On This Day: Cuban missile crisis ends after 13-day nuclear standoff

OCTOBER 28, 1962: Cuban missile crisis ends after 13-day nuclear standoff

The Cuban missile crisis ended on this day in 1962 after a 13-day standoff between the United States and the USSR that threatened global nuclear annihilation.

The world breathed a sigh of relief after the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle all his country’s atomic weapons stationed in Cuba.

In return, President John F Kennedy, who had learned of the missiles 90 miles from Florida on October 15, promised the U.S. would not invade the communist island.

He also secretly agreed to dismantle U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey – which then bordered the Soviet Union – and could reach Moscow in minutes.

The American leader’s diplomatic skills were credited for ending a confrontation,which is considered the closest the Cold War came to a nuclear conflict.

A British Pathé newsreel, titled Kennedy Triumphs, showed the smooth operator smiling with his glamorous wife Jackie after the agreement.

It also showed footage of Cubans preparing for war – including students manning barricades –and dictator Fidel Castro giving a speech during the standoff.


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The missile crisis arose after the botched U.S.-organised Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961.

In August1962, Khrushchev privately agreed to send his allies medium and two kinds of missiles that were capable of reaching Washington and New York in 13 minutes.

The weapons were not discovered for months because the U.S. was reluctant to fly its U2 spy planes after the pilot Gary Powers had crashed one in Russia in May.

But their suspicions were raised on October 7 when nominal Cuban president Osvaldo Dorticos told the UN they had weapons “which we would have preferred not to acquire, and which we do not wish to employ.”

A U2 plane sent on October 14 discovered medium and intermediate range missiles – capable of travelling between 2,000 and 3,500miles – on the island.

Kennedy was told the next day but decided against attacking Cuba, despite military chiefs advising him to launch a full-scale invasion.

Instead, he began private talks with the Soviets, who claimed the missiles were only defensive.

On October 22 Kennedy publicly announced a “quarantine”, which was essentially a naval blockade to prevent more weapons entering Cuba.

Meanwhile,U.S. armed forces went on alert and the Strategic Air Command went to a Stage 4alert, which is one step away from nuclear attack.

The news triggered panic around the world as a nuclear attack by either superpower would lead to simultaneous strikes on Nato and the Warsaw Pact states.

On October 22, Khrushchev said the blockade was “an act of aggression propelling human kind into the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war”.


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The world then held its breath as Soviet ships carrying additional missiles charged towards Cuba.

At the last minute, the vessels turned around and returned to the USSR.

U.S.Secretary of State Dean Rusk later said of this event: “We were eyeball to eyeball and the other guy just blinked.”

But that did not mean the crisis was over.
On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a letter saying he would withdraw the weapons from Cuba if the U.S. agreed to never invade the communist island.

But 24hours later the world was once again pushed to the brink of World War Three when a Cuban missile shot down a U2 and killed pilot Rudolph Anderson.

On October 28, Khrushchev calmed the situation down again by offering to remove the missiles from Cuba if the U.S. would remove its nuclear weapons from Turkey.
Kennedy, advised by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, ultimately decided to accept Khrushchev’s first offer and ignore the second.

It ended the crisis, although not everyone in the world was happy about the way it was resolved with the U.S. seeming to gain the upper hand.

Expressing anger at the Soviet climb-down, China and said it will support Cuba “through thick and thin”.

The next year, communist sympathiser Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy dead as he toured Dallas.