Five unknown facts about the Caribbean crisis. A stone's throw from the new world Caribbean crisis 55 years to watch

Powerful optics of the spy plane snatches out of the pre-dawn jungle an area the size of a football field. It clearly shows the "tubes" of transport containers of ballistic missiles, air defense positions, tents and military depots. In the center is the launch pad. Pilot Major Richard Heizer, not believing his eyes, makes another circle over the wasteland and is finally convinced: a nuclear weapon of the USSR has appeared on Freedom Island. Exactly 55 years ago, on October 14, 1962, a US Air Force U-2 reconnaissance aircraft discovered the positions of Soviet R-12 medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. This incident is considered to be the beginning of the Cuban missile crisis, which almost escalated into the Third World War. RIA Novosti reports on the events of the days when the world was on the brink of nuclear disaster.

© Photo: U.S. Air Force

Do the impossible

For the first time, Nikita Khrushchev announced the idea of \u200b\u200btransferring ballistic missiles and military contingent to Cuba on May 20, 1962 at a meeting with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and First Deputy of the USSR Council of Ministers Anastas Mikoyan. By that time, the planetary confrontation between the two superpowers had reached its peak. A year earlier, the Americans had transported fifteen Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles near Turkish Izmir, capable of destroying Moscow and other large cities in the European part of the USSR in less than ten minutes. The party elite rightly believed that such a "trump card" in the hands of the United States could deprive Soviet Union the ability to deliver a full-scale retaliatory strike.

At that time, the USSR was seriously losing to the Americans in terms of the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Those had in their arsenals 144 SM-65 Atlas ICBMs and about 60 SM-68 Titan. In addition, 30 Jupiters with a range of 2,400 kilometers were deployed in Italy, and 60 PGM-17 Thor missiles with similar capabilities were deployed in the UK. In the Soviet Union, by 1962, there were only 75 R-7 ICBMs, but no more than 25 units could be launched at the same time. Of course, the USSR had 700 medium-range ballistic missiles at its disposal, but it could not deploy them close to the US borders.

The threat was obvious. Already on May 28, a Soviet delegation flew to Cuba. It didn't take long to persuade Raul and Fidel Castro: the revolutionary brothers seriously feared an American invasion of the island and saw the USSR as an influential and powerful ally. And on June 10, Defense Minister Marshal Malinovsky, speaking at a meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, presented a plan for the missile transfer operation. He proposed the deployment in Cuba of two types of ballistic missiles: 24 R-12 with a range of about 2,000 kilometers and 16 R-14 with a range twice that. Both types of missiles were equipped with nuclear warheads each with a megaton yield. For comparison: the intercontinental Topol missiles currently in service with the Strategic Missile Forces have about the same power.

Operation "Anadyr"

In addition to missiles, the group of Soviet forces included a Mi-4 helicopter regiment, four motorized rifle regiments, two tank battalions armed at that time with the latest T-55, 42 Il-28 light bombers, two cruise missile units with 12-kiloton warheads, several batteries of barreled anti-aircraft artillery and 12 S-75 air defense systems. The transport ships were covered by a naval strike group consisting of two cruisers, four destroyers, 12 missile boats, and 11 submarines. In total, it was planned to involve 50 thousand people in a unique operation. Our country had no experience of transferring such a powerful group to another hemisphere either before or after the Cuban missile crisis.

The operation was named "Anadyr". It was developed by the best military strategists of the country of the Soviets - Marshal Ivan Bagramyan, Colonel General Semyon Ivanov and Lieutenant General Anatoly Gribkov. Naturally, the transfer of troops had to be carried out in the strictest secrecy so that Western intelligence would not find out about it. Therefore, it was carried out according to legend, according to which the personnel were serving for exercises in the northern regions of the USSR. Soldiers and officers, who did not know what exactly they had to do, were given skis, felt boots, army sheepskin coats, white camouflage gowns.

85 ships were allocated for the operation. Their captains knew nothing of the contents of the holds and their destination. Each of them was given a sealed package with instructions to open at sea. The papers ordered to follow to Cuba and not come into contact with NATO ships.

“The fast and organized preparation of the troops for dispatch bore fruit, and this gave reason to report to Khrushchev on July 7 about the readiness of the Ministry of Defense to implement the Anadyr plan,” General Anatoly Gribkov later recalled. “The transportation of personnel and equipment by sea was carried out on passenger and dry cargo ships. merchant fleet from the ports of the Baltic, Black and Barents Seas ".

It should be noted that this operation is a real feat of military and civilian sailors of the USSR. Many ships went to Cuba overloaded - in addition to people, they needed to transport over 230 thousand tons of material and technical equipment. The soldiers and officers huddled in the holds, in a strong cramped atmosphere and stuffiness. It was especially hard for the infantrymen and tankers, many of whom had never been on a voyage before, they were tormented by seasickness, which had the character of an epidemic. The transportation of goods cost the Soviet treasury $ 20 million, but the result was worth the money. American intelligence was never able to find out the real reason activity of the Soviet merchant fleet near their shores until the discovery of missiles ready for launch.

