AT ABOUT NOON the Crusader pilots received final approval to launch and ran out to the aircraft, climbed the three steps to the cockpit, and were strapped in by the support staff. Engines were started, and the whirling turbine blades first made a low growl that soon became a “deafening, high-pitched whine.”1 Heat blasted from the engines, which generated a thrust of 10,200 pounds, and ground crews stayed clear of the front of the planes, as the engines’ intake could suck a man right inside and shred him to pieces.
The pilots went through their final checks, including the proper functioning of the five camera shutters. Then they gave the thumbs-up sign and blasted down the runway. There was no verbal communication with the control tower in the event the Soviets were eavesdropping. Once airborne, they rocketed toward Cuba, expecting to cover the ninety miles in just eleven minutes. To elude enemy radar, they stayed just a hundred feet above the ocean, glad for a light rain that washed off the salt spray that covered the windshields and camera lenses.
Captain William Ecker and Lieutenant Bruce Whilhemy, a 1958 graduate of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, were teamed together and headed straight toward the San Cristobal site that Steve Heyser and Rudy Anderson had first photographed showing medium-range ballistic missiles. The other two teams of pilots would cover high-priority sites in central and eastern Cuba.
Ecker recalled that he emerged from the rain showers into sunshine just in time to see the Havana skyline and then headed toward San Cristobal, paralleling a range of small mountains on the right. “All of a sudden the San Cristobal missile complex appeared! I called to Bruce to move out farther to the right so that we would get maximum coverage of the target area, rather than flying close together or in tandem.”2
Tad Riley flew low over the surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites, and a few surprised men on the ground actually waved at him. “The second day, they didn’t wave anymore,” he later said.3
The pilots got the photos they needed and steered for home. The antiaircraft guns below them remained silent, either ordered not to shoot or caught off guard, as the Crusaders appeared unexpectedly and briefly, perhaps for a second or two. The pilots put their afterburners on “to let them know we were there,”4 an attempt to intimidate and harass the Cubans and Soviets with the Crusaders’ screeching engines.
The mission was a success, but unfortunately a “granddaddy” of a thunderstorm lay between the pilots and Florida. Afraid of wind shear, Ecker elected to pass under it at a very low altitude but still feared being “torn to pieces by the storm.”
WHILE THE CRUSADERS were attempting to get through the thunderstorm with their precious cargo of film, ExComm was meeting to determine what action the United States would take if the Soviets shot down a U-2. Robert McNamara began that part of the conversation, addressing President John F. Kennedy.
MCNAMARA—Now, you asked me yesterday to consider reaction to a U-2 accident, and we would recommend this: That SAC [Strategic Air Command] be instructed to immediately inform the Joint Chiefs, as far as myself and yourself, upon any deviation from course of U-2 aircraft that is unexplained. They maintain a minute by minute check on the U-2s as they proceed through their flight pattern. They will be able to tell us when a U-2 moves off course and, we believe, why, particularly if it’s shot down. That information can be in here in a matter of minutes, literally 15 minutes after the incident.
We are maintaining aircraft on alert that have the capability, if you decide to instruct to do so, to go in and shoot the SAM site that shot down the U-2. It would be approximately 8 aircraft required to destroy the SAM site. We would recommend the information on the U-2 action to come in here so that we can present recommendations to you at the time that the action is required. I believe we would recommend that we send the 8 aircraft out to destroy the site, and have it destroyed within 2 hours of the time the U-2 itself was struck.
The president asked McNamara if they would be able to rescue a pilot downed in the ocean, and the defense secretary answered in the affirmative. Kennedy then began to add details to his strategy if a U-2 was shot down: “If we lose one of our officers in the planes, then the next fellow we send out… I suppose what we do is, when we take out that SAM site, we announce that if any U-2 is shot down, we’ll take out every SAM site.”
The Joint Chiefs must have felt some measure of satisfaction. The president had finally, and unequivocally, authorized bombing SAM sites if the Russians shot down a US plane. Though far less than the large-scale bombing raid that the Joint Chiefs had called for, this at least promised offensive action on the part of the United States. General Curtis LeMay, in particular, took heart when Kennedy went on record, clearing the way for a retaliatory attack that would show both the Soviets and the Cubans that the US Air Force was not afraid to strike back.
