cuban missile crisis.........

for those too young to remember this point in time in oct 1962,it was the closest to a nuclear ww3,the world held it's breath and waited,thankfully we are all still here...what would the planet be like today had the missiles been launched? what would have been left of value more to the point....those of you old enough to be around then,what do you recall as the days ticked bye...

14 Days in October: The Cuban Missile Crisis


http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=121406 the command center in russia during this period..

 

Ray,

I was in elementary school at the time. I would have been safe because, though they would have nuked the B52 base in my city, I would have been safely under my desk. Had it happened while at home I could get into our sandbag shelter. Still recall the drills we went through, the paperwork to take home to our parents, my daydreams of launching my body over Karen to save her. Somehow I didn't realize the threat. It was all fun for me as a kid.

Ted

 

hello ted,I was 16 back then and although not legally of age to drink,was in our local pub, plenty of talk as you can imagine,and a friend and myself were going horseracing the following day,so it really affected us..but we came through that very dangerous moment and hoped the world would be a better place! but as we can see! not a lot to shout about sadly!!!

 

I have some rather odd memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis moment-in-time. I had just turned 13, and as a newly minted teenager was wondering if I would be one for very long (b. October 7th). My Dad came in from the farm and had our food stores completely replenished in our fruit room/bomb shelter. Dad had built this new home in 1956, mostly by himself, and it incorporated a special "fruit room" (his name for it) in the basement in which our entire family could also sleep. Beside it on the other side of a concrete wall was a 2000 gallon fresh water cistern he kept filled with water from the Marias River. This had a pump which went through a filter system and fed the entire new house at every faucet as well as into the "bomb shelter". This was built into the house because at that time the "city water" was undrinkable (high soda content), and he loved fresh water. We had enough food and water in the "fruit room" for our family of six to live for about two months. Our local sewer system would have continued to function as it was gravity fed, and our new place had a bathroom adjacent to the "fruit room". Dad had also built a diesel powered generator into his new place in case "the power went out", and it could run for about two weeks on the fuel in its tank, longer if not run constantly.

That is the most vivid portion of that period of time, listening to the radio to find out if we were going to be in that place as the bombs went off. We lived a few miles north of the Malmstrom Air Base, and while there weren’t too many Minute Man missiles around us up in the north of Montana, we were in the over-flight for the B-52s and their escorts so a "bomb shelter" seemed a good idea when Dad built the house. Speaking of the "duck and cover" drills, Dad also had us run our own drills at home, and on a couple of occasions (week-ends) he had the entire family live in the basement just to see if we could stand each other in that close a proximity for two days.

When the family moved to the other place in central Montana, I asked Dad if we were going to build a new system here and he said nope. We were surrounded by Minute Man silos at that one, the closest was actually on our property and about three miles away as the crow flies (Mike-8), and his reason was that the Russians wouldn’t fire at the sites, they would be empty unless in a "first strike" situation, and if that was the case we were too close to get away or live through an attack anyway. The USAF "missile men" didn’t have too great a reputation in our little area, they would come out to "inspect" the silos every now and then, and we would see them parked outside the fence with their feet sticking out of the windows of their Dodge crew cab pickups taking a nap for the three hours they were there.

That is what I remember about those three weeks in 1962, the wondering if that little "fruit room" would be the place I spent the time after an atomic war broke out. My little sister and brothers were too young to take it in, but I was very "anxious" the entire time. You should have seen the contrails in the sky as the B-52s cycled around out of the Dakota and Montana fields for those few weeks. It was definitely NOT like when they did "training missions".

 

thanks for telling that clint,I suppose the states were more on a ready alert than most other countries,I cant recall too much as to what was different here,but like you! certainly wondered what happens if the ussr dont back down? crazy 2 weeks,the world living in the grip of annihilation....ray..

 

thanks lou,was a fear of the unknown then,and being young it was all so strange! to think that only 17 yrs before we had ended the war to end all wars,I dont know that it mattered where you were,we would have little protection from so many warheads,I suppose for many of our generation lou we have not had to go to war.thankfully,ray..

 

Thanks Lou, I just finished reading a great book a few weeks ago on this very subject. Probably because of my memories of those tense weeks right after my birthday. If you or Ray are interested, the book was;

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War; by Michael Dobbs.

