay. [NARA] 
Colonel Georgi Voronkov (left), commander of the SAM regiment in eastern Cuba, congratulates officers responsible for shooting down Anderson's U-2. The officer on the right, with a pistol, is Major Ivan Gerchenov, commander of the Banes SAM site. [MAVI] 
Previously unpublished map of U-2 pilot Captain Charles Maultsby's overflight of the Soviet Union, found by the author in State Department Archives. [NARA] 
Air Force photo of Captain Maultsby. [Photo provided by Maultsby family] 
Another U-2 pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was shot down over Cuba while Maultsby was in the air over the Soviet Union. [Photo provided by Anderson family] The mood was very different across the Potomac at the Pentagon, where the Joint Chiefs were busy refining their plans for a massive air strike against Cuba followed by an invasion. Curtis LeMay was already furious with Kennedy for postponing the planned attack until Tuesday. The Air Force chief wanted his fellow generals to go with him to the White House to demand an attack by Monday at the latest, before the missile sites became 'fully operational.'
Tickertape of the Radio Moscow broadcast was distributed around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday. The chiefs reacted with dismay. LeMay denounced Khrushchev's statement as 'a charade,' and a cover for keeping some weapons in Cuba. Admiral Anderson predicted that the no-invasion pledge being offered to Cuba by Kennedy would 'leave Castro free to make trouble in Latin America.' The generals were unimpressed by McNamara's argument that Khrushchev's concessions left the United States in 'a much stronger position.' They drafted an urgent message to the White House dismissing the Soviet move as 'an insincere proposal to gain time' and warning that 'there should be no relaxation of alert procedures.'
'We have been had,' Anderson told Kennedy when they finally got together.
'It's the greatest defeat in our history,' insisted LeMay. 'We should invade today.'
Fidel Castro was at home in Vedado. He heard about the dismantling of the Soviet missile sites in a telephone call from the editor of Revolucion, Carlos Franqui. The Associated Press teletype was reporting the text of the letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy that had just been broadcast over Radio Moscow. The newspaper editor wanted to know 'what should we do about this news?'
'What news?'
Franqui read the news bulletin over the phone and braced himself for an explosion.
'Son of a bitch! Bastard! Asshole!' Fidel went on in this vein for some time, 'beating even his own record for curses.' To vent his anger, he kicked a wall and smashed a mirror. The idea that the Russians had made a deal with the Americans 'without even bothering to inform us' cut him to the core. He felt deeply 'humiliated.' He instructed President Dorticos to call the Soviet ambassador to find out what had happened.
Alekseev had been up late the night before. He was still in bed when the telephone rang.
'The radio says that the Soviet government has decided to withdraw the missiles.'
The ambassador had no idea what Dorticos was talking about. There was obviously some mistake.
