I wasn’t really listening to Dave’s question. It was background white noise, blending in with the muffled sounds of traffic driving by the park. My mind was elsewhere. Has it only been six weeks since my birthday? Just another distracted memory of people, places and special days I’d likely never experience again.
“Earth to Kinsey!”. Dave snapped me out of my semi-trance and repeated his question. “Do you think it’ll happen?”.
It was a question asked by adults in households, pubs and workplaces, even by kids wherever they hung out. At that time in my short life I was with mates meandering around a nameless pocket park. Having attained the age of 14, I was the old man of our rat pack.
Also, my lofty status was enhanced by being the only one with a state-of-the-art transistor radio – a Sony TR-63 no less – that was a birthday gift. The portable radio liberated us. We could now listen to the decadent, godless rock ‘n’ roll station, outside the confines of someone’s living room and being yelled at to “turn that noise down!”.
The day my world stood still
Three days earlier, on Monday, 22 October 1962, the local radio station’s hourly newscast mentioned that President John F Kennedy would make an address to the American people at 7:00 pm EDT that evening.
I opted not to sit in the living room with the family, gathered in front of the black and white console TV. Instead, I lay on the top bunk, in the room I shared with one of my sisters, listening to Kennedy’s words that convinced me I would be dead by the month’s end.
Kennedy’s 18 minute speech began by informing the American people – and by extension those of other nations broadcasting his address – that within the past week there had been unmistakable evidence that a series of offensive launch sites, for medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, were being constructed in Cuba. Once operational, the missiles – armed with multi-megaton thermonuclear warheads – were capable of delivering their payload to most of North America, as far north as Hudson Bay, Canada, and as far south as Lima, Peru. At the midpoint of his address, Kennedy said that henceforth:
“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
As those words crackled through the speaker of my handheld Sony, a chill pulsed through my prone body. Most of us who grew up in the 1950s were only too aware of the awesome power of nuclear weapons. The frightening spectacle was regularly shown on newsreels in cinemas, prior to the main feature film, and on the evening television newscasts.
Prior to the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) of 1963, which finally banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, under water and in outer space, the US had conducted 215 atmospheric nuclear tests, the Soviet Union 219, and the UK 21. People who had the power to do something, and were likely well aware long beforehand of the damage to the environment and human health, due to radiation fallout that winds carried aloft, stopped the posturing and finally did something responsible.
Kennedy outlined the immediate US military initiative to establish a naval quarantine of the Caribbean island.
“All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life, as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.”
Duck and cover
The next morning at the family breakfast – yes, those were the days when families sat together for breakfast and dinner – everyone was unusually silent. I wolfed down what was left of breakfast, grabbed my lunch and mercifully went to school. About a third of my home-room class was absent and Miss Baginski didn’t bother with roll-call. It was apparently the same in most other classrooms. I wouldn’t be surprised if even fewer showed up tomorrow.
That morning we were instructed on what to do if a flash and fireball appeared: duck and cover. The bureaucrat who dreamed up these survival techniques may have seriously believed they were giving the wee bairns a hope of survival. Or they actually believed this ‘El Toro poo-poo’, not realising ‘duck and cover’ did squat against winds that knocked down brick buildings, heat waves that pushed the air temperature to tens of thousands of degrees Celsius, and turning anything combustible into a firestorm. And someone came up with ‘duck and cover’?
While it was against the rules, I brought my new Sony transistor radio to school, but didn’t listen to it until after lunch and sitting in the school yard. There was a civil defence instruction about preparing your home in the event of a nuclear attack. News reports gave the impression that the situation was escalating.
We had a duck and cover drill after the lunch break and I couldn’t help but laugh aloud, which triggered giggles from other classmates. Being the instigator, I was banished to stand in the hallway until class was over.
Students were sent home halfway through afternoon classes. Before dismissal, teachers were instructed to tell students that school attendance was mandatory, “So be here tomorrow”. Walking home with the rat pack – all but two of us lived on the same street – I shared my decision to spend my final days outside the confines of the stuffy draconian school building, sitting in the park, looking at the clouds drifting peacefully with the wind, hoping none would take the shape of a mushroom.
Road to Black Saturday
The general public knew the consequences for a fatal misstep, but in reality the situation was escalating rapidly towards war. On 25 October 1962, the US raised its military alert level to DEFCON 2. Even though Soviet ships were turning away from the blockade, the missiles were still in Cuba and would soon be operational. There was still a clear and present danger of nuclear war.
Two events of 27 October, one of which wouldn’t be revealed until 2002, gave it the moniker ‘Black Saturday’.
The known event was the shooting down of a USAF U2 that resulted in the only death by enemy action during the crisis.
It wasn’t until 2002 that the B-59 incident was declassified. It was a harrowing nautical tale of when a mid-level Russian officer thwarted the launch of a nuclear torpedo, safeguarding mankind and preserving civilisation.
These two events could have been the tipping point to trigger DEFCON 1. However, the following day, Chairman Khrushchev and President Kennedy reached a diplomatic compromise. The Soviet missiles would be withdrawn, for a public guarantee that the US would not invade Cuba, and the Americans would remove their Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
World War III had been averted. For now.
Reflections
I never did answer Dave’s question. To 14-year-old me, only knowing what I did then, I would have replied, “It doesn’t matter what I think. You, me, we have no control over what will happen tomorrow or what decisions our leaders take. It’s the same for the students or workers in Moscow.” Or something to that effect.
More on history.