And yet the "bustle" in the Atlantic has raised serious suspicions in the United States. Since July, NATO reconnaissance planes have regularly flown over Soviet ships at ultra-low altitudes. On September 12, this led to a tragedy: another "spy" got close to the dry cargo ship "Leninsky Komsomol" and after another call hit the water and sank. And from September 18, American warships began to constantly request the transports of the USSR about the nature of the cargo. However, the Soviet captains managed to successfully deny.

Black Saturday

Dozens of books have been written about what happened after October 14, 1962. The very next day after the historic reconnaissance mission of Major Richard Heizer, photographs of the launching positions of Soviet missiles were shown to President John F. Kennedy. He appeared on television on October 22 with an address to the nation and admitted that the USSR had placed nuclear weapons in the "underbelly" of the United States. The head of state announced a complete naval blockade of Cuba, which came into force on October 24. Nevertheless, some Soviet dry cargo ships managed to "slip through" and reach their destination.

Picket under the slogan "Hands off Cuba!" in Moscow during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis

The next day, President Kennedy for the first time in the history of the United States issued an order to increase the combat readiness of the country's Armed Forces to the level of DEFCON-2. Simply put, this is almost a war. For comparison: the less "serious" DEFCON-3 was announced only on September 11, 2001. The situation was rapidly heating up. The UN headquarters has become a field of bitter verbal battles between American and Soviet diplomats. The United States was preparing to launch an invasion of Cuba, our politicians repeatedly promised to give a serious rebuff. The confrontation reached its peak on October 27, "Black Saturday", when the launchers of the C-75 anti-aircraft missile division shot down a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Cuba. Historians believe that on this day the world was closest to a global nuclear war.

Oddly enough, the incident, instead of provoking an escalation, seriously cooled hotheads on both sides of the Atlantic. On the night of October 28, President Robert Kennedy's brother met with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and conveyed to him a message from the American government, which agreed to give guarantees of non-aggression against Cuba. In the evening of the same day, the Minister of Defense of the USSR Rodion Malinovsky gave the order to start dismantling the launch sites in Cuba. On November 20, when the Soviet Union removed the last missiles from the island, John F. Kennedy ordered an end to the blockade of Cuba. A few months later, the US removed its Jupiters from Turkey. The Cuban missile crisis was finally resolved.

It should be noted that in the history of the 14-day confrontation between the two superpowers, there are many blank spots. New details are extremely rare. In particular, in September 2017, the Russian Ministry of Defense published for the first time data on losses among Soviet servicemen, one way or another involved in the "missile crisis." According to the military department, from August 1, 1962 to August 16, 1964, 64 citizens of the USSR were killed in Cuba. The details, of course, were not disclosed. But even according to the available data 55 years ago, it was very hot in the Caribbean.

Soviet submarine B-59. Archive photo

So, on October 27, a group of eleven destroyers of the US Navy, led by the aircraft carrier USS Randolph, blocked the Soviet diesel-electric submarine B-59 in neutral waters near Cuba. nuclear weapons under the command of Captain Second Rank Valentin Savitsky. The Americans tried to force the boat to surface in order to identify it, and began to bombard the B-59 with depth charges. One can only guess how the divers felt at this moment, who probably thought that world War still started. Savitsky gave the order to attack a cluster of ships with a torpedo with a nuclear warhead. However, his senior officer, captain of the second rank Vasily Arkhipov, managed to convince the commander to show restraint. The submarine transmitted the signal "Stop provocation" to the enemy ships, after which the situation was somewhat defused. The destroyers stopped attacking the B-59, and she continued on her way. And how many similar cases, which ended not so well, are still classified "top secret"?

Powerful optics of the spy plane snatches out of the pre-dawn jungle an area the size of a football field. It clearly shows the "tubes" of transport containers of ballistic missiles, air defense positions, tents and military depots. In the center is the launch pad. Pilot Major Richard Heizer, not believing his eyes, makes another circle over the wasteland and is finally convinced: the nuclear weapon of the USSR has appeared on Freedom Island. Exactly 55 years ago, on October 14, 1962, a US Air Force U-2 reconnaissance aircraft discovered the positions of Soviet R-12 medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. This incident is considered to be the beginning of the Cuban missile crisis, which almost escalated into the Third World War. About the events of the days when the world was on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe - in the material RIA Novosti.

Do the impossible

For the first time, Nikita Khrushchev announced the idea of \u200b\u200btransferring ballistic missiles and military contingent to Cuba on May 20, 1962 at a meeting with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and First Deputy of the USSR Council of Ministers Anastas Mikoyan. By that time, the planetary confrontation between the two superpowers had reached its peak. A year earlier, the Americans had transported fifteen Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles near Turkish Izmir, capable of destroying Moscow and other large cities in the European part of the USSR in less than ten minutes. The party elite rightly believed that such a "trump card" in the hands of the United States could deprive the Soviet Union of the opportunity to deliver a full-scale retaliatory strike.

