RUDY ANDERSON WAS not originally scheduled to fly on Saturday, October 27. Strategic Air Command (SAC) had initially planned to launch three flights but scrubbed all three at the last minute because Crusaders were going to cover the same areas of Cuba. There was no need for redundancy, and it was best to keep the men fresh should they be needed on Sunday. It looked like all the U-2 pilots would have a day of rest that Saturday.
Then SAC flight planners decided to send a U-2 to cover the eastern part of the island where Crusaders would not be flying.1 Rudy was ready. The night before, he had asked operations manager Tony Martinez to put him on standby in case another pilot was needed. Tony granted his wish.2 And now the opportunity had come up, and Rudy was prepared. His one concern was that he had not spoken to his wife, Jane, in several days. Normally, they talked by phone, and although he could not reveal details about his mission or its duration, he always gave her clues about when to expect him home. Rudy would ask nonchalantly about whether she’d picked up his uniform from the cleaners and drop other subtle hints that he was coming home soon. But the secrecy surrounding the flights over Cuba made any contact with the outside world verboten. Plus he had no idea when or if he’d be returning to her.
Rudy Anderson ate his usual breakfast of steak and eggs with the other pilots originally scheduled to fly, and once told his was the sole mission launching that morning, he had a physical exam and flight briefing.3 Then he conducted his hourlong preflight breathing of 100 percent oxygen, followed by a study of his target folder. His physiological support team (PST) helped him squeeze into his pressure suit, and together they boarded the air-conditioned van that carried him to his plane.
Once in the cockpit of his U-2, Anderson and a PST tech went through several checks followed by more checks from Captain Roger Herman, who had the job of clearing Rudy to launch.4 Herman conducted a “press to set” procedure that sent a burst of oxygen into Anderson’s suit, briefly inflating it to make sure it was functioning correctly.
Everything was in order. Herman slapped the pilot on the shoulder and said, “Okay, Rudy, here we go, have a good trip. See you when you get back.”
Anderson responded with a thumbs-up, and Herman closed the canopy. Rudy had taped two photos above his control panel: one of his beautiful, smiling wife; the other of his two boys. Staring at the photos, he must have truly believed that his mission could save their lives and those of millions more around the world. He could not bear to think of the bloodshed on the invasion beaches or the vaporization of large cities and small towns in the United States and the Soviet Union. He prayed to God that his aerial photographs would lead to the de-escalation of the conflict. Both sides simply had too much to lose.
LEAVING MCCOY AIR Force Base at 9:10 a.m. eastern standard time, Anderson had relatively clear skies. While he had performed five earlier spy missions over Cuba during the crisis, none of the pilots who did multiple missions viewed such flights as routine, and Major Anderson was no exception. Jerry McIlmoyle’s October 25 flight also lurked in the back of his mind. McIlmoyle’s close encounter with an exploding surface-to-air missile (SAM), combined with the escalation of the crisis, put Rudy Anderson at full alert as he entered Cuban airspace.
His mission would take him over the easternmost third of the island, coasting in from the north, initially in a straight line heading south-southeast. He would be passing within range of no less than eight SAM sites.5
AT ABOUT 11 a.m., Jerry McIlmoyle, Steve Heyser, and Buddy Brown were just beginning a round of golf on McCoy’s golf course when they heard the distinct roar of Anderson’s U-2 taking off. Not scheduled to fly that day, Heyser and McIlmoyle had decided to grab their golf clubs and relieve some stress. Brown was a late addition as he had been scheduled to follow Anderson into the skies over Cuba, but his mission had been scratched. The pilots turned to see the aircraft climbing out at a steep angle. Suddenly, the Dragon Lady came into view for a brief moment before it soared high above the cloud cover. Jerry nudged Heyser and said, “There he goes, he’s passing you.” Steve Heyser only smiled; it didn’t matter to him if Rudy flew the most missions over Cuba. He knew the goal was important to Anderson, and that was fine with him.
Jerry, Steve, and Buddy knew that with each additional flight, the risks to the pilots increased exponentially. The Soviets had fired on Jerry two days earlier and would likely do so again.
Steve certainly believed Jerry’s account of what had happened. Both men closely followed the news that the Soviets were testing the blockade and that their medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba were becoming operational. The crisis was escalating, and the U-2s were in the forefront of the peril. Yet both Heyser and McIlmoyle—just like Anderson—were willing to fly over the island again.
All the U-2 pilots at McCoy were pragmatic as well as patriotic. Earlier that month Air Force Association Magazine contained an advertisement for $10,000 in life insurance for combat crews, and all eleven pilots immediately applied for it.6 They knew that they might not come back from any given mission and wanted to provide for their families in whatever way possible.
ANDERSON FLEW AT the usual 72,000 feet, first crossing over Cuba at the northern coastal area of Cayo Coco, then continuing his trajectory over Esmeralda and next over Camagüey. So far so good. The weather was a mix of sun and clouds, the cameras were working fine, and Rudy knew the extreme importance of the mission. His photos might reveal that warheads had been put on the missiles, indicating that they were ready for firing. In twenty-four hours the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President John F. Kennedy himself would likely be examining some of his film to guide them in planning their next steps. Anderson was serving his country, helping to keep it safe. The fact that his plane was unarmed suited his conviction that he could be a top-notch air force pilot without dropping bombs or blowing enemy pilots out of the sky.
ON THE GROUND in Cuba, Soviet radar was tracking Major Anderson’s flight, and the technicians labeled this intruding aircraft “target 33.”7 Nerves were frayed: both the Soviets and the Cubans expected the United States to launch an all-out attack at any moment. And there was anger too, particularly among the Cubans. Why let the Americans invade their airspace in the high-flying U-2s and gather intelligence that would help make the inevitable attack that much more deadly and effective? Since October 14, when Steve Heyser first discovered the missiles, radar had painted the U-2s crisscrossing the island nation, and more recently—and even more egregiously—the low-flying reconnaissance jets were roaring by at treetop level, flaunting their superiority. The Cubans felt they had the right to defend their country from enemy aircraft. The Russians, they believed, should use the damn SAMs that they had so painstakingly shipped and assembled here.
Many of the Russians on the island agreed with their Cuban counterparts.8 After all, the Cubans and Russians toiling in Cuba—not those in Moscow—would pay the ultimate price when the United States attacked. They could not understand Moscow’s reluctance to let them defend themselves. But their orders were to withhold fire unless under attack. Some Soviets on the ground thought this gave them a bit of leeway to use their judgment to shoot down the offending US planes if they sensed an attack coming during the overflights. In a 2004 interview, Soviet colonel Grigory Danilevich, head of the political section of the antiaircraft division on the island, claimed that commands from Moscow changed constantly and were unclear. “There was a command [on October 26] to ‘open fire in case of manifest attack.’”9
The nonstop intrusion of American aircraft over Cuban airspace and Moscow’s reluctance to allow the SAMs to take them down angered and frustrated no one more than Fidel Castro. The American military continued to mobilize with the US troop and technician buildup in Guantánamo, the ever-increasing numbers of US Navy vessels patrolling just off the Cuban coast, and informers disclosing a massive increase in military activity in Florida.10
Castro’s letter from the previous day calling for Moscow to launch a first strike against the United States had led Nikita Khrushchev to think he was becoming unhinged, and like Kennedy the premier worried that the situation would spiral out of control. On the morning of October 27, that is just what was happening.
SOVIET FORCES DEPUTY commander General Leonid Garbuz and deputy commander of air defenses General Stepan Grechko were monitoring the incursion of target 33 from a command center in Havana. “Our guest,” said Grechko, “has been circling above us for more than an hour. I think we should give the order for downing the plane.”11 They thought a US attack was imminent, so why allow this U-2 to return more valuable data to their adversaries in Washington? The time had come to propose taking action to General Issa Pliyev, who commanded all Soviets in Cuba.
A phone call to Pliyev’s headquarters proved futile as his aide-de-camp said he was not available. General Pliyev, known to be ill with kidney disease, was possibly too sick to take the call.12
Had Pliyev known what Garbuz and Grechko were planning, he would have taken the call even from his deathbed.
THE RADAR ACTIVATED by the Soviets included missile guidance radar (MGR), which they had not used since October 19, perhaps to keep the Americans guessing or to lull them into thinking the Soviets would not launch the missiles.13 Activation of the MGR signaled that the SAMs were being prepared for firing and to lock in on their targets.
(The missiles that missed McIlmoyle might have been launched without full radar capacity so as not to alert him that they had been fired. A device in Jerry’s plane that would have warned him that a missile had locked on to him never turned red as it should have. Either the device malfunctioned or the Soviets intentionally kept the guidance system off.)
On Saturday, October 27, however, SAC’s RB-47s, gathering electronic intelligence just off Cuba, detected that the Soviets had activated their MGR systems. The pilots of those RB-47s alerted the Pentagon, but neither had the means to warn Rudy Anderson.14