First Missiles to Cuba: The Deadly SA-2s

Thirty-third Chapter in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

In the 21st Chapter in this series () we looked at the Soviet missiles which made their deployment to Cuba not only historic but hugely dangerous.

The original deployment plans ordered the medium and intermediate range missiles to go to Cuba first because it would take so long to construct their sites and make them operational.

The Order of Deployment Changes

By the time he met with military leaders on 7 July, Khrushchev had finally realized how quickly the strategic missiles would be spotted by American U-2s once they arrived in Cuba.

At that point, Khrushchev & Co. apparently decided that antiaircraft units would go to Cuba first “so that American planes could be shot out of the skies before they detected the early construction of the ballistic missile sites.”

The “Fabled” SA-2: a Game-Changer

The anti-aircraft regiments ordered to Cuba first were equipped with what Fursenko and Naftali call the “fabled” SA-2 surface to air missile (SAM). “Fabled” is accurate. This was the weapon that is generally thought to have brought down a U-2 over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, thus abruptly ending the U-2’s invulnerability to ground fire.

At that moment the SA-2 became a game-changer.

The SA-2 “Guideline’s” Operational Profile

The Soviets called their system the “V-75 Dvina.” We’ll use the NATO designations “SA-2” and “GUIDELINE.”

Just under 35 feet long, the two-stage SA-2 GUIDELINE weighed 5,040 pounds and had a wingspan of 8’ 2.” It could reach an altitude of about 70,000 feet but was apparently most accurate at or under 60,000 feet. Its “slant range” was about 25 miles. Its warhead contained a 420-pound conventional high explosive charge.

The SA-2 Radars

There were two types at each of the 24 SAM sites: a) the SPOON REST tracking radars, very like the civilian radars used to follow ordinary aircraft; and b) the FRUIT SET fire control radars. When an SA-2 was fired, the FRUIT SET guided it to its target using information acquired from the SPOON REST.

When the FRUIT SET radars were active, no aircraft within their range was safe.

When operational, the SPOON REST and the FRUIT SET radars emitted highly distinctive and very different signals which trained electronics intelligence (ELINT) technicians could instantly recognize. So could the pilots of a targeted aircraft.

These radars became active—and deadly—during the October Crisis.

How Many SA-2s Were Sent to Cuba?

ANADYR included 24 battalions equipped with 144 SA-2 launchers and all the missiles, warheads, radars, trucks, and other equipment needed to make the missile sites operational. By October 22, these battalions occupied 24 overlapping sites ringing Cuba’s coastline. The Soviets had left no gaps through which reconnaissance or attack aircraft could slip.

First Signs of SAMs in Cuba

Four CIA U-2 photo reconnaissance missions during June revealed that work had begun on SAM sites in Cuba. Although the missiles themselves were not there yet, U-2 flights were delayed until August 5.

To put it another way: during July 1962, the United States’ fear of losing another U-2 to SA-2s (which had not even arrived in Cuba) deprived the U.S. intelligence community of its only source of objective evidence about Castro’s island.

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Sources and Notes

The YouTube video embedded with this blog will give an idea of how the SA-2 performed during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The video is much more recent, however.

Khrushchev’s recognition of the missiles’ vulnerability to detection by American U-2s is discussed in Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble.” Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, 192. The quotation about shooting “American planes…out of the skies” comes from p. 192. Their source for this decision is a document in Russian whose title they translate as “On the Brink of a Precipice.”

One wonders if Khrushchev and his advisors considered how the U.S. would react if the Soviets did any such thing.

General Gribkov attributes the decision to send the SAMs in first to Marshall Malinovsky in his and General William Y. Smith’s Operation ANADYR: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chicago: edition q, inc., 1994, 28. He describes on pp. 27-8 the motorized rifle divisions (or regiments—he and his translator use both terms, alas—) that would accompany the SAMs.

According to General Gribkov, the SAMs would be accompanied by four motorized rifle regiments to defend the missile sites against land assault. Each of these regiments had 2,500 men, 31 battle tanks, ten self-propelled 100-mm cannon, and assorted other vehicles and weapons. P. 27. The U.S. Intelligence community did not learn they were there until 23 October.

My source for the SA-2’s operational profile is 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, 316-7. The authors give the SA-2’s ceiling as 25,000 feet, which seems 50 percent too low for the SA-2. They may have meant meters, not feet, but 25,000 meters would be 82,000 feet, which seems much too high.

The work begun on SAM sites in Cuba, with the corresponding shutdown of U-2 reconnaissance missions in July, is described by Norman Polmar in Spyplane: The U-2 History Declassified. Osceola, WI: MBI Publishing Company, 2001, 183. Dino Brugioni, who worked at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center, concurs that four U-2 missions were flown in June 1962 but does not mention evidence of work on SAM sites until his account of missions flown in late August. See Brugioni’s Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of The Cuban Missile Crisis (Robert F. McCort, ed.). New York: Random House, 1991, 88.