At that time, the USSR was seriously losing to the Americans in the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Those had in their arsenals 144 SM-65 Atlas ICBMs and about 60 SM-68 Titan. In addition, 30 Jupiters with a range of 2,400 kilometers were deployed in Italy, and 60 PGM-17 Thor missiles with similar capabilities were deployed in the UK. In the Soviet Union by 1962 there were only 75 R-7 ICBMs, but no more than 25 units could be launched at the same time. Of course, the USSR had 700 medium-range ballistic missiles at its disposal, but it could not deploy them close to the US borders.

The threat was obvious. Already on May 28, a Soviet delegation flew to Cuba. It didn't take long to persuade Raoul and Fidel Castro: the revolutionary brothers were seriously afraid of an American invasion of the island and saw the USSR as an influential and powerful ally. And on June 10, Defense Minister Marshal Malinovsky, speaking at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, presented a plan for the missile transfer operation. He proposed the deployment of two types of ballistic missiles in Cuba: 24 R-12 with a range of about 2,000 kilometers and 16 R-14 with a range twice that. Both types of missiles were equipped with nuclear warheads each with a megaton yield. For comparison: the intercontinental Topol missiles currently in service with the Strategic Missile Forces have about the same power.

Operation "Anadyr"

The operation was named "Anadyr". It was developed by the best military strategists of the country of the Soviets - Marshal Ivan Bagramyan, Colonel General Semyon Ivanov and Lieutenant General Anatoly Gribkov. Naturally, the transfer of troops had to be carried out in the strictest secrecy so that Western intelligence did not find out about it. Therefore, it was carried out according to legend, according to which the personnel were serving for exercises in the northern regions of the USSR. Soldiers and officers, who did not know what exactly they had to do, were given skis, felt boots, army sheepskin coats, white camouflage gowns.

“The rapid and organized preparation of the troops for dispatch bore fruit, and this gave reason to report to Khrushchev on July 7 about the readiness of the Ministry of Defense to implement the Anadyr plan,” General Anatoly Gribkov later recalled. - Transportation of personnel and equipment by sea was carried out on passenger and dry cargo ships of the merchant fleet from the ports of the Baltic, Black and Barents Seas.

It should be noted that this operation is a real feat of military and civilian sailors of the USSR. Many ships went to Cuba overloaded - in addition to people, they needed to transport over 230 thousand tons of material and technical equipment. Soldiers and officers huddled in the holds, in a strong tightness and stuffiness. It was especially hard for the infantrymen and tankers, many of whom had never been on a voyage before, they were tormented by seasickness, which had the character of an epidemic. The transportation of goods cost the Soviet treasury $ 20 million, but the result was worth the money. American intelligence was never able to find out the true reason for the activity of the Soviet merchant fleet near its shores until the discovery of missiles ready for launch.

And yet the "bustle" in the Atlantic has raised serious suspicions in the United States. Since July, NATO reconnaissance planes have regularly flown over Soviet ships at ultra-low altitudes. On September 12, this led to a tragedy: another "spy" approached the bulk carrier "Leninsky Komsomol" and after another call hit the water and sank. And from September 18, American warships began to constantly request the transports of the USSR about the nature of the cargo. However, the Soviet captains managed to successfully deny.

Black Saturday

The next day, President Kennedy for the first time in the history of the United States issued an order to increase the combat readiness of the country's Armed Forces to the level of DEFCON-2. Simply put, this is almost a war. For comparison: the less "serious" DEFCON-3 was announced only on September 11, 2001. The situation was rapidly heating up. The UN headquarters has become a field of bitter verbal battles between American and Soviet diplomats. The United States was preparing to launch an invasion of Cuba, our politicians repeatedly promised to give a serious rebuff. The standoff peaked on October 27, Black Saturday, when the launchers of the C-75 anti-aircraft missile battalion shot down a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Cuba. Historians believe that on this day the world was closest to a global nuclear war.

Oddly enough, the incident, instead of provoking an escalation, seriously cooled hotheads on both sides of the Atlantic. On the night of October 28, the President's brother Robert Kennedy met with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and conveyed a message from the American government, which agreed to provide guarantees of non-aggression against Cuba. In the evening of the same day, the Minister of Defense of the USSR Rodion Malinovsky gave the order to start dismantling the launch sites in Cuba. On November 20, when the Soviet Union removed the last missiles from the island, John F. Kennedy ordered an end to the blockade of Cuba. A few months later, the US removed its Jupiters from Turkey. The Cuban missile crisis was finally resolved.

It should be noted that in the history of the 14-day confrontation between the two superpowers, there are many blank spots. New details are extremely rare. In particular, in September 2017, the Russian Ministry of Defense published for the first time data on losses among Soviet servicemen, one way or another involved in the "missile crisis". According to the military department, from August 1, 1962 to August 16, 1964, 64 citizens of the USSR were killed in Cuba. Details, of course, were not disclosed. But even according to the available data 55 years ago, it was very hot in the Caribbean.