Here is a review from the Amazon.com site:

The 1962 Cuban missile crisis is probably the single most analyzed episode of the cold war. In the past decade, declassified American and Russian documents have proved that a nuclear exchange was even closer than most scholars had previously realized. Dobbs, a reporter for the Washington Post, has used those sources as well as numerous new ones gleaned from two years of research in the U.S., Cuba, and Russia. Although nothing presented here will change the overall view of the crisis, Dobbs presents new and often startling information that again confirms that the thirteen days in October brought the world to the edge of an unprecedented cataclysm. Dobbs spends little time describing the characters of the key players, but he does convey a sense of men under immense stress as events threaten to outstrip their ability to cope with them. This is a well-written effort to explain and understand our closest brush with nuclear war. --Jay Freeman

The things that struck me strongly in this rendition was his access to personal diary entries of many of the principles. Chilling reading, and if you think a tingle happens when you remember this period of time Lou, this might (as it did for me) make you put the book down and silently shake your head in wonder.

 

thanks for that book guide pointer clint,appreciated,ray..

 

Here are some other reviews from the book jackets:

Wayne Smith, Director of the Cuban Program, Center for International Policy...

"Is there anything new left to be said about the 1962 missile crisis? As it turns out, there is. This book puts forward the first reports I've seen of Soviet-Cuban plans to wipe out the Guantanamo Naval Base. That an American U-2 strayed over the Soviet Union during the crisis has been known all along, but Dobbs gives us the first full account of what happened. There were so many inadvertent steps and so many miscalculations involved in the crisis that we were lucky to come through it with the world in one piece."

Ambassador Raymond Garthoff, former intelligence analyst and author of Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis ...

"Did we need another book on the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962? Anyone reading One Minute to Midnight will quickly realize that we did need another -- and that this is it. This is unquestionably the most complete and accurate account of the crisis that we have, and will no doubt long remain so. Michael Dobbs has managed to combine the careful and thorough research of a scholar into the ability of an able journalist to bring his findings to life in a dramatic story that illuminates the historical events it examines with lively characterization of the people who made up the cast of the drama. It is first rate great history and a great read!"

Sergei Khrushchev... (Nikita's son)

"At a time of danger for a nation it is important for political leaders first to think, then to think more and try avoid shooting. This book gives a day by day perspective on how two world leaders, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, showed their ability to manage a crisis. Thanks to them, humanity survived and we are able to read this book."

ISBN: 9781415954584 and it’s release date was: Jun 17, 2008.

So it is pretty new actually, just to tantalize you guys a bit! I enjoyed it, if that is the right word for the emotion?

 

I also was 16 in October, 1962, and living in Long Beach, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles. My father was in Washington DC on business for his company at the time, and my mother was working as a civilian employee at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard.

After School I would walk over to a friend's house and stay with him and his mother until late in the afternoon because, frankly, it was scary going home and being alone until my mother came home after work. My mother had been a young woman during the Great Depression and had picked up the habit of hoarding canned goods, but during the Missile Crisis she also began stocking up on things like water, toilet paper, and flashlight batteries. Years later, I was still finding old rolls of toilet paper and plastic jugs of water in odd corners of the house and garage.

Listening to the news was frightening because no one really knew what was likely to happen, but not listening to the news was even worse because there were so many crazy rumors going around that it was almost comforting to hear that they were just rumors. I remember that whenever I went outdoors, I had an almost compulsive urge to look up at the sky, as if I could spot the incoming warheads in time to take cover! Everybody was on edge and seemed nervous; after two weeks my friends became somewhat fatalistic about things because the tension was just too worrisome otherwise.

One day, near the end of the crisis, I was in gym class when the city air raid sirens went off. We were instructed to take cover in the boys locker room; everyone, including the teachers thought it was the real thing. I remember turning to my best friend, shaking hands with him and saying something like "It's been great knowing you." Turned out that a city worker checking out the air raid siren system had set it off accidentally!

 

thanks devilsadvocate,thanks for relating that time,appreciate concerns then, I dont know if it would have happened or a very dangerous bluff by both side,either way it was like waiting to be sentenced,the world was on edge right up to the stand down order from kruschev.nostradamus predicted ww3 in this yr,and when the russians invaded georgia and americans and us intervened in the war in georgia,we were told in no uncertain terms put up or shut up! I wondered did nostradamus get this one right,as all the signs were there for a showdown,thankfully it didn,t,ray..

 

maybe the most media highlights..but hardly the closest..nixon in 70s has that honour..mid east... defcon numbers went out the window..and yet we all shopped blissfully unaware...

 

thats right urqh,nothing seems to phase many...

 

I was a little over three years old at the time. My only concern was "when is my peanut butter jelly sammich gonna be ready?" Ahh, the good ole days....

 

I was six years old and retain a vivid image of my parents listening to the radio and talking about things I didn't understand. They looked very worried - the first time in my life I'd seen that.