How the Cuban Missile crisis really ended????

[WorkinStiff]

I was talking to a co-worker who was a military jet pilot back in the 60s...He said that the Cuban missile Crisis really ended when JFK sent 2 or 3 B-58 Hustler bombers on a low level, under the radar, mission to buzz Moscow.He didn't say wheather it was night or day....He said that just before they buzzed the Kremlin JFK called Kruschev and told him to look out his window..Has anyone heard that before??? Does it sound plausable????The B-58 was a supersonic, delta winged, h-bomb carrying bomber which ate tremendous amounts of fuel and was very dangerous to fly....

[Luis Gonzalez]

It hasn't.

[Right Wing Assault]

I don't think we ever saw any missiles removed from Cuber, did we. All I recall seeing were some tubular things with tarps over them and we said, "OK! Good enough. Must be missiles."

Or am I nuts?

[thackney]

They might be remembering the movie "Fail Safe".

[MikeA]

I doubt it. Sounds like another one of these myths put forth to make JFK seem like a larger than life god. I really doubt a bomber could penetrate that far into Russian airspace.

The Cuban missile crisis ended when JFK surrendered to the Soviets by giving in to their demands to remove US missile bases from Turkey. This is what the Soviets wanted all along. But the Soviets agreed to take their missiles out of Cuba in exchange for an ex post facto announcement that the US was pulling its nukes out of Turkey. Khruschev simply allowed JFK to wait a little while before making the announcement to save face and so it wouldn't appear we were bowing to Soviet pressure. Make no mistake about it, despite the historical revisionism about how JFK the superhero faced down the Soviets, the Soviets really in the end won this one.

[Crazieman]

The top speed of the suckers was mach 2.1 though.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Until you stuck the weapons pod on them.

[Crazieman]

True

[Tijeras_Slim]

Very cool plane though.

[MikeA]

Yeah, but what about refueling? Where would they have flown from? Anyway, I think if this were really true we'd have known about it by now from some other source than just some guy at this persons' office. Surely the Kremlin files that have been combed through on the Cuban Missile Crisis would have revealed this information.

To me, the more interesting revelation revealed in those files is that Castro was pushing Khruschev like a madman to launch a first strike on the US. Fortunately Khruschev resisted. But this is the creep many US lefties revere and say we should have normal relations with, a man who advocated the murder of millions of Americans in the 60s through a nuclear holocaust. This is the number 1 reason I cite to people when they wonder why we should still maintain an embargo on Castro and not normalize relations with that piece of filth.

[larryw408]

And underbelly/wing tanks to give it that 1750 mile combat radius.

[xcamel]

I heard a better story from a retired GE engineer who worked for the DOD at the time. He claimed (with a serious and straight face) that Fidel had indeed given the command to launch. The Russian missile installation was built mostly with Cuban slave labor, and Russian supervisors. The translations and drawings were poor on the best day.

The poor Cubans that turned the first launch keys were instantly electrocuted, and the command center totally fried, as the Russian to Cuban Spanish for "twenty and one hundred volts, to ground" came out "twenty-one-hundred volts, grounded".

[bnelson44]

I am pretty sure the "red phone" came after the Cuban Missil Crisis, and initially was a teletype machine, not a telephone.

[WorkinStiff]

According to web sources, the B-58 had a top speed of 1325 mph and a range, without refueling, of 4400 miles...Could have flown from Turkey like the U2...In 62 the Russions didn't have either lookdown or over the horizon radar..At that speed even scrambled migs couldn't have caught up....who knows?????

[IMTOFT]

Doesn't sound plausible. The B-58 did once hold the record for distance (8000+ miles, Tokyo to Britain, in 1963), so 2 or 3 could have made the trip. But I doubt they would have been able to outrun the inevitable interceptors the Russians would have launched along the borders to meet the returning B-58's.
Remember, (not that Kennedy couldn't have called Khrushchev on existing lines), the "hot line" was not installed until 1963 as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But, the biggest issue of implausibility has to be in the idea Kennedy would authorize such an incredibly audacious act when the whole world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev was not one to be taken lightly - perhaps the sight of B-58's over the Kremlin may have pushed him to launch missiles from Cuba or made him back down, but it doesn't sound like a likely bet anyone would have elected to take at such a precarious time.

The more likely story is as follows from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/moment.htm

"The second volume of Khrushchev's memoirs (Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament), published posthumously in 1974, touched only briefly on the Robert Kennedy-Dobrynin meeting, but included the flat statement (on p. 512) that "President Kennedy said that in exchange for the withdrawl of our missiles, he would remove American missiles from Turkey and Italy," although he described this "pledge" as "symbolic" since the rockets "were already obsolete."