So, on October 27, a group of eleven US Navy destroyers led by the aircraft carrier USS Randolph blocked a Soviet diesel-electric submarine B-59 with nuclear weapons under the command of Second Rank Captain Valentin Savitsky in neutral waters near Cuba. The Americans tried to force the boat to surface in order to identify it, and began to bombard the B-59 with depth charges. One can only guess how the submariners felt at this moment, for sure they thought that the world war had started after all. Savitsky gave the order to attack a cluster of ships with a torpedo with a nuclear warhead. However, his senior officer, captain of the second rank Vasily Arkhipov, managed to convince the commander to show restraint. The boat transmitted the signal to the enemy ships “Stop provocation”, after which the situation was somewhat defused. The destroyers stopped attacking the B-59, and she continued on her way. And how many similar cases, which ended not so well, are still classified "top secret"?

55 years ago, on September 9, 1962, Soviet ballistic missiles were delivered to Cuba. This was the prelude to the so-called Caribbean (October) crisis, which for the first time and so closely brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war.

"Metallurg Anosov" with deck cargo - eight rocket transporters with rockets covered with tarpaulin. During the Cuban missile crisis (blockade of Cuba). November 7, 1962. Photo: wikipedia.org

The Cuban Missile Crisis itself, or rather its most, lasted 13 days, from October 22, 1962, when American political circles almost agreed to launch a missile strike on Cuba, where by that time an impressive Soviet military contingent had been deployed.

On the eve of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the list of official losses of Soviet citizens who died on the island from August 1, 1962 to August 16, 1964 was published: there are 64 names in this mournful register.

Our compatriots died while rescuing Cubans during the strongest hurricane Flora, which swept over Cuba in the fall of 1963, during combat training, from accidents and diseases. In 1978, at the suggestion of Fidel Castro, in the vicinity of Havana, a memorial was built in memory of Soviet soldiers buried in Cuba, which is surrounded by maximum care. The complex consists of two concrete walls in the form of the mournfully inclined banners of both countries. Its content is supervised in exemplary manner by the country's top leadership. By the way, the Soviet military, who, together with the Cubans, were involved in the coastal defense of the island in the fall of 1962, were dressed in Cuban uniforms. But on the most stressful days, from October 22 to 27, they took vests and peakless caps from their suitcases and prepared to give their lives for a distant Caribbean country.

The decision was made by Khrushchev

So, in the fall of 1962, the world faced the real danger of a nuclear war between two superpowers. And the real destruction of humanity.

At one time in US official circles, among politicians and in the media, the thesis became widespread that the cause of the Cuban missile crisis was allegedly the deployment of "offensive weapons" by the Soviet Union in Cuba, and the Kennedy administration's retaliatory measures, which brought the world to the brink of a thermonuclear war, were "forced." ... However, these statements are far from the truth. They are refuted by an objective analysis of the events that preceded the crisis.

Fidel Castro examines the armament of Soviet ships on July 28, 1969. A photo: RIA News

The sending of Soviet ballistic missiles to Cuba from the USSR in 1962 was an initiative of Moscow, and specifically Nikita Khrushchev. Nikita Sergeevich, who was shaking his boot on the rostrum of the UN General Assembly, did not hide his desire to "put a hedgehog in the pants of the Americans" and was waiting for a convenient opportunity. And looking ahead, he succeeded brilliantly - Soviet missiles of destructive power not only were located a hundred kilometers from America, but the United States did not know for a whole month that they were already deployed on the Island of Freedom!

After the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961, it became clear that the Americans would not leave Cuba alone. This was evidenced by the increasing number of acts of sabotage against the Island of Freedom. Moscow received reports on American military preparations almost every day.

In March 1962, at a meeting in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, according to the memoirs of the outstanding Soviet diplomat and intelligence officer Alexander Alekseev (Shitov), \u200b\u200bKhrushchev asked him how Fidel would react to the proposal to install our missiles in Cuba. "We, said Khrushchev, must find such an effective deterrent that would deter the Americans from this risky step, because our statements in the UN in defense of Cuba are clearly not enough.<… > Since the Americans have already surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of their military bases and rocket launchers for various purposes, we must pay them in their own coin, give them a taste of their own medicine, so that they can feel what life is like under the gunpoint of nuclear weapons. Speaking of this, Khrushchev stressed the need for this operation to be carried out in strict secrecy so that the Americans would not detect the missiles before they are brought to full combat readiness. "

Fidel Castro did not reject this idea. Although he was well aware that the deployment of missiles would entail a change in the strategic nuclear balance in the world between the socialist camp and the United States. The Americans have already deployed warheads in Turkey, and Khrushchev's response to deploy missiles in Cuba was a kind of "missile equalization of chances." A specific decision on the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba was made at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on May 24, 1962. And on June 10, 1962, before the July arrival of Raul Castro in Moscow, at a meeting in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, USSR Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovsky presented a draft operation for the transfer of missiles to Cuba. It assumed the deployment of two types of ballistic missiles on the island - the R-12 with a range of about 2,000 kilometers and the R-14 with a range of 4,000 kilometers. Both missiles were equipped with one megaton nuclear warheads.

