Nation: The Buildup for Cuba: Just Like World War II

They were gone the instant they came—a brace of Air Force RF-101 jets screeching 200 ft. above Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base. On the reviewing stand, President Kennedy turned to General Walter Sweeney, commander of the Tactical Air Command, and asked: “They wouldn’t have been able to shoot down those ships at that speed and altitude, would they?” The general said no. Said Kennedy: “I’d like to see them again.” And so the reconnaissance jets once more simulated the flights that had helped document the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba (see box).

Kennedy also paid his personal respects to the men of the Army’s 1st Armored (“Old Ironsides”) Division at Fort Stewart, Ga. During the U.S. buildup toward a possible invasion of Cuba, the division had been secretly moved 1,300 miles from Fort Hood, Texas. The operation took two weeks, with 40 trains carrying equipment and some men, while 13,000 other soldiers were airlifted.

The movement of the 1st Armored and other military activities during the Cuban crisis were disclosed last week as the Pentagon relaxed the security clampdown that had prevailed for a month and a half.

Early Warning. When Soviet missiles were first discovered in Cuba, the U.S. hastily improvised an early-warning system. Three Air Force long-range radar units, designed to track satellites, were focused on Cuba to pick up any sign of a firing. The network would have provided about five minutes’ warning for the mid-Atlantic coastal region and about 15 minutes for most of the Strategic Air

Command bases—time enough to launch a retaliatory attack on Russia.

At the same time, SAC greatly increased the number of B-52 bombers—usually about 50%—on 15-minute ground alert. Dozens of SAC’s B-52s fully armed with nuclear bombs flew 24-hour alerts; none was allowed to land until its replacement was in the air. And a special alert went out to most of the crews of the U.S.’s 156 operational intercontinental ballistic missiles (102 Atlases and 54 Titan I missiles).

When President Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine of Cuba, a U.S. fleet was on its way within hours. The U.S.S. Blandy, a destroyer, shoved off so quickly from Newport that it left behind its paymaster and his moneybags. On payday Lieut. James Eilberg, the supply officer, doled out the ship’s petty-cash hoard of $9,500, then collected money as it was spent in the ship’s store, post office and “gedunk” (soda shop), and parceled it back out until everyone was paid.

At peak strength, the main quarantine force consisted of 16 destroyers, three cruisers, an antisubmarine aircraft carrier and six utility ships. Deployed in reserve were nearly 150 other ships, including the nuclear-powered carrier Enterprise. In all, the Navy came alongside 55 Cuba-bound ships, let them pass through after establishing that they carried no proscribed material. Navy planes and ships also detected and tracked half a dozen Soviet submarines. When the subs surfaced to recharge their batteries, they were politely hailed by Russian-speaking U.S. interpreters, then permitted to continue their voyage. One destroyer gathered a Dixieland combo on its deck, blared a jazz greeting across the water to a surfaced sub intruder. The Russians grinned like kids.

The U.S. Air Force lost 15 men during the alert: four in the crash of an RB-47 reconnaissance plane at Florida’s

MacDill Air Force Base; four in an RB-47 crash at Kindley Air Force Base in Bermuda; six in the crack-up of a C-135 transport at Guantanamo, and U-2 Pilot Major Rudolf Anderson, who was shot down by antiaircraft fire while on a photo-reconnaissance flight—one of more than 2,000 sorties over Cuba by U.S.

planes.

“We Were Prepared.” All the while, the buildup continued for a possible invasion. The Tactical Air Command airlifted more than 18,000 tons of equipment to staging areas in the southeastern U.S. Besides the 1st Armored, the U.S.

was prepared to throw in the 1st and 2nd infantry divisions, the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions, some 12,000 marines and more than 1,000 aircraft. Says a top-ranking admiral of the invasion plans: “We were prepared to execute an operation that would have compared in scope with the largest of World War II.” It was that, plus the poised threat of U.S. nuclear retaliation against Russia, that undoubtedly caused Khrushchev to back away from his Cuban adventure.