Mid-April 1962: Moscow to Cuba’s Rescue!

Fourteenth in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

The Kremlin’s Caribbean Nightmares

In the thirteenth post in this series we examined the Kremlin’s fears that a) Castro was deserting Moscow for Beijing; and b) U.S. amphibious exercises in the Carolinas and the Caribbean were really rehearsals for the invasion of Cuba.

The Kremlin Acts to Protect Cuba

On April 12, 1962, alarmed by developments in the Caribbean, the Presidium decided to jump-start the delayed delivery to Cuba of four air defense divisions equipped with 180 SA-2 antiaircraft missiles designed to shoot down high-altitude aircraft like the U-2 spy plane. The Presidium also decided to divert to Cuba a shipment of SA-2s earmarked for Egypt.

The SA-2s would take care of any high-altitude threat. With a sea-borne U.S. invasion of Cuba one of its chief fears, the Presidium decided to send Castro a division of Sopka coastal defense missiles and ten obsolete short-range Il-28 bombers. The Sopka was designed to sink troop transports and landing craft with conventional (non-nuclear) warheads.

The Kremlin rounded off this latest burst of military aid with a 650-man detachment to train Cuban soldiers to use their new equipment, and a Red Army general to survey Cuba’s further military needs.

A Closer Look at the SA-2

Since the SA-2 played a major role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, we should take a good look at it.

The 35-foot long SA-2, powered by a two-stage solid fuel rocket, could reach an altitude of 60,000 feet at three times the speed of sound (Mach 3).

Since the SA-2 did not arm itself until it reached an altitude of 3,000 feet, it would be useless against low-level air attacks, which would inevitably precede and then accompany a U.S. invasion. The SA-2 was excellent at shooting down high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and bombers, however.

But in April 1962 the only high-altitude planes overflying Cuba were the CIA’s U-2s, armed solely with the latest in camera and film technology. The flimsy U-2’s only threat to Cuba—or to Soviet forces in Cuba—was the intelligence its cameras brought back to the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) near Washington D.C.

Misleading Signals + Misinterpretations = ?

As of 12 April 1962, then, the Soviet Union had decided to send Castro additional military aid to ward off a U.S. invasion which existed only as a contingency war plan—a paper document, in other words. The United States was rehearsing that paper plan with deadly seriousness, however. Who knew when the real McCoy might follow? Hence the new burst of Soviet military aid.

Thus did misleading U.S. signals spawn Soviet-Cuban misinterpretations which then became the basis for Soviet actions.

The Kremlin’s Third Nightmare: A U.S. Nuclear Strike

In the last post we also looked at the Kremlin’s new and growing concern: that the U.S. was planning a nuclear first strike against the USSR.

The Kremlin was especially alarmed by the prospect of a U.S. nuclear strike because, as we have seen, the USSR had absolutely no nuclear weapons that could hit the United States from the Russian homeland. Fear of a devastating nuclear retaliation is a very effective deterrent to those toying with the idea of a first strike! But the USSR had no such deterrent.

How could Khrushchev & Co., who had no intercontinental nuclear forces, possibly defend the Russian people against this new nightmare?

As we ponder that question, we must keep firmly in mind the CIA’s 21 March prediction: that the USSR would not dare risk angering the United States by establishing a nuclear missile base in Cuba.

Email questions to the author at phufstader@sbcglobal.net or post comments below this blog.

Sources

A U.S. nuclear preventive strike against the Soviet Union had been actively discussed by the U.S. military since the early 1950s. It had been actively promoted by U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay, the first commander of the Strategic Air Command. In 1962, LeMay was the Air Force Chief of Staff. For more on his first strike activism, as well as on President Eisenhower’s 1954 policy banning preventive nuclear strikes, see Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995, especially Chapter 27, “Scorpions in a Bottle,” 560-576. I also suggest David Alan Rosenberg’s “ ‘A Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours’: Documents on American Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954-1955.” International Security, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 3-38 (winter 1981-1982).

On 1 May 1960 a Soviet SA-2 missile appears to have brought down a CIA U-2 over the Soviet Union. Its pilot, a CIA contract employee named Francis Gary Powers, parachuted to safety and was captured, along with some of the U-2’s photographic equipment.

The U-2’s flimsy construction is described in Norman Polmar’s Spyplane: the U-2 History Declassified. Osceola, WI: MBI Publishing Company, 2001.

Details of the Presidium’s 1962 decision to re-start military aid to Cuba appear in Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble.” Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, 169-70.

The SA-2’s characteristics are described in 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 misstate the SA-2’s service ceiling as 25,000 feet. It was more than twice that altitude. According to Polmar and Gresham, fifteen U.S. B-52s were among the many aircraft shot down by the SA-2 during the Vietnam War.

The CIA’s 21 March prediction is discussed in The CIA’s Cracked Crystal Ball, the eleventh post in this series.