The text of the agreement on the supply of missiles was handed over to Fidel Castro on August 13 by the USSR Ambassador to Cuba, Alexander Alekseev. Fidel immediately signed it and sent with him Che Guevara and the chairman of the United Revolutionary Organizations Emilio Aragones to Moscow, ostensibly to discuss "pressing economic issues." Nikita Khrushchev received the Cuban delegation on August 30, 1962 at his dacha in Crimea. But, having accepted the agreement from Che's hands, he did not even bother to sign it. Thus, this historic agreement remained formalized without the signature of one of the parties.

By that time, Soviet preparations for sending people and equipment to the island had already begun and had become irreversible.

The captains did not know about the purpose of the mission

Operation "Anadyr" for the transfer of people and equipment across the seas and oceans from the USSR to Cuba is inscribed in golden letters in the annals of world military art. Such a jewelry operation, carried out under the nose of a super-powerful adversary with his exemplary tracking systems at that time, world history does not know and did not know before.

The equipment and personnel were delivered to six different ports of the Soviet Union, in the Baltic, the Black and Barents Seas, allocating 85 ships for the transfer, which made a total of 183 voyages. Soviet sailors were convinced that they were going to the northern latitudes. For the purpose of conspiracy, camouflage gowns and skis were loaded onto the ships in order to create the illusion of a "march to the North" and thereby exclude any possibility of information leakage. The captains of the ships had the corresponding packages, which had to be opened in the presence of the political officer only after passing the Strait of Gibraltar. What to say about ordinary sailors, even if the captains of the ships did not know where they were sailing and what they were carrying in the holds. Their amazement knew no bounds when, after opening the package after Gibraltar, they read: "To head for Cuba and avoid conflict with NATO ships." For camouflage, the military, who, of course, could not be kept in the holds for the entire trip, went on deck in civilian clothes.

The general plan of Moscow was to deploy a Group of Soviet Forces in Cuba as part of military formations and units of the Missile Forces, Air Force, Air Defense and Navy. As a result, more than 43 thousand people arrived in Cuba. The core of the Group of Soviet Forces was a missile division consisting of three regiments equipped with medium-range R-12 missiles and two regiments armed with R-14 missiles - a total of 40 missile launchers with a missile range from 2.5 to 4.5 thousand kilometers. Khrushchev wrote later in his "Memoirs" that "this power was enough to destroy New York, Chicago and other industrial cities, and there is nothing to say about Washington. Small village." At the same time, this division was not tasked with delivering a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States; it was supposed to serve as a deterrent.

Only decades later, some, until then secret, details of Operation Anadyr became known, which speak of the exceptional heroism of Soviet sailors. People were transported to Cuba in cargo compartments, the temperature in which at the entrance to the tropics reached more than 60 degrees. They were fed twice a day in the dark. The food was spoiled. But, despite the harsh conditions of the campaign, the sailors underwent a long sea passage of 18-24 days. Upon learning of this, US President Kennedy said: "If I had such soldiers, the whole world would be under my thumb."

The first ships came to Cuba in early August 1962. One of the participants in this unprecedented operation later recalled: “The poor people came from the Black Sea in the hold of a cargo ship that had previously transported sugar from Cuba. The conditions, of course, were unsanitary: hastily put together multi-storey bunks in the hold, no toilets, underfoot and on teeth - the remains of granulated sugar. From the hold let out to breathe air in turn and for a very short time. At the same time, observers were put on the sides: some watched the sea, others - the sky. The hatches of the holds were left open. In the event of any foreign object "passengers" had to quickly return to the hold. Carefully camouflaged equipment was on the upper deck. The galley was designed to prepare food for several dozen people making up the ship's crew. Since there were much more people, they fed, to put it mildly, it does not matter. Not about any hygiene, Of course, there could be no question. In general, we spent two weeks in the hold practically without daylight, without minimal amenities and normal noisy food ".

Slap for the White House

Operation Anadyr was the biggest failure of the American special services, whose analysts were calculating how many people Soviet passenger ships could transport to Cuba. And they got some ridiculously small figure. They did not understand that on these ships it was possible to accommodate significantly more people than it should be for a regular voyage. And the fact that people can be transported in the holds of dry cargo ships, they could not even imagine.

In early August, the American intelligence services received information from their West German counterparts that the Soviets were almost tenfold increasing the number of their ships in the Baltic and Atlantic. And the Cubans who lived in the United States learned from their relatives in Cuba about the delivery of "strange Soviet cargo" to the island. However, until the beginning of October, the Americans simply "ignored this information."

To hide the obvious for Moscow and Havana would mean to stir up even greater American interest in shipping goods to Cuba and, most importantly, in their contents. Therefore, on September 3, 1962, in the joint Soviet-Cuban communiqué on the stay in the Soviet Union of the Cuban delegation consisting of Che Guevara and E. Aragones, it was noted that "the Soviet government met the request of the Cuban government to provide Cuba with arms assistance." The communique stated that these weapons and military equipment are intended solely for defense purposes.

