Another Bombshell Hits the White House: September 7, 1962

Fifty-fifth Chapter in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

The Mystery Construction Site

The August 29 U-2 mission photographed a strange construction site near Banes, on the north shore of Cuba’s eastern province. The Banes site was quite different from the distinctive and well-known Star of David pattern of the eight SAM sites photographed the same day. See photographs at the head of this chapter.

While the analysts could see launchers, missile transporters, radars, auxiliary vehicles, and tents, they could not precisely identify the missile to be deployed at the strangely different site. By early September, however, they had a good idea what type it would be.

Analysts at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) had tentatively concluded that an unknown type of surface-to-surface missile (SSM) would be deployed at the Banes site to defend Cuba’s shores.

“The President was p…ssed!”

On Friday, September 7, 1962, the secretaries of state and defense and CIA officers General Carter and Ray Cline briefed President Kennedy on this new discovery.

The President was not pleased at this news. He became furious when the Agency told him that this unidentified missile would be able to hit any American ships that came within its range. “That would make it an offensive weapon, wouldn’t it?” he reportedly barked at the CIA’s representatives.

Just three days before, Kennedy had told the world that the discovery of offensive Soviet missiles in Cuba would give rise to “the gravest issues.” Now he might have to make good on that warning. He badly needed to know precisely what kind of missile he was dealing with.

This is the moment when the difference between offensive and defensive missiles becomes crucial—and curiously hard to define.

Zeroing in on the Unknown Missile

According to Brugioni, CIA analysts, strongly motivated by reports of the President’s wrath, went to work to pin down this unknown missile.

Later in September, after much cross-checking of file photographs, the CIA’s analysts decided that the Banes site was being built for a hitherto unknown cruise missile developed from a well-known Soviet air-to-surface missile (ASM) that NATO called KENNEL. This new cruise missile was given the NATO name of SAMLET. The analysts estimated the SAMLET’s range at 25 miles.

A cruise missile is an explosive warhead carried by an unmanned aircraft which is guided to its target by radar, radio, or inertial guidance.

Two Types of Cruise Missiles Sent to Cuba

The TOP SECRET May 24 ANADYR deployment order approved by the Soviet Presidium—handwritten, one copy only—listed two types of cruise missile to be deployed to Cuba. In 1962 the U.S. intelligence community did not know either existed.

1. A regiment of Sopka (“Little Volcano”) conventional (non-nuclear) missiles comprising three battalions of six launchers each with three missiles per launcher. One battalion would be positioned on the coast near Havana, one near Banes in the southeast, and the third near Cienfuegos on the south coast. The deployment order stated that the Sopka could destroy ships up to 80 kilometers (49.7 statute miles) away. We now know that the Banes site was being built for the Sopka.
2. The deployment order also included two regiments of FKR cruise missiles comprising 16 launchers with 5 nuclear warheads for each launcher. The range of the FKR was up to 180 kilometers (111.8 statute miles). The deployment order also specified that the FKRs would be accompanied by personnel specially trained to handle nuclear warheads (“PRTB” in Soviet jargon).

As described above, U.S. analysts christened the to-them unknown Sopka the SAMLET. The FKRs in Cuba remained completely unknown until 1998. They looked so like the Sopka/SAMLET that the U.S. intelligence community thought all the Soviet cruise missiles in Cuba were Sopka/SAMLETs. That meant they had no idea that those 80 tactical nuclear warheads were in Cuba as well.

The Implications of the Unknown FKRs in Cuba

It is worth repeating: the Soviet high command was sending 80 FKR nuclear warheads to Cuba, 30 percent more nuclear warheads than it was sending for the strategic nuclear missiles combined.

According to General Anatoly Gribkov of the Soviet General Staff, the FKR warheads ranged in explosive power from 5 kilotons to 12 kilotons. (The atom bomb that flattened Hiroshima, killing approximately 100,000 people, had the destructive force of 13 kilotons.)

A map of Cuba inside the front cover of Gribkov and Smith’s Operation ANADYR shows one FKR regiment deployed overlooking the beaches between Mariel and Havana. The map places the other FKR regiment at a position about 50 km (31 statute miles) south of Banes and approximately 95 km (59 statute miles) northwest of Guantanamo. Of the latter FKR regiment, more in tomorrow’s chapter.

Now look at the invasion map at the head of this chapter. The FKR regiment with its nuclear warheads stationed near Havana on Gribkov’s map would command the sea approaches to the beaches where the invasion map shows U.S. troops landing.

United States Navy troop transports approaching the Mariel-Havana area would be incinerated far off shore by nuclear missiles no one knew were there. Ships, landing craft, men, support vessels—all would vanish in the cataclysmic blasts of the FKRs’ warheads.

Then the United States would have to retaliate—against the Soviet Union.

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Sources and Notes

My account of the missile site at Banes derives primarily from Dino Brugioni’s Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of The Cuban Missile Crisis (Robert F. McCort, ed.). New York: Random House, 1991, 120-129. Burgioni attributes the quotation concerning the President’s agitated state of mind, used as a header above, to Deputy Director of Intelligence General Carter. See p. 127 (where the verb is spelled in full).

The photograph of that site at the head of this chapter comes from the Dino A. Brugioni Collection, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/photos.htm.

The Sopka-SAMLET’s characteristics are described on pp. 315-6 of Norman Polmar and John D. Gresham, DEFCON-2: Standing on the Brink of Nuclear War during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2006.

The May 24, 1962, Soviet deployment order approved by the Presidium is reproduced in Raymond L. Garthoff, “New Evidence on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Khrushchev, Nuclear Weapons, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Bulletin 11, The Cold War International History Project, Winter 1998, 251-262. The reproduced deployment order begins on p. 254

The destructive power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb and the death toll there on August 6, 1945, comes from Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing, Cold War: An Illustrated History. 1945-1991. Jeremy Isaacs Productions and Turner Original Productions, 1998, 20-21. A kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT.

The figures for the FKR warhead’s destructive power comes from Generals Anatoli I. Gribkov and William Y. Smith, Operation ANADYR: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chicago: edition q, inc., 1994, 27. The frontispiece map referred to above shows conventional Sopka regiments deployed on the north coast just east of Havana, on the coast south of Cienfuegos, and on the coast just north of Banes. This was the site photographed by the August 29 U-2 mission that stumped the photo analysts and so alarmed the President.

It is worth noting that the FKR’s range of over 100 miles meant that it could reach the military installations at Key West. That would make it an offensive weapon.