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Drawing on evidence collected from eyewitness interviews, new Russian secondary sources, as well as recently declassified documents from both sides, the author significantly widens the academic understanding of the maritime dimension of this gravest crisis of the Cold War. Most significant is her conclusion that Soviet commanders were led by complex and challenging tactical circumstances, including unreliable communications and malfunctioning equipment, which might have prompted them to contemplate a resort to tactical nuclear weapons on more than one occasion. Almost as disturbing is the revelation that US forces were not aware of this particular threat. This research reveals how a chain of inadvertent developments at sea could have precipitated global nuclear war, underlining the extreme danger of the crisis.
Notes
Anatoly Gribkov and William Smith, Operation Anadyr: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago, IL, Berlin, Tokyo and Moscow: Edition q, inc. 1994).
See especially Graham Allyson, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman 1999); Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1976); and Joseph Bouchard, Command in Crisis: Four Case Studies (New York: Columbia University Press 1991).
Alexander Mozgovoi, Kubinskaya Samba Kvarteta Foxtrotov [The Cuban Samba of the Foxtrot Quartet] (Moscow: Voennyi Parad 2002); Raymond Garthoff, ‘New Evidence on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Khrushchev, Nuclear Weapons and the Cuban Missile Crisis’, CWIHP Bulletin 11 (Winter 1998) pp.251–62.
Dangers of inadvertent use of weapons and of unintentional escalation due to human mistake are discussed at length in James Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 1990).
‘The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: 40th Anniversary Conference’, Havana, Cuba, 11–13 Oct. 2002, co-sponsored by The National Security Archive at George Washington University in partnership with Brown University's Watson Institute for International Affairs and Cuban institutions. The conference was the latest in a series of critical oral history meetings on the Cuban missile crisis and generated worldwide headlines by gathering US, Russian and Cuban veterans of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis for two days of discussions in Havana.
Thomas S. Blanton and William Burr, ‘The Submarines of October: U.S. and Soviet Naval Encounters During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, The National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 75. Available at < http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB75 > .
This conference was held in Havana and organized jointly by the Cuban government and the National Security Archive with its partners from Brown University.
Peter Huchthausen, October Fury (New York: John Wiley 2002).
On the Che-Aragones mission to Moscow see detailed analysis by Alexander Fursenko and Timothy Naftali in One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W.W. Norton 1997) p.195; and on Aragones' recollection of Khrushchev's promises, see James Blight and David Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: The Noonday Press 1990) p.334.
See Raymond Garthoff, ‘New Evidence on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Khrushchev, Nuclear Weapons, and the Cuban Missile Crisis’ in Cold War International History Bulletin 11 (Winter 1998) p.253.
Initial Plans for Soviet Navy Activities in Support of Operation Anadyr, 18 Sept. 1962. Source: Volkogonov Collection, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Reel 17, Container 26. Translation available on The National Security Archive website at < http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchive/ > .
Report on the Progress of Operation Anadyr, 25 Sept. 1962. Source: Volkogonov Collection, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Reel 17, Container 26. Translation available on The National Security Archive website at < http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchive/ > .
Ibid.
Mozgovoi (note 3) p.100.
Ibid.
Ibid. p.103.
Ibid. p.62.
Interview with Shumkov, 18 Sept. 2002, Moscow.
Meaning, if they were attacked and hit under the water.
Transcript of selections from Russian documentary program How It Happened (VID, 30 Jan. 2001) ORT (Russian Television Channel 1) with four submarine commanders who participated in Operation ‘Anadyr’.
Mozgovoi (note 3) p.71.
Captain Third Rank Anatoly Andreev's diary, published in Nikolai Cherkashin, ‘Povsednevnaya Zhizn’ Rossiiskikh Podvodnikov’ [Daily Life of Russian Submariners] (Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya Publishing House 2000) p.111. .
Interview with Orlov, 17 Sept. 2002, Moscow.
Cherkashin (note 22) p.114.
Alexi Dubivko, “In the Depths of the Sargasso Seas” in On the Edge of the Nuclear Precipice (Moscow: Gregory Page 1988) p.318.
Orlov interview (note 23).
Dubivko (note 25) p.318.
Interview with Shumkov, 18 Sept. 2002, Moscow.
Cherkashin (note 22) p.153.
Huchthausen, October Fury (note 8) p.209.
CTG 136.2 to COMASWFORLANT, 31 Oct. 1962, available at < http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB75 > .
Alexei Dubivko, ‘In the Depths of the Sargasso Sea’, in On the Edge of the Nuclear Precipice (Moscow: Gregory Page 1998) p.320.
Interview with Dubivko, 25 July 2002.
From deck logs of US destroyers Beale and Cony of 27 Oct. 1962. An extensive collection of deck logs and communications of US ASW forces tracking the Soviet submarines was assembled by William Burr at the National Security Archive: Thomas S. Blanton and William Burr, ‘The Submarines of October: U.S. and Soviet Naval Encounters During the Cuban Missile Crisis’. The National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 75 (note 6).
Mozgovoi (note 3) pp.92–3.
Interview with Orlov (note 23).
Sobesednik: Obscherossiiskaya Yezhednevnaya Gazeta, No. 10 (1012), 17–23 March 2004, Moscow.
For detailed Soviet Generals' testimony on how the U-2 was shot down see James Blight, Bruce Allyn and David Welch, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse (New York: Rowman & Littlefield) pp.113–14.
See Mozgovoi (note 3) p.98; CINCLANTcable to JCS, 1 Nov. 1962, available at < http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB75 > .
Dubivko, ‘In the Depth of the Sargasso Sea’ (note 32) p.323.
All the Russian accounts used in this study point to a statement to that effect made during the meeting of the Defense Ministry Collegium in Moscow.
Dubivko, ‘In the Depth of the Sargasso Sea’ (note 32) p.321.
Ibid.
Mozgovoi (note 3) pp.108–10.
Oct. EXCOMM Meeting Transcript, Philip Zeikow and Ernest May, (eds), The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Vol. III (New York: Norton 2001) pp.190–94.
Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Norton 1971) p.69.
Oct. EXCOMM Meeting Transcript (note 45).
Joseph F. Bouchard, Command in Crisis: Four Case Studies (New York: Columbia University Press 1991) p.123.
Conversation with Ryurik Ketov, 7 May 2004.
Anatolii Dubivko, ‘In the Depths of Saragasso Sea’ (note 32) p.319; and interview with Dubivko, 25 July 2002, Moscow.
Telephone interview with Rear Adm. Carl J. Seiberlich (retd.) by William Burr, 14 Sept. 2002 – see National Security Archive Briefing Book 75 (note 6).
See Natioanl Security Archive Briefing Book 75, Document 49, table showing deployment of non-nuclear components of nuclear depth charges at Guantanamo Bay, 1961–63.