The Four Horsemen: the Nuclear Apocalypse of 1962
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
- Start date
Thank you for your input. Corrected the mistake.
I edited it based on your comments, but the "thousands of weapons" scenario is very real for 1962. I don't know where you got your numbers from, but sources I've checked mention 27.000 warheads for the US and 3.000 for the Soviets.
marathag
Banned
Here is ready for use listing for mostly strategic use, than tactical.
Now the US Army had Davey Crockett nukes from the back of a jeep, nuclear landmines, bridges in W. Germany set to receive Atomic demo charges,
Tactical aircraft with a variety of bombs and missiles, army with atomic shells for the 8" and around a dozen 'Atomic Annie' 11" guns
Navy had nuke depth charges, ASROC, more bombs and missiles, and 16" shells for the Iowas
About the only bunch that didn't have nukes in the '60s, was the Coast Guard
Number add up really fast
Upthread I posted charts for the yield of the big boys, but not the smaller weapons
SAC was planning to put a gigaton worth of nukes on the Moscow Metro Area, and really didn't coordinate much with the USN on what their Boomers were planning.
Chapter II: Proportional Response, Saturday October 27th 1962.
Update time!
At 06:00 AM on Saturday October 27th the CIA delivered a memo that three of the four missile sites at San Cristobal and the two sites at Sagua la Grande seemed to be fully operational. Three hours later Radio Moscow broadcast a message from Khrushchev that contradicted the letter from the night before, offering a new trade: the missiles on Cuba would be removed in exchange for the removal of the Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey. Moscow’s proposition would make Kennedy’s position tenuous as the trade would look like a fair one despite the fact that the missiles, militarily not useful, were slated for removal anyway, a fact not known to the general public. Going along with this, while it seemed perfectly reasonable, could be seen as caving to Moscow’s threats.
At 11:03 AM a new message from Khrushchev arrived that reiterated the proposal and added the element of UN inspections. Turkey remained opposed to the removal of the Jupiter missiles, but Italian Prime Minister Fanfani offered to allow the withdrawal of the missiles at Apulia as a bargaining chip. What made the following events even more tragic was that the US considered the Jupiter missiles obsolescent and supplanted by the submarine launched Polaris missiles. Dismantling them was, therefore, not an issue as long as it didn’t appear like a tit for tat. Removing them a few months later, by which time the matter would’ve been forgotten, could be done.
Tensions, however, increased again around noon when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down and its pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson, was killed. Further low-level recon flights were fired upon as well, with one getting hit by a 37 mm shell, but these all returned to base. After learning of the shootdown and the death of the pilot, President Kennedy met the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, to discuss the matter around 04:00 PM. Against the Pentagon’s wishes he decided not to attack the SAM site responsible for the shootdown, but warned retaliation would follow if another US aircraft was downed. Throughout the day, Kennedy stayed in close contact with U Thant, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in an effort to broker some sort of agreement with the Soviet Union, using Thant as a go-between.
At 01:00 PM, US navy destroyers Beale, Cony, Murray and Barry began investigating a sonar contact. At 04:17 PM, USS Beale made contact with Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 and began making attempts to “communicate” by pinging with active sonar and dropping practice depth charges. USS Cony added to the attempts to establish contact by dropping hand grenades into the water. The B-59’s crew misperceived these taunts as attacks and the exhausted Captain Valentin Savitsky thought the same, though aware of American tactics, as communications with Moscow could not be established. Believing the war had already begun, he furiously ordered a 15 kiloton nuclear torpedo to be readied. The crew, fatalistic at this point, figured like their captain that if they were going to go down they would take some Americans with them.
At 04:30 PM, EXCOMM decided to agree to Khrushchev’s proposed trade that had come in earlier that morning. The US would remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey as they were obsolete and slated for removal anyway, as long as the withdrawal of the missiles was kept secret. In return for this concession, the US agreed not to invade. The Soviets, in turn, would remove their missiles from Cuba. Just as cooler heads prevailed and a diplomatic resolution to the crisis had been agreed upon, things tragically spun out of control. If Captain Savitsky of Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 had surfaced to radio Moscow to learn war hadn’t begun, he wouldn’t have launched his nuclear torpedo and nothing would have happened.
At 05:15 PM, the readied nuclear torpedo was launched on Savitsky’s orders. Travelling at forty knots, it closed the distance in less than a minute and evaporated USS Beale and USS Cony along with their crews, while the accompanying Murray and Barry were crippled beyond repair with most of the men serving on them killed. The blast blinded dozens of men on nearby aircraft carrier USS Randolph, lightly damaging her and several of her escorting destroyers. Meanwhile, the B-59 was hit by an underwater shockwave that made its hull buckle and doomed her crew as she sank to the bottom with one watertight compartment after the other buckling as she descended past her crush depth.
The President was notified of the nuclear attack, resulting in the loss of four ships and roughly one thousand men, no more than twenty minutes after the fact. EXCOMM reconvened immediately in an emergency session. The question at hand was who had fired first and if the nuclear detonation had been accidental or not. The USS Randolph’s radio had been protected by the ship’s steel hull and because the ship was a little further away from the explosion than the four affected ships, enabling it to inform the Pentagon that a Soviet submarine had unleashed the nuclear attack. The readiness level of US forces was raised to DEFCON 1, the highest possible level, which was reserved for when nuclear war was imminent or had already begun.
It was proposed to him to enact SIOP-63 (Single Integrated Operational Plan), but he balked at the idea of a massive nuclear attack against the Soviets and Chinese. He decided on a moderate, proportional response. The result was nonetheless an escalation: at 06:00 PM Kennedy ordered the US Navy to find and eliminate Soviet naval vessels to the west of the 60th meridian west and for the US Air Force to pre-emptively destroy the operational Soviet missile sites on Cuba through an airstrike. The US Navy based at Chesapeake Bay took to sea in numbers to carry out this search and destroy order, aided by aerial reconnaissance.
After the order for an airstrike was given and the navy escalated into a shooting war, Kennedy reviewed the plans for an air attack devised by General Taylor earlier: three airfields with nuclear-capable IL-28 medium bombers would be bombed along with all known IRBM and MRBM sites, but Taylor reminded the President there might be unknown launch sites missed by the CIA and the U-2 overflights. Kennedy accepted a nuclear strike on US soil could happen and nonetheless gave the final go-ahead for the airstrikes at 07:00 PM. The first bombs would fall at 07:45 PM. US forces also prepared themselves for an invasion of Cuba, a possibility that became ever more likely as the crisis continued. The USS Enterprise and the USS Independence and their carrier groups west and south of Jamaica respectively were ordered to set a course to Cuba to provide air support to an invasion of Cuba, if necessary. Battleship USS New Jersey was also hastily reactivated; she was chosen as she was in the best material condition compared to her sister ships, having received an overhaul just before her decommissioning. As a mixture of fresh recruits and WW II and Korean war veterans were brought aboard, a handful of 20 kiloton nuclear shells were added to her arsenal as well. She steamed out of Bayonne, New Jersey, the next morning. She rushed south at a speed of 31 knots.
Khrushchev was informed of the nuclear detonation thanks to a Soviet cargo ship that noticed the mushroom cloud in the distance and notified Moscow. He learned the news and reportedly the first thing he asked was: “Was it us or was it them?” Admiral Gorshkov informed him by phone that submarine B-59 was missing and that other submarines reported being under attack from the Americans too. Orders were sent out that Soviet naval ships were to retaliate against American ships, as it was initially believed the Americans had fired the first shots of this undeclared war. Within an hour of Kennedy’s search and destroy order and Khrushchev’s authorization to strike back, twenty Soviet ships and eight American ones had been sunk. Meanwhile, Khrushchev phoned Anatoly Dobrynin to call the White House and personally ask Kennedy whether a state of war existed between the two superpowers. After the twenty minute discussion by phone ended, if the shouting match between the President and the Soviet Ambassador deserves to be called that, Dobrynin hung up with a sense of finality. He reported back to Moscow that when Kennedy answered the phone he was furious about the nuclear strike, which he perceived as a Soviet sneak attack, though Dobrynin added the Americans may have been at fault by provoking the B-59’s captain into attacking. Though he hadn’t gotten around to asking this, he told Moscow the two countries were de facto at war.
The Soviet Premier resolved to personally speak to Kennedy by phone as he knew just how enormous the discrepancy between the Soviet and American forces really was. He knew the Soviet Union couldn’t “win” in any sense of the word and intended to negotiate a ceasefire and announce his unconditional withdrawal from Cuba. Missiles surrounded the country and US bombers were in the air waiting for the order to attack; the USSR had much less to strike back with.
This conference didn’t happen as hardliners stopped it: Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Shelepin secretly phoned his protégé Semichastny, who’d succeeded him as KGB chief. Khrushchev was arrested, taken out to a forest outside Moscow and was shot. Shelepin, Semichastny and other hardliners agreed to rule by committee, removing pro-Khruschev officers from command and seizing control of the strategic missile forces and the strategic bombers in a matter of hours. They did not know their 3000+ warheads and handful of ICBMs didn’t compare to the US’s 27.000+ warheads and pressed ahead. Kennedy waited for a phone call that would never come. A recall order could have been issued, but it wasn’t. The hardliners, not knowing just how disadvantaged the USSR was, decided to retaliate forcefully against perceived US aggression and eliminate the nuclear threat. The coup d’état had progressed smoothly.
In the meantime, the first wave of some 200 US aircraft reached Cuba at 07:45 PM. Having seen the attackers coming on radar, the Cubans took to the skies. US Air Force F-105 Thunderchiefs and US Navy F-4 Phantom IIs overwhelmed the defending MiG-15s, losing only five aircraft to the enemy’s seventeen planes downed. Some American aircraft were lost to surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns, but the first wave eventually silenced most SAM sites. The second wave attacked the missile sites, destroying trailers and transporter-erector-launchers, rupturing fuel lines and spreading missile parts across the landscape as missiles blew apart in secondary explosions. The second wave also struck the hangars of the airfields where the IL-28 bombers were stationed. Cuban MiG-15s and Soviet MiG-21s from bases further away attempted to intervene, but couldn’t stop the onslaught. Undeterred by their losses so far, the third and final wave hit the missile sites and airfields again just to be sure and at this point there were no more MiGs left to respond, leaving air defence up to Cuban anti-aircraft gunners and a handful of surviving SAM sites. About 90 minutes after it all began, around 09:15 PM, it was over. Fire, shrapnel, torn bodies, wreckage and burning rocket fuel was all that was left. Reconnaissance flights continued to look for missile sites after the attack (crucially, two launchers and five SS-4 missiles escaped the attention of the Americans as well as the FROG-7 tactical nuclear missiles on the island). After the first reports came in, Kennedy was elated for the first time during the crisis, believing this could end without nuclear Armageddon.
Meanwhile, Castro considered the aerial offensive the prelude to an invasion. He ordered an attack to take control of the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay. An artillery bombardment pounded the base for over an hour, at which point Castro believed the enemy’s defences had been softened enough. A division sized human wave attack supported by a handful of T-55 and T-34 tanks attacked the base’s defences, commanded by Fidel’s brother Raul. Over 10.000 Soviet troops were deployed in support as well. US soldiers and marines bravely fought