AFTER THE PRESIDENT gave the go-ahead for unrestricted U-2 overflights, Colonel E. A. Powell of Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters arrived at Laughlin Air Force Base and met with senior staff and pilots, informing them of the need for maximum effort to monitor missile activity on Cuba. This top-secret order, authorized by the president, was code-named BRASS KNOB.
The Soviet missiles were nearly ready for firing. The clock was ticking, so the cautious approach of only using the higher-flying CIA U-2C models was scrapped, and a larger group of both air force and CIA U-2s was scheduled for launch on the morning of October 17. Rudy Anderson and Steve Heyser would fly from McCoy Air Force Base, each in a CIA U-2. Four other pilots—Buddy Brown, James Qualls, George Bull, and Roger Herman—would take off from Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas in the air force’s U-2s.
Buddy Brown, recently turned thirty-three, had already been flying the U-2 for six years. Before joining the air force, the California native studied chemical engineering at Bakersfield College. He had enrolled in graduate school at the University of Nebraska and then joined the air force at the outbreak of the Korean War. Brown flew the F-86 Sabre as a combat pilot before turning to reconnaissance flying. “Back then I had two brain cells, one to eat and one to fly,” Buddy Brown would say later.1
Jim Qualls, the same age as Buddy Brown, had been a star athlete at Frederick High School in Oklahoma and attended college before enlisting in the air force in 1949. He flew one hundred combat missions in the skies over Korea. Bull was steady, competent, and completely at ease in the cramped cockpit of the U-2. He would eventually mark 1,000 flying hours in the Dragon Lady. Roger Herman was the youngest. At thirty-one years old, the Tucson, Arizona, native had discovered a love of flying as a boy. He had flown his first solo flight at sixteen and earned his pilot’s license a year later.
The pilots in the air force planes might have faced marginally higher risk, but the weather in which they were about to launch posed an even greater threat to all of them. A severe thunderstorm with strong wind gusts had descended on Laughlin right at the takeoff time of 3:25 a.m. The crosswinds were powerful enough that on any other day the flights would have been aborted. But because of the gravity of the situation, SAC decided to execute the mission.
Buddy Brown could scarcely believe it when the go-ahead for his flight came down. He had awoken at 11 p.m. to the sound of thunder shattering the skies. For a brief second, he thought the base was getting shelled. Earlier in the day, both Brown and Qualls had taken special sleeping pills that helped them both fall asleep and wake up quickly. The flight surgeon gave each a quick physical to make sure their blood pressure and temperature were normal.
“The flight surgeon knew you better than anyone else,” Brown recalled years later. “If your blood pressure was 125 and it was normally 120, if your temperature was a little high… you would be grounded. You wouldn’t be able to fly and your backup would fly. If you gained a couple of pounds, you wouldn’t fly because you couldn’t get into your pressure suit so they watched you very closely.”
All readings were normal, and the pilots got into their flight suits and prebreathed oxygen for two hours. During this interval, Brown and Qualls were briefed on their mission. Each man was supposed to photograph a thirty-mile swath over Cuba.
Brown later recounted that as the support team drove him to his aircraft, “the rain was so severe I could hardly see more than a couple feet in front of the van.”2 Strong winds rocked the vehicle.
Once at the spy plane, the mobile officer opened the canopy, and as Buddy climbed in, both he and the cockpit were drenched. After the preflight checks, Buddy closed the canopy, and as sheets of rain pounded the aircraft, he said to himself, Say your prayers, Buddy Boy. Then he gave the U-2 full throttle and barreled down the runway, violently jolted by buffeting winds. Lightning lit up the sky as his plane began its climb through severe turbulence. Not until he reached 50,000 feet did the “roller-coaster” ride stop as he broke into a clear night sky. With his heartbeat returning to normal, he settled in for the long flight, hoping the other pilots made it out of the storm without incident.
The trip was 1,065 miles to Cuba from the runway near Del Rio, Texas, and both Brown and Jim Qualls made it there in less than two hours. Quall’s mission had almost ended back at Laughlin, as the wingtip of his U-2 narrowly missed the runway due to heavy crosswinds.
Buddy Brown’s initial coast-in point for Cuba was on the western end of the island at Pinar del Río, and he soon turned his cameras on and photographed targets across the west side of the island. Buddy knew a surface-to-air missile (SAM) could blow him out of the sky at any moment, but like Anderson and Heyser, he did not dwell on that fact and focused entirely on the operation, searching for the next landmark below to keep himself on track.
Jim Qualls also flew back and forth in parallel lines for hours while his cameras sucked in everything within a thirty-mile radius. Qualls looked down and could see the SAM sites, which were about the size of a fingernail. They reminded him of the Star of David, but he realized that each point of the star was in fact a Soviet missile.