Bobby Kennedy worried about the critics of a quarantine—those who would point out the danger of turning away Soviet ships after the missiles were already in place in Cuba.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY—We recognize the missiles are already there. But we also recognize there’s not a damn thing anybody can do about the missiles being there unless we had invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs or a previous Cuban invasion a year before.
A bit later in the conversation, Kennedy, trying to leave no detail unconsidered, worried that three airfields in Florida had become congested with U.S. military aircraft, making it easy for the Russians or Cubans to disable a number of them in a single bombing raid.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY—We have to figure that if we do execute this plan we just agreed on this morning [the response against a SAM site if a U-2 was brought down] that they are going to strafe our fields, and we don’t want them to shoot up 100 planes. We’ve just got to figure out some other device.
TAYLOR—This is one of these rather humorous examples of the over-sophistication of our weapons. We have everything except to deal with a simple aircraft coming in low [and strafing].
The president suggested relieving some of the congestion by using the civilian airport at West Palm Beach.
Near the end of the meeting, the group voiced its impatience to see what the low-level photos provided by the Crusaders would reveal. The Crusaders, however, were still conducting their missions at the very moment that ExComm wondered what the jet pilots might uncover, and John McCone made clear that the photos would not be available until that night.
Dean Rusk then took a moment to remind everyone in the room just how lucky they were on this day. “I think it is very significant that we are here this morning. We’ve passed the one contingency [following Kennedy’s speech], an immediate, sudden, irrational strike.”
NOT LONG AFTER the meeting adjourned, the president received a short letter from Nikita Khrushchev. It contained nothing that would lead him to believe Soviet ships would turn back. Khrushchev flatly said the US quarantine was “in violation of international norms and freedom of navigation on the high seas”5 and later added that Kennedy’s actions “could lead to catastrophic consequences.”
In his response Kennedy made the point he had been stressing with his own advisors: do not let the crisis spin out of control. He said he hoped the United States would not have to fire at any Soviet ships and closed by writing, “I am concerned that we both show prudence and do nothing to allow events to make the situation more difficult to control than it is.”6
ECKER AND WHILHEMY made it through the storm and sped their way north. To expedite the processing of the film, the pilots flew straight to Florida’s Naval Air Station Jacksonville, where the navy housed its photo lab. The two pilots looked each other’s planes over en route to make sure there were no bullet holes or fuel leaks. They landed in Jacksonville and were pleased to learn that the other four pilots who flew over Cuba had already safely touched down. Nobody reported being fired at, but this was to change in future flights. As Ecker explained, “On later missions we would see popcorn flax [37mm AAA fire] which exploded in white puffs in our mirrors.”7
After landing and shutting down the engine, Bill Ecker was extricating himself from the cockpit when the chief photo officer, Bob Koch, appeared at the side of the plane and said, “Stay put, you’re going to Washington.”
Ecker, who had thought his day’s work was done, never even got to leave his aircraft. The Joint Chiefs wanted to hear every detail of his flight in person. So while the plane was being refueled, Ecker ate a ham sandwich and drank a small carton of milk, and then he was airborne again, arriving just outside the nation’s capital at Andrews Air Force Base in less than an hour.
The meeting was considered so critically important that a waiting helicopter flew Commander Ecker to the Pentagon. The lieutenant had not been told whom he would meet with, and when he entered a small conference room he was greeted by Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and George Anderson, chief of naval operations. They ushered him over to a square table, where more of the top military brass were seated, along with some of the president’s advisors. Taylor motioned Ecker to take a seat.
Ecker, who had been in the air for hours and was still in his flight suit, had to slide behind a general to get to the one empty seat. While doing so, he apologized, saying, “You’ll have to pardon me, General, I’m kind of smelly and sweaty.”8
The general removed the cigar from his mouth and barked, “You’ve been flying an airplane haven’t you? You ought to sweat and smell. Now sit down!”
Curtis LeMay wanted to waste no time hearing Ecker’s debriefing.
