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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: 'CRATE AND RETURN'

'You dragged us into this mess': Troyanovsky, 250. For the time of meeting, see Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, 351.

'the danger of war and nuclear': September 1993 interview with CC secretary Boris Ponomaryev cited in Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 284; see Fursenko, Prezidium Ts. K. KPSS, 624, for Malin notes on Presidium meeting, October 28, 1962.

The possibility that Soviet commanders on Cuba: Sergei Khrushchev, 335. Sergei reports that his father angrily asked Malinovsky whether Soviet generals on Cuba were serving in the Soviet or Cuban army. 'If they are serving in the Soviet army, why do they place themselves under a foreign commander?' Since Sergei was not present at this conversation, I have not used the quote. However, the sentiment appears to be an accurate reflection of his father's views at the time.

the 'hour of decision': Troyanovsky, 251; Dobrynin, 88. Several writers have argued that Dobrynin's report on his meeting with RFK arrived too late to influence Khrushchev's reply to JFK. See, e.g., Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War, 490, which claims that Khrushchev 'dictated his concession speech…before he knew of Kennedy's own concession.' This is a misreading of the October 28 Presidium record. The minutes do suggest that a smaller group of Presidium members convened later in the day to consider the Dobrynin report, and reply to it. However, they list the Dobrynin report as number three on an agenda of at least nine items that day, ahead of a letter to Fidel Castro and a telegram to Pliyev (number five on the agenda), which were both part of the original discussion. Other Presidium records show that several agenda items were debated 'out of order.'

It seems probable, therefore, that the Dobrynin message arrived during the first part of the meeting, before Khrushchev dictated his letters to JFK and Castro, but became the subject of detailed discussion at the second session. This is consistent with Khrushchev's own memoirs and the memories of Oleg Troyanovsky, who was present at the first session. Together with the fragmentary Presidium record, Troyanovsky's account is the most authoritative version of what took place, and I have followed it closely.

if he led them into a 'war of annihilation': Khrushchev letter to Castro, October 30, 1962, NSAW.

'Let none of you': Gribkov et al., U Kraya Yadernoi Bezdni, 167.

had come to 'deeply respect': NK1, 500.

The Soviet people wanted 'nothing but peace': FRUS, Vol. XI, 279.

advised Castro to 'show patience': Khrushchev letter to Castro, October 28, 1962, NSAW, trans. by the author.

'We consider that you acted': Malinovsky telegram to Pliyev (pseudonym Pavlov), October 28, 1962, 4:00 p.m. Moscow time. NSAW Cuba, trans. by the author. Malinovsky sent a further message at 6:30 p.m. Moscow time, ordering Pliyev not to use S-75 SAM missiles and to ground fighter aircraft 'in order to avoid collisions with U.S. reconnaissance planes.' Translations of both documents are in CWIHP, 14–15 (Winter 2003), 389.

'a long wire' or rope: CINCLANFLT message 272318Z, CNO Cuba, USNHC.

'Korabl X': Log books of USS Beale, Cony, and Murray. See Submarine chronology prepared by NSAW.

'Attention, attention please': Carrier Division Sixteen, Cuban missile crisis documentation, NSAW.

to 'behave with dignity': Mozgovoi, 94; Orlov interview.

'The only thing he understood': Dubivko memoir, 'In the Depths of the Sargasso Sea,' trans. Savranskaya.

'It's a disgrace': Mozgovoi, 109-10.

'enjoyed ridiculing people': Gen. Horace M. Wade OH, AFHRA.

'Shit, oh dear!': Unpublished Maultsby memoir.

'demonstrated the seriousness': Sagan, 76.

'You are a lucky little devil': Exactly how Maultsby came to overfly the Soviet Union, and the precise route he took on his way to and from the North Pole, would remain mysterious for many decades. Although the U.S. government admitted to a 'serious navigational error' by the pilot that took him over Soviet territory, it did its best to hush up the embarrassing incident. McNamara demanded 'a complete and detailed report' on what went wrong, but the results of the Air Force investigation have not been released. (McNamara memo to Air Force secretary, Cuban missile crisis files, Box 1, OSD.) Among the few official documents that this author was able to find relating to the incident were two charts showing Maultsby's route over the Soviet Union. The charts turned up in unexpected places in the records of the State Department and the JFK Library, suggesting that they may have been declassified inadvertently.

Read in conjunction with astronomical maps, the charts confirm the personal recollections of Maultsby and the navigator who helped him return to Alaska. But they also undermine the widely accepted official assumption that he ended up over the Soviet Union because he took a wrong turn over the North Pole. In fact, they suggest that he never reached the Pole, and instead ended up somewhere in the vicinity of northern Greenland or the Queen Elizabeth Islands of northern Canada.

The principal problem with the official version is an unexplained hour and a quarter of extra flying time. At 75,000 thousand feet, a U-2 was obliged to fly at constant speed of around 420 knots. Had Maultsby maintained this speed and made a wrong turn at the North Pole, he would have crossed over Soviet territory around 10:45 a.m. Washington time, rather than 11:59 a.m. The extra flying time equates to a detour of around six hundred miles.

The most likely explanation for the aberration is that his compass interfered with his navigational computations. In the vicinity of the North Pole, a compass is useless. Pilots had to rely on the stars, a gyro to keep them on a fixed heading, and accurate calculations of time and distance flown. According to another U-2 pilot, Roger Herman, Maultsby told friends that he forgot to unchain his gyro from his compass, an error that would have had the effect of pulling him in the direction of the magnetic North Pole, then located in northern Canada.

According to the State Department chart, Maultsby entered Soviet territory not from the north, but from the northeast. This is consistent with his recollection that he observed the Belt of Orion off the left nose of his plane. Had he been flying southward from the North Pole, he would have seen Orion off the right nose of the plane.

Gradually, the truth sank in: Vera interview.

The CIA later said: Richard Helms memo, November 13, 1962, JFKARC.

'operationally infeasible': Chronology of the Mathambre Mine Sabotage Operation, November 14, 1962, JFKARC. See also Harvey memo to Director of Central Intelligence, November 21, 1962, JFKARC. In his memos, Harvey said that the plan called for 'only two immediate alternate rendezvous, on 22 and 23 October,' i.e., four or five days after the saboteurs were dropped off. A 'final pickup operation,' in the event that these rendezvous were missed, was set for November 19. This chronology makes little sense. Everybody understood that it was likely to take longer than four days to carry out the sabotage operation. During the previous, unsuccessful attempt to target the copper mine, in early October, a sabotage team led by Orozco was retrieved after five days in Cuba. The October 22–23 pickup may have been designed for a separate arms-caching operation, and as a fallback in case Orozco and Vera failed to make it as far as Matahambre. There is no reason to doubt Vera's insistence that the main rendezvous date was between October 28 and 30, with a final fallback date of November 19.

On the morning of Tuesday: Cuban interrogation report, November 8, 1962, Havana 2002, Documentos de los Archivos Cubanos, Vera interview.

It was clear from the photographs: Blue Moon mission 5035, November 2, 1962, NARA.

'within 1¹/₂ to 2 hours': Moscow telegram 1115 to Secretary of State, October 28, 1962, SDX.

With time running out: Troyanovsky, 252; Taubman, 575-6.

sounded to him like a 'shameful retreat': Sergei Khrushchev, 367.

'If possible': Troyanovsky, 253.

'I feel like a new man': O'Donnell and Powers, 341; Beschloss, 541.

'I could hardly believe': Alsop and Bartlett, 'In Time of Crisis,' Saturday Evening