There was very little cloud cover, and the mission was going as planned for both pilots. They had been in the air approximately six hours when they completed photographing all their targets. Qualls flew back to Laughlin while Brown began the short flight north to the safety of McCoy Air Force Base in Florida. Both George Bull and Roger Herman also flew missions over Cuba that day, and each man made it safely back to Laughlin.
Unlike the dangerous weather conditions that Buddy Brown launched into at Laughlin, the skies were clear with only light winds at McCoy, and he touched down smoothly. Once he brought the aircraft to a stop, mobile operations personnel inserted pogo sticks beneath the wings for support, and then Buddy steered the aircraft to its parking spot. Vehicles converged on the U-2, and attendants hurriedly removed the film from the aircraft and whisked it away to a waiting jet. Buddy was surprised to see that the first person up the ladder to the cockpit was the SAC director of operations, Major General Keith Compton, who welcomed him home with a smile. That’s when the full importance of his flight registered with the pilot, and he knew the photos he shot would eventually be in the hands of the president of the United States.
All the pilots landed safely. Years later, thinking about the thunderstorm that day at Laughlin Air Force Base, Buddy thought it was just short of a miracle that all four of the flimsy, lightweight planes launched without mishap or aborting. “Our Guardian Angel,” said Buddy, “was watching over the 4080 Wing that night.”
The Soviets had tracked all of these flights on radar but held back from unleashing their SAMs. How much longer the pilots’ luck would hold was anybody’s guess, but the more missions flown over enemy airspace, the more opportunities for the Soviets to change their minds and try to bring one down.
Steve Heyser had now flown over Cuba three times and Rudy Anderson, twice. Their commander at McCoy talked about perhaps using CIA pilots to pitch in with flights on October 18. This would alleviate the need to put Heyser and Anderson right back in the air. The commander worried that fatigue would catch up with the two men, which might very well prove catastrophic as one wrong decision could bring the aircraft tumbling down. On notifying his superiors of his idea, he received an immediate response: “No.” Air force general Curtis LeMay did not want to let the CIA get a foot in the door of the flying part of this all-important operation. Instead, CIA pilot Jim Barnes began a brief training of Buddy and some of the other pilots on the agency aircraft.
But until that training was completed, only Anderson and Heyser could fly the CIA planes, and the two men became unusually valuable assets. The two pilots were not privy to the deliberations held by President Kennedy and ExComm, but when told they would be launching yet again on the very next day, both understood that a crisis was at hand. SAC and the White House agreed that after six successful flights using a combination of spy planes on October 17, they should not push their luck the next day. On October 18 they would only use the better-equipped CIA U-2s, and that meant the two most experience pilots, Rudy Anderson and Steve Heyser, would be at the controls. Normally, pilots did not fly on consecutive days, both to prevent fatigue and to allow them to assist in charting their next flight. But there was nothing normal about October 1962.
Like a coach who goes with his very best players at the most critical times, the leaders of SAC would clearly send these two men on as many missions over enemy positions as possible.
IN WASHINGTON, DC, October 17 was a day of meetings held by different working groups, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior officials at the State Department. They produced position papers and set military-preparedness steps in motion. And of course the film analysts at the National Photographic Interpretation Center had been working around the clock. The interpreters had completed their study of the film from Anderson’s and Heyser’s October 15 flights over long swaths of Cuba. As expected they found additional medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) locations, bringing the total to three, as well as more SAM sites, for a grand total of twenty-three. But they also discovered something unexpected and even more ominous—indications of construction of a launch site for intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs). These long-range nuclear missiles could travel 2,200 miles, far enough to knock out the United States’ own IRBM sites in the Midwest. This meant that from Cuba the Soviets could potentially not only kill millions of Americans in every part of the country except the Northwest but also diminish US nuclear retaliatory capabilities.
The new information solidified Joint Chiefs chairman General Maxwell Taylor’s opinion that an invasion should follow a full-scale air attack on all military installations in Cuba. And it would need to happen quickly, before placement of warheads on both the MRBMs and IRBMs. The heads of each branch of the military supported him unanimously.
President Kennedy maintained a normal schedule on this day as he flew to Connecticut to campaign for Abraham Ribicoff, a longtime supporter now running for the US Senate.
On October 18 ExComm reconvened in the Cabinet Room, and the president flipped the hidden switch to record the meeting. John McCone and Arthur Lundahl updated the group with analysis of the Heyser and Anderson flights flown on October 15 and the discovery of at least one IRBM site under construction.
Anxious for more information, Kennedy inquired about the six flights flown the day before.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY—These missions, they don’t know what coverage they got do they?
LUNDAHL—The total picture has not yet emerged, sir.
MCCONE—We think we got the entire island. I think you should know that these six missions involve about 28,000 linear feet of film. When this is enlarged it means the center has to examine a strip of film 100 miles long and 20 feet wide. Quite a job.
As on the day before, the group brainstormed different options, laying out the pros and cons, with some calling for surprise air attacks and others advocating a naval blockade so that no additional military equipment would reach Cuba. The president had not made a decision and wondered if the blockade option would ever lead to removal of the missiles. “He [Nikita Khrushchev] could go on developing the things he has there,” said the president. And Bobby Kennedy, who would later advocate for the blockade, was at this point clearly against it, calling it “a slow death.” The group kept the door open for an invasion, if it should come to that, and also discussed the likelihood that any military action against the Soviets would probably result in Khrushchev’s taking action in Berlin. President Kennedy especially believed a military strike would have this result.
The president next played devil’s advocate to push the group to view the situation from every possible angle.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY—Say the situation was reversed, and he [Khrushchev] had made the statement about these missiles in Turkey similar to the one I made [about Cuba]. And he made the statement that serious action could result if we put them in, and we went ahead and put them in?
Kennedy clearly understood the military advantages of a surprise attack but kept pressing the group about the ramifications. He didn’t think the generals had given enough thought to consequences, especially the series of escalating steps that each side would prompt the other to take if it felt threatened. The lengthy meeting was freewheeling, with every member getting a chance to talk, speculate, and plan.
Speechwriter Ted Sorensen, who had been battling painful ulcers, began drafting a speech for the president to give should he authorize an air strike. Sorensen stared at the blank page affixed to his typewriter and began pressing the keys: “This morning, I reluctantly ordered the armed forces to attack and destroy the nuclear buildup in Cuba.… Americans should remain calm, go about your daily business, secure in the knowledge that our freedom loving country will not allow its security to be undermined.” Sorensen finished the draft in the hope that President Kennedy would never read it aloud.3
That evening JFK kept his prearranged meeting in the Oval Office with Soviet foreign minister Andrey Gromyko and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. The president sat in the rocking chair he favored to help alleviate his back pain; Gromyko sat just to his right on a white couch, with Dobrynin next to him. The meeting was cordial, but Gromyko dominated the conversation, citing a long list of grievances regarding actions by the United States around the world. Kennedy wisely opted not to tip his hand on the missiles but did express concern over the Soviet military buildup on Cuba. Gromyko assured the president that the Soviets had placed only defensive weapons on the island and that the bulk of their effort related to helping Cubans grow enough food to feed themselves.
After the meeting with Gromyko and Dobrynin, the president met with Dean Rusk, Llewellyn Thompson, Mac Bundy, and Robert Lovett (Truman’s secretary of defense and now an advisor to Kennedy), giving them an overview of this exchange. Kennedy described how Gromyko “had been in this very room not more than ten minutes earlier and told more barefaced lies than I have ever heard in so short a time. All during his denial that the Russians had any missiles or weapons or anything else in Cuba, I had the pictures in the center drawer of my desk, and it was an enormous temptation to show them to him.”4
But the president was disciplined enough to hold back. There was no sense flouting his knowledge until he had decided on a course of action.
Later that night, at approximately 9 p.m., the president met with more advisors in the Executive Mansion. This group included McNamara, deputy defense secretary Roswell Gilpatric, Taylor, Bobby Kennedy, Bundy, George Ball, Alexis Johnson, Ed Martin, and Sorensen. These advisors (except Bundy) reached a consensus to begin the action with a blockade. The president favored this response but still wanted a bit more time before committing to it. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. later explained that JFK liked the idea of a blockade because “it would avoid the shock effect of a surprise attack, which would hurt us politically throughout the world and might provoke Moscow to an insensate response against Berlin or the United States itself. If it worked the Russians could retreat with dignity. If it did not work, the Americans retained the option of military action.”5
Late that night the president finally got to bed. The day had been demanding but would be child’s play compared to the upcoming few days. The crisis would of course be mentally taxing, but it would take a physical toll as well. Kennedy would have little time for his usual midday swim to stretch his back and relieve the pain, fewer opportunities to take his daily forty-five-minute nap after lunch, and many more late nights of phone calls and meetings. With each upcoming day the pressure would ratchet upward for a decision whose consequences no one could know for sure.
WHILE THE WHITE HOUSE buzzed with discussion about how to respond to the Soviets, Rudy Anderson and Steve Heyser completed their October 18 mission over Cuba. They were aloft for approximately six hours, longer than the day before, and covered a good portion of the island. Both landed safely back at McCoy. Flight planners knew the risks were increasing, because each mission discovered installation of more SAM sites. Mission planners did all they could to protect the unarmed pilots by having them enter and exit Cuban airspace from new directions and locations on each flight. They also instructed the pilots not to fly in a straight and level path over the island for more than thirty seconds. Making slight but frequent turns became the norm.
It was later determined that SAMs defended virtually the entire island: just one surface-to-air missile could travel over twenty-five miles to deadly effect. Rudy Anderson, Steve Heyser, and the others didn’t know this on October 18, but they suspected as much and hoped that the Dragon Ladies, and a little luck, would keep them safe.