The most perilous incident on the blockade line came on 27 October, when two US destroyers, USS Beale and USS Cony, intercepted a Soviet sub and dropped ‘signalling’ depth charges. Or, despite Khrushchev’s concerns, Soviet ships could have ignored the cordon and forced a response. The U-2 spy plane that took the photographs of the missile launch sites on 14 October could have been delayed, meaning the information came later and JFK’s decisions had to be more rushed. It was the most dangerous episode of the Cold War, but the world eventually stepped back from the brink of nuclear Armageddon.īut so many things could have led to the escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In return, the US secretly agreed to remove their own missiles from Turkey. The 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis resolved with the Soviet ships sailing away and the missiles withdrawn. It was after days of an agonisingly tense standoff that negotiations eventually prevailed.

In a television address on 22 October, JFK announced a naval blockade, or quarantine, and his commitment to retaliation if attacked. The US, even with an overwhelming nuclear superiority, could not tolerate anything this close – with Cuba just 90 miles from Florida – so President John F Kennedy and his advisory body, ExComm, considered a number of responses.

On 14 October 1962, a US spy plane obtained photographic evidence that nuclear missiles had been secretly shipped to Cuba, and that the Soviets were building medium-and intermediate-range launch sites.

Communist america alternate history