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1) In 1962, the Soviet had fewer than fifty bombers and missiles that could hit the United States. We had more than five hundred.
2) the crisis was resolved because the United States forced the Soviet Union to back down.

3)27th October – Before Kennedy could reply to the first, a second letter from Khrushchev was received demanding that USA removed their missiles from Turkey. Kennedy refused to remove the American missiles in Turkey because he felt a deal over the missiles would damage American prestige. Instead he replied to the first letter promising to lift the naval blockade and not invade Cuba as long as all the missiles in Cuba were removed and none more installed there. The presidents brother informed the Russian ambassador (evening of 27th October) that the president had considered removing the missiles from Turkey for some time.
4) So, neither the Turks nor NATO wanted them out, so action had not been taken to get them out. But in a critical meeting in the president’s office a small group of six or seven of were present -- they all agreed that they, the missiles, were a pile of junk militarily and they should get them out of there, but because of the way in which action to remove them under the threat of Soviet pressure – the way in which that would be interpreted as weakness by the Turks and by NATO, they could not make it part of the agreement.

So the president agreed, and he told Bobby to tell Dobrynin that he agreed to pledge he would not invade Cuba in return for Khrushchev taking Soviet missiles out of Cuba. And, in addition, Dobrynin could tell Khrushchev that unilaterally – not part of an agreement, but unilaterally -- he was going to take the Jupiter missiles out of Turkey and replace them, in effect, by Polaris submarines off the coast of Turkey. So that was the deal. It was not an agreement; it was a statement of unilateral action.

However you phrase it, its the same agreement and effect and no amount of apple polishing and semantics by the incompetent McNamara, waterboy Sorenson and the other hagiographers from the presidential staff will make it other than what it was. It is well accepted that it was a one-for-one agreement: withdraw your missiles in Cuba and we'll withdraw ours from Turkey (this by the way, was a little detail that only appeared in the public domain months after the supposed "back-down" splashed all over the media in time for the 1962 congressional elections). I don't dispute the US 10-1 missile advantage, which with the promise on removing the Turkey missiles probably spurred Khrushchev to agree and would have made any war with Russia a bit one-sided; but then again, wasn't it JFK who campaigned in 1960 on the supposed "missile gap" caused by the Soviet numerical "advantage" over the US? I grant that the overall result could have been much, much worse but it was hardly the "winner take all staredown" that the press and the JFK legacy keepers like to project.