Nuclear Age Nightmares: Accident—Miscalculation—Madness

Sixty-seventh Chapter in a Series Chronicling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

President Kennedy’s 1961 United Nations Speech

On September 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy warned the United Nations General Assembly,

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.… “

Accident—miscalculation—madness: could any or all of those nightmares really have ignited a nuclear holocaust in October 1962?

Accident

Eugene Burdick’s 1962 novel Fail-Safe imagines what happens when an undetected radio malfunction allows a U.S. aircraft carrying atomic weapons to turn a simulated attack on the Soviet Union into the real thing. The pilots, indoctrinated to ignore radio messages recalling them, dismiss even their wives’ frantic appeals to turn back.

The film The Bedford Incident examines how, in peace time, an American destroyer skipper and a Soviet submariner hunt each other in the North Atlantic. A misunderstood remark leads an American officer to launch the destroyer’s ASROC (vertically-launched anti-submarine rocket) at the Soviet sub; the Soviet sub fires a nuclear torpedo at the U.S. destroyer.

And in the Real World of 1962?

On Saturday, October 27th,, 1962, the most dangerous day of the missile crisis, an American U-2 on an arctic atmosphere-sampling mission lost its way and strayed over Siberia. A cascade of events sent two American fighters armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles hurtling toward Soviet fighters pursuing the U-2. The MiGs had to turn back before their fuel ran out. The American fighters broke off to escort the U-2 home.

Three days later, the American destroyer Blandy flushed a Soviet attack submarine to the surface north of the Bahamas. The sub lay on the Blandy’s starboard side; the situation was under control until the gun captain in the forward five-inch mount heard over the ship’s intercom, “…surface action starboard…”

The horrified watch officers then saw the forward five-inch mount train around to starboard until it was aimed directly at the surfaced submarine. The gun captain was immediately and profanely ordered to train his gun back to the ship’s center line.

For a few seconds, however, the Soviet skipper had been staring directly into the barrel of a cannon that could have blown him to kingdom come.

No one aboard Blandy knew the surfaced sub had a nuclear torpedo aboard.

Miscalculation

Earlier in this series we examined serious miscalculations made by both the Soviet Union and the United States that could have led to a nuclear war.

Khrushchev’s major miscalculations:

a)     Thinking he could smuggle strategic missiles into Cuba undetected. When the Americans discovered them—in the nick of time—they confronted him.

b)    Thinking that the Americans would passively accept Soviet missiles in Cuba, as he had had to accept NATO’s missiles in Turkey. He was wrong there too.

The Americans’ major miscalculations:

a)     Choosing to believe that Khrushchev would not dare smuggle strategic missiles into the Western Hemisphere—then stubbornly maintaining that belief in spite of evidence to the contrary.

b)    Curtailing photo reconnaissance missions over interior Cuba for six weeks, during which the Soviet missiles were trucked to northwestern Cuba and set up.

Those two sets of major miscalculations conspired to bring the United States and the USSR into direct confrontation on and after October 16th. The big question then would be how President Kennedy decided to confront Khrushchev and how Khrushchev reacted to that confrontation.

Madness

A staple scenario of Cold War fiction had military personnel controlling nuclear weapons going barmy. Would safety procedures like multiple firing keys and coded authentication messages actually prevent some front-line lunatic from triggering Armageddon?

More importantly, what about their superiors at the highest echelons?

In the 31st chapter in this series (http://napavalley.patch.com/blog_posts/civilian-control-of-the-us-milita...), we looked at the zany pretexts the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the nation’s highest military leaders—had cooked up in March 1962 to justify an invasion of Cuba. On April 10 the Joint Chiefs unanimously recommended that “a national policy of early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the United States [and] that such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible…”

Translation: the Joint Chiefs wanted to invade Cuba—NOW!

In James Bamford’s opinion, as of spring 1962 “the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.” Six months later, at the height of the Missile Crisis, they were still—unanimously—committed to military intervention in Cuba, regardless of the consequences.

Does the possibility of “madness” triggering a nuclear war still sound far-fetched? On “Black Saturday,” October 27th, a U.S. Navy hunter-killer force was relentlessly tracking a Soviet Foxtrot submarine in the Sargasso Sea north of the Bahamas. According to those aboard, the Soviet submarine commander, his batteries and air supply exhausted, and close to physical exhaustion himself, did go mad, or very nearly so. He was with difficulty restrained from loading his nuclear torpedo into a firing tube.

We did not learn about this incident until decades later.

Email your questions to phufstader@sbcglobal.net or post a comment.

Sources and Notes

The 2012 annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly concludes today, October 1st. Last week’s speeches and meetings made daily headlines across the United States. The civil strife in Syria was a major focus during the week.

The text of President Kennedy’s U.N. address was printed on p. 14 of the September 26, 1961, New York Times.

The incident involving the American U-2 lost over Siberia on October 27th, 1962, is described in Michael Dobbs’s One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, p. 254ff. It’s important to realize that this U-2 mission had nothing whatever to do with the missile crisis in the Caribbean. But the Soviets didn’t know that.

The Joint Chiefs recommendation that the U.S. invade Cuba is contained in Memorandum to the Secretary of Defense signed by Army General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JCSM-272-52, dated 10 April 1962. Html copy in author’s possession.

Bamford’s judgment that the JCS had “quietly slipped over the edge” appears on p. 82 of his Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

The gun-mount incident aboard USS Blandy is described in Peter A. Huchthausen’s October Fury. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2002, pp. 214-5. It later developed that part of a background remark in the ship’s Combat Information Center—“Looks like the ship should prepare for surface action starboard”—was apparently picked up by an open CIC microphone and transmitted to the forward gun captain’s headset. Of such incidents are calamities born.

The “madness” incident aboard the Soviet Foxtrot is described in Svetlana Savranskaya’s “New Sources of the Role of Soviet Submarines in the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 2005, pp. 246-7. Dr. Savranskaya cites the recollections of one Vadim Orlov, whom she identifies as the head of a “special radio intercept  team,” one of which was on each of the four foxtrots dispatched to Cuba. There is some question about the accuracy of some of Orlov’s details. “Recollections of Vladimir Orlov (USSR Submarine B-59). We will Sink Them All, But We Will Not Disgrace Our Navy.” From Alexander Mozgovoi, “The Cuban Samba of the Quartet of Foxtrots: Soviet Submarines in the Caribbean Crisis of 1962.” Military Parade, Moscow 2002. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya of the National Security Archive.

Orlov’s recollections are also discussed in Huchthausen’s October Fury, pp. 73ff. Huchthausen, who identifies Orlov as a Senior Lieutenant, concurs with Savranskaya that he headed a “supersecret Radio Intercept Group.”