The lieutenant didn’t have that much to say. He had only been over the missile site for a couple seconds, but he said he did see the complex, noted that some of it was camouflaged, and did not think he had been shot at. The urgent debriefing lasted all of ten minutes.
If Ecker was short on details, the photos he took were not. After viewing the high-altitude U-2 photos for a week, analysts at the National Photographic Interpretation Center found the low reconnaissance images, with their more exact detail, a welcome change. Adlai Stevenson would use these photos at the United Nations when he confronted the Russians. The ambassador now had the evidence to back up the US claim that the Russians had stationed offensive weapons on Cuba and were working around the clock to complete the missile sites.
ALSO ON TUESDAY, October 23, three U-2s performed a mission over Cuba. Steve Heyser was back in the air after four days’ rest. Roger Herman and another U-2 pilot, Daniel Schmarr, also flew that day. Dan Schmarr was an elite pilot and a good family man. The Spokane, Washington, native had also discovered a love for flying at an early age. He told his sister that as a child, he would fall asleep and dream that he was a bird waving his arms and soaring past clouds. He was married to his childhood sweetheart, Kay, and together they had three kids. When asked later in life about the key to parenting, Schmarr said, “The best thing one can do for their children was to love their mother.”9
The SAC termed all three U-2 missions “100 percent successful.”10 It was beginning to look like the Soviets would not attack American aircraft and perhaps instead test the US Navy on the high seas.
At 6 p.m. that night, President Kennedy met again with his advisors in the Cabinet Room. The topic at hand was whether the Soviets would allow the US Navy to board its ships if they passed the quarantine. It would mark the first time that armed American military personnel and armed Soviet troops would be in close proximity during the crisis.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY—They’re going to keep going. And we’re going to shoot the rudder off, or the boiler. And then we’re going to try to board it. And they’re going to fire a gun and then machine guns.… So I would think that the taking of those ships is going to be a major operation. You may have to sink it rather than just take it.
Soon after, attention focused on the doomsday scenario and America’s readiness to withstand a nuclear attack. Steuart Pittman, assistant secretary of defense for civil defense, walked the president through the numbers. Pittman said that a nuclear strike around 1,100 nautical miles from Cuba would potentially kill 92 million Americans in fifty-eight cities. When asked by Kennedy about evacuating people from likely target cities a week before a potential strike, Pittman said the cities were actually the safest places, as buildings might serve as adequate protection from the initial nuclear blast, subsequent heat, and exposure to radiation.
At the president’s request, Bobby Kennedy met privately with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin at the Soviet embassy that evening. RFK had been using back channels to continue a dialogue with the Russians and had learned from journalist Charles Bartlett, serving as an intermediary, that the Soviet ships planned on plowing through the American quarantine. RFK met with Dobrynin in a sitting room on the third floor of the Soviet embassy located near DuPont Circle. The agitated attorney general accused the Russian diplomat of betrayal. Coyly, Dobrynin said that he was only working with information that his government had shared with him. RFK then asked what the Soviet ship captains had been instructed to do if and when confronted by US warships. Dobrynin said that the captains “would not bow to any illegal demands for a search on the high seas.” RFK got up to leave. He reached the doorway of the sitting room and addressed Dobrynin once more.
“I do not know how this will end, but we intend to stop your ships.”11
The attorney general returned to the White House after 10 p.m. and briefed his brother. JFK tossed out the idea of arranging an immediate summit with Khrushchev, then thought better of it. There would be no meeting until Khrushchev accepted Kennedy’s resolve in the matter.
Also on Tuesday night, the world caught its first glimpse of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev since the onset of the missile crisis. Ironically, the Russian leader attended the American performance of Boris Godunov, starring New York opera singer Jerome Hines, at the Bolshoi Theater. As Khrushchev participated in a champagne toast to the American performers backstage after the show, Radio Moscow issued a statement assuring that “not a single nuclear bomb would hit the U.S. unless aggression is committed.”12
Still, the Soviets had not clearly defined “aggression.” President Kennedy and his top advisors could only guess what they planned to do next.