The list of official losses of Soviet citizens from August 1, 1962 to August 16, 1964 was published. There are 64 names in the mournful register

The fact that the USSR was supplying missiles to Cuba was absolutely legal and permitted by international law. Despite this, the American press published a number of critical articles about the "preparations in Cuba". On September 4, US President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would not tolerate the deployment of strategic surface-to-surface missiles and other types of offensive weapons in Cuba. On September 25, 1962, Fidel Castro announced that the Soviet Union intended to establish a base in Cuba for its fishing fleet. At first, the CIA really believed that a large fishing village was being built in Cuba. True, later in Langley they began to suspect that under his guise the Soviet Union was in fact creating a large shipyard and a base for Soviet submarines. American intelligence surveillance of Cuba was intensified, and the number of U-2 reconnaissance flights, which continuously photographed the island's territory, increased significantly. It soon became obvious to the Americans that the Soviet Union was building launch sites for anti-aircraft guided missiles (SAMs) in Cuba. They were created in the USSR a few years ago in the deeply classified design bureau of Grushin. With their help, in 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, piloted by the pilot Powers, was shot down.

Hawks were for hitting Cuba

On October 2, 1962, John F. Kennedy orders the Pentagon to bring the American armed forces on alert. It became clear to the Cuban and Soviet leaders that it was necessary to accelerate the construction of facilities on the island.

Here bad weather played into the hands of Havana and Moscow, worried about the speedy completion of ground work. Due to heavy cloudiness in early October, U-2 flights, suspended by that time for six weeks, began only on October 9. What he saw on October 10 amazed the Americans. Photo reconnaissance data showed the presence of good highways where until recently there was a desert area, as well as huge tractors that did not fit into the narrow country roads in Cuba.

Then John F. Kennedy gave the order to intensify photo reconnaissance. At that moment, a new typhoon hit Cuba. And new pictures from a spy plane, loitering at an extremely low altitude of 130 meters, were taken only on the night of October 14, 1962 in the San Cristobal area in the Pinar del Rio province. It took a day to process them. U-2 discovered and photographed the launching positions of the Soviet missile forces. Hundreds of photographs showed that Cuba had already installed not just anti-aircraft missiles, but surface-to-surface missiles.

On October 16, Presidential Adviser McGeorge Bundy reported to Kennedy on the results of the flight over Cuban territory. What John F. Kennedy saw radically contradicted Khrushchev's promises to supply Cuba with only defensive weapons. The missiles discovered by the spy plane were capable of wiping out several major American cities. On the same day, Kennedy gathered in his office a so-called working group on the Cuban issue, which included senior officials from the State Department, CIA and Defense Ministry. It was a historic meeting at which the "hawks" put pressure on the US president in every possible way, persuading him to strike immediately against Cuba.

General Nikolai Leonov recalled how then-Pentagon chief Robert McNamara told him at a conference in Moscow in 2002 that the majority in the US political elite in October 1962 insisted on striking Cuba. He even clarified that 70 percent of those from the then US administration held a similar point of view. Fortunately for world history, the minority view prevailed, held by McNamara himself and President Kennedy. "We must pay tribute to the courage and courage of John F. Kennedy, who found a difficult opportunity to compromise in defiance of the overwhelming majority of his entourage and displayed amazing political wisdom," Nikolai Leonov told the author of this article.

There were only a few days left until the climax of the Cuban missile crisis, about which RG will tell ...

Nikolai Leonov, retired state security lieutenant general, author of biographies of Fidel and Raul Castro:

The CIA frankly missed the transfer of such a large number of people and weapons from one hemisphere to another, and in the immediate vicinity of the coast of the United States. To covertly move an army of forty thousand strong, a huge amount of military equipment - aviation, armored forces and, of course, the missiles themselves - such an operation, in my opinion, is a model of staff activity. As well as a classic example of enemy disinformation and disguise. Operation "Anadyr" was designed and carried out in such a way that the mosquito of the nose will not undermine. Already during its implementation, it was necessary to make urgent and original decisions. For example, the missiles, already in transit on the island itself, simply did not fit into the narrow Cuban rural roads. And they had to expand.

55 years ago, on September 9, 1962, Soviet ballistic missiles were delivered to Cuba. This became the prelude to the so-called Caribbean (October) crisis, for the first time and so close to put humanity on the brink of nuclear war.

Himself Caribbean crisis, or rather its most acute and decisive phase, lasted 13 days, from October 22, 1962, when American political circles almost agreed to launch a missile strike on Cuba, where by that time an impressive Soviet military contingent was stationed.

Our compatriots died while rescuing Cubans during the strongest hurricane Flora, which swept over Cuba in the fall of 1963, in the course of combat training, from accidents and diseases. In 1978, at the suggestion of Fidel Castro, in the vicinity of Havana, a memorial was built in memory of Soviet soldiers buried in Cuba, which is surrounded by maximum care. The complex consists of two concrete walls in the form of the mournfully inclined banners of both countries. Its content is supervised in exemplary manner by the country's top leadership. By the way, the Soviet military, who, together with the Cubans, were involved in the coastal defense of the island in the fall of 1962, were dressed in Cuban uniforms. But on the most stressful days, from October 22 to 27, they took vests and peakless caps from their suitcases and prepared to give their lives for a distant Caribbean country.

