Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Montgomery
...so he picked up the red phone and called...and we're all alive now because of it.
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Actually Marc there was no red phone to pick up during the Cuban missile crisis, that was a big part of the problem. In the end it was only secret back-channel communications which defused the situation at the eleventh hour. It was in response to this problem that the Washington-Moscow hotline was established soon afterwards. Also, contrary to popular culture, it's never been a telephone, it's always text communication. I guess it has to be, for translation purposes, and various other problems arising in phone conversations, like frayed tempers! Of course, the phone works much better in movies, like Dr. Strangelove, which was based on these events.
As for ending the crisis - Kennedy gets the credit in the West, and rightly so, for keeping his Chiefs of Staff at bay, notably Curtis Lemay. However it's arguably Krushchev who deserves most credit, for initiating direct negotiations, via his secret communique, and managing to keep the Soviets stood down throughout the crisis. He's generally painted as the villain of the piece, and indeed of the Cold War itself at that time, but in fact he was under even more pressure from his generals than Kennedy. The real villain of course was Castro, who as we know was a genuine psychopath.
It can be difficult to judge these events half a century later, particularly as a lot of material remains classified, but there have been some interesting revelations over the years, including a statement by Deputy Chief of Staff Burchinal. At the height the crisis, when 80% of SAC planes were ready to launch, with large numbers on airborne alert, many of them orbiting Soviet airspace (as featured in Dr. Strangelove), Burchinal states that "the Russians were so thoroughly stood down, and we knew it. They didn't make any move. They did not increase their alert; they did not increase any flights, or their air defense posture. They didn't do a thing, they froze in place. We were never further from nuclear war than at the time of Cuba, never further."
More recently however it was revealed that a Soviet sub off Cuba came within a hair's breadth of launching a nuclear weapon, and it was only thanks to the 2IC, who managed to dissuade the captain, that the launch was narrowly averted. US warships at the time were dropping depth charges around the sub, which had been out of radio contact for days, so the commander assumed war had already started. One suspects that if he HAD pushed that button, it WOULD have started.