Over the years, many scholars of the Cuban Missile Crisis came strongly to suspect that Robert Kennedy had, in fact, relayed a pledge from his brother to take out the Jupiters from Turkey in exchange for the Soviet removal of nuclear missiles from Cuba, so long as Moscow kept the swap secret; yet senior former Kennedy Administration officials, such as then-National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy and then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, continued to insist that RFK had passed on no more than an informal assurance rather than an explicit promise or agreement.

The first authoritative admission on the U.S. side that the Jupiters had actually been part of a "deal" came at a conference in Moscow in January 1989, after glasnost had led Soviet (and then Cuban) former officials to participate in international scholarly efforts to reconstruct and assess the history of the crisis. At that meeting, former Kennedy speechwriter Theodore Sorensen (and the uncredited editor of Thirteen Days) admitted, after prodding from Dobrynin, that he had taken it upon himself to edit out a "very explicit" reference to the inclusion of the Jupiters in the final deal to settle the crisis."
Another good source (no mention of B-58's over the Kremlin) is http://www.coldwar.org/index.html

[dinasour]

I really doubt a bomber could penetrate that far into Russian airspace.

 

You mean, until some kid did it.

 

West German Mathias Rust lands airplane on Red Square May 30 in ...

[WorkinStiff]

Although I think the story is highly unlikely, ( with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the opening of archives, I think It would have gotten out somehow).....However as for plausability; the top Soviet Fighter-intercepter in 62 was the MIG-21 Fishbed, Top speed; 1385 mph, ceiling: 50K ft vs 1325 & 64K ft for the Hustler........Sneak over Moscow under the radar at 700+ mph then climb to 64000ft and accerate to 1300 mph...In 62 the Hustler would have been real hard to catch flying two and a half miles above the soviet intercepters....It could also outrun SAMS..Powers U2 was only going about 400 mph when hit.....

[NormsRevenge]

Damn, Pretty bird.

CONVAIR B-58A "HUSTLER"

The delta-wing Hustler was the first USAF supersonic operational bomber. The B-58 made its initial flight on Nov. 11, 1956 and flew supersonically on Dec. 30, 1956. Distinctive B-58 features included its sophisticated inertial guidance navigation and bombing system, slender "wasp-waist" fuselage, and extensive use of heat-resistant honeycomb sandwich skin panels in the wings and fuselage.

The thin fuselage prevented internal carriage of bombs so an external droppable two-component pod beneath the fuselage contained extra fuel and a nuclear weapon, reconnaissance equipment, or other specialized gear.

The B-58 crew consisted of a pilot, navigator-bombardier, and defense systems operator.

The USAF ordered 86 Hustlers which were operational in the Strategic Air Command between 1960 and 1970. B-58s set 19 world speed and altitude records and won five different aviation trophies. Note:There were a total of 116 B-58s built: 30 test and pre-production aircraft and 86 for inventory.

The B-58A on display flew from Los Angeles to New York and returned on March 5, 1962, setting three separate speed records and earning the crew the Bendix and Mackay Trophies for 1962. It was flown to the Museum in Dec. 1969.

SPECIFICATIONS

Span: 56 ft. 10 in.

Length: 96 ft. 10 in.

Height: 31 ft. 5 in.

Weight: 163,000 lbs. max.

Armament: One 20mm cannon in tail; nuclear weapons in pod or on under-wing pylons

Engines: Four General Electric J79s of 15,000 lbs. thrust ea. with afterburner

Cost: $12,442,000

PERFORMANCE

Maximum speed: 1,325 mph

Cruising speed: 610 mph.

Range: 4,400 miles without aerial refueling

Service Ceiling: 64,800 ft.

[hinckley buzzard]

The first authoritative admission on the U.S. side that the Jupiters had actually been part of a "deal" came at a conference in Moscow in January 1989

That may be the case, but the de-facto deal was obvious and reported on as such, shortly thereafter, when the Jupiters were in fact removed.

As for the B-58 story, I don't buy it. That would have been out of character for Kennedy, a cautious person, who deliberated slowly in making decisions. And there was way too much uncertainty at the time as to USSR's intentions. Such a provocation, if detected, could have resulted in a disastrous nuclear exchange, for no good reason at all. Sounds like a Kennedy-philiac wetdream to me.

[The Sons of Liberty]

This is a variation on a story I heard. The variation I heard was that SAC wanted to prove their bomber flight profiles for pentration of the Soviet defense system. According to what I heard, two B-52s came in low level screaming at top speed and crossed right over Red Square in broad daylight. Both returned safely to their bases.