Khrushchev's decision

So, in the fall of 1962, the world faced the real danger of a nuclear war between two superpowers. And the real destruction of humanity.

"Metallurg Anosov" with deck cargo - eight rocket transporters with rockets covered with tarpaulin. During the Cuban missile crisis (blockade of Cuba). November 7, 1962. Photo: wikipedia.org

The sending of Soviet ballistic missiles to Cuba from the USSR in 1962 was an initiative of Moscow, and specifically Nikita Khrushchev. Nikita Sergeevich, who was shaking his boot on the podium of the UN General Assembly, did not hide his desire to "put a hedgehog in the pants of the Americans" and waited for a convenient opportunity. And looking ahead, he succeeded brilliantly - Soviet missiles of destructive power not only were located a hundred kilometers from America, but the United States did not know for a whole month that they were already deployed on the Island of Freedom!

In March 1962, at a meeting in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, according to the memoirs of the outstanding Soviet diplomat and intelligence officer Alexander Alekseev (Shitov), \u200b\u200bKhrushchev asked him how Fidel would react to the proposal to install our missiles in Cuba. “We, said Khrushchev, must find such an effective deterrent that would deter the Americans from this risky step, because our statements in the UN in defense of Cuba are clearly not enough.<… > Since the Americans have already surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of their military bases and rocket launchers for various purposes, we must pay them in their own coin, give them a taste of their own medicine, so that they can feel what life is like under the gunpoint of nuclear weapons. Talking about this, Khrushchev stressed the need for this operation to be carried out in strict secrecy so that the Americans do not detect the missiles before they are brought to full combat readiness. "

Fidel Castro did not reject this idea. Although he was well aware that the deployment of missiles would entail a change in the strategic nuclear balance in the world between the socialist camp and the United States. The Americans have already deployed warheads in Turkey, and Khrushchev's response to deploy missiles in Cuba was a kind of "missile equalization of chances." A specific decision on the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba was made at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on May 24, 1962. And on June 10, 1962, before the July arrival of Raul Castro in Moscow, at a meeting in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, the USSR Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovsky presented a draft operation for the transfer of missiles to Cuba. It assumed the deployment of two types of ballistic missiles on the island - the R-12 with a range of about 2,000 kilometers and the R-14 with a range of 4,000 kilometers. Both missiles were equipped with one megaton nuclear warheads.

The text of the agreement on the supply of missiles was handed over to Fidel Castro on August 13 by the USSR Ambassador to Cuba, Alexander Alekseev. Fidel immediately signed it and sent him to Moscow Che Guevara and the chairman of the United Revolutionary Organizations Emilio Aragones, ostensibly to discuss "pressing economic issues." Nikita Khrushchev received the Cuban delegation on August 30, 1962 at his dacha in Crimea. But, having accepted the agreement from Che's hands, he did not even bother to sign it. Thus, this historic agreement remained formalized without the signature of one of the parties.

By that time, Soviet preparations for sending people and equipment to the island had already begun and had become irreversible.

Operation "Anadyr"

Operation "Anadyr" on the transfer of people and equipment across the seas and oceans from the USSR to Cuba is inscribed in golden letters in the annals of world military art. Such a jewelry operation, carried out under the nose of a super-powerful adversary with his exemplary tracking systems at that time, world history does not know and did not know before.

The equipment and personnel were delivered to six different ports of the Soviet Union, in the Baltic, the Black and Barents Seas, allocating 85 ships for the transfer, which made a total of 183 voyages. Soviet sailors were convinced that they were going to the northern latitudes. For the purpose of conspiracy, camouflage gowns and skis were loaded onto the ships in order to create the illusion of a "march to the North" and thereby exclude any possibility of information leakage. The captains of the ships had the appropriate packages that had to be opened in the presence of the political officer only after passing the Gibraltar Strait. What to say about ordinary sailors, even if the captains of the ships did not know where they were sailing and what they were carrying in the holds. Their amazement knew no bounds when, after opening the package after Gibraltar, they read: "To head for Cuba and avoid conflict with NATO ships." For camouflage, the military, who, of course, could not be kept in the holds for the entire trip, went on deck in civilian clothes.

The general plan of Moscow was to deploy in Cuba a Group of Soviet Forces as part of military formations and units of the Missile Forces, Air Force, Air Defense and Navy. As a result, more than 43 thousand people arrived in Cuba. The core of the Group of Soviet Forces was a missile division consisting of three regiments equipped with medium-range R-12 missiles and two regiments armed with R-14 missiles - a total of 40 missile launchers with a missile range from 2.5 to 4.5 thousand kilometers. Khrushchev wrote later in his Memoirs that “this force was enough to destroy New York, Chicago and other industrial cities, and there is nothing to say about Washington. Small village ". At the same time, this division was not tasked with delivering a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States; it was supposed to serve as a deterrent.

Only decades later, some, until then secret, details became known. operation Anadyrwho speak of the exceptional heroism of Soviet sailors. People were transported to Cuba in cargo compartments, the temperature in which at the entrance to the tropics reached more than 60 degrees. They were fed twice a day in the dark. The food was spoiled. But, despite the harsh conditions of the campaign, the sailors underwent a long sea passage of 18-24 days. Upon learning of this, US President Kennedy said: "If I had such soldiers, the whole world would be under my thumb."

The first ships arrived in Cuba in early August 1962. One of the participants in this unprecedented operation later recalled: “The poor people came from the Black Sea in the hold of a cargo ship that had previously transported sugar from Cuba. The conditions, of course, were unsanitary: hastily knocked together multi-storey bunks in the hold, no toilets, underfoot and on the teeth - the remains of granulated sugar. They were allowed to breathe air from the hold in turns and for a very short time. At the same time, observers were put on the sides: some watched the sea, others - the sky. The hatches of the holds were left open. In the event of the appearance of any foreign object, the "passengers" had to quickly return to the hold. The carefully camouflaged equipment was on the upper deck. The galley was designed to prepare meals for several dozen people making up the ship's crew. Since there were much more people, the food was, to put it mildly, unimportant. Of course, there was no question of any hygiene. In general, we spent two weeks in the hold practically without daylight, without minimal amenities and normal food. "

The failure of the American intelligence services

Operation "Anadyr" was the biggest failure of the American intelligence services, whose analysts were calculating how many people Soviet passenger ships could transport to Cuba. And they got some ridiculously small figure. They did not understand that on these ships it was possible to accommodate significantly more people than it should be for a regular voyage. And the fact that people can be transported in the holds of dry cargo ships, they could not even imagine.

To hide the obvious for Moscow and Havana would mean to stir up even greater American interest in shipping goods to Cuba and, most importantly, in their contents. Therefore, on September 3, 1962, in the joint Soviet-Cuban communiqué on the stay in the Soviet Union of the Cuban delegation consisting of Che Guevara and E. Aragones, it was noted that "the Soviet government met the request of the Cuban government to provide Cuba with arms assistance." The communiqué stated that these weapons and military equipment are intended solely for defense purposes.

The fact that the USSR was supplying missiles to Cuba was absolutely legal and permitted by international law. Despite this, the American press published a number of critical articles about the "preparations in Cuba." On September 4, US President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would not tolerate the deployment of strategic surface-to-surface missiles and other offensive weapons in Cuba. On September 25, 1962, Fidel Castro announced that the Soviet Union intended to establish a base in Cuba for its fishing fleet. At first, the CIA really believed that a large fishing village was being built in Cuba. True, later in Langley they began to suspect that under his guise the Soviet Union was in fact creating a large shipyard and a base for Soviet submarines. American intelligence surveillance of Cuba was intensified, and the number of U-2 reconnaissance flights, which continuously photographed the island's territory, increased significantly. It soon became obvious to the Americans that the Soviet Union was building launch sites for anti-aircraft guided missiles (SAMs) in Cuba. They were created in the USSR a few years ago in the deeply classified design bureau of Grushin. With their help, in 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, piloted by the pilot Powers, was shot down.

Then John F. Kennedy gave the order to intensify photo reconnaissance. At that moment, a new typhoon hit Cuba. And new pictures from a spy plane, loitering at an extremely low altitude of 130 meters, were taken only on the night of October 14, 1962 in the San Cristobal area in the Pinar del Rio province. It took a day to process them. U-2 discovered and photographed the launching positions of the Soviet missile forces. Hundreds of pictures showed that Cuba had already installed not just anti-aircraft missiles, but surface-to-surface missiles.

General Nikolai Leonov recalled how then-Pentagon chief Robert McNamara told him at a conference in Moscow in 2002 that the majority in the US political elite in October 1962 insisted on striking Cuba. He even clarified that 70 percent of people from the then US administration held a similar point of view. Fortunately for the history of the world, the minority view prevailed, held by McNamara himself and President Kennedy. “We must pay tribute to the courage and courage of John F. Kennedy, who found a difficult opportunity to compromise in defiance of the overwhelming majority of his entourage and showed amazing political wisdom,” Nikolai Leonov said to the author of these lines.

There were only a few days left until the climax of the Cuban missile crisis, which RG will tell you about ...

Nikolai Leonov, retired state security lieutenant general, author of biographies of Fidel and Raul Castro:

- The CIA frankly missed the transfer of such a large number of people and weapons from one hemisphere to another, and in the immediate vicinity of the coast of the United States. To covertly move an army of 40,000 strong, a huge amount of military equipment - aviation, armored forces and, of course, the missiles themselves - such an operation, in my opinion, is a model of staff activity. As well as a classic example of enemy disinformation and disguise. Operation "Anadyr" was designed and carried out in such a way that the mosquito of the nose will not undermine. Already during its implementation, it was necessary to make urgent and original decisions. For example, the missiles, already in transit on the island itself, simply did not fit into the narrow Cuban rural roads. And they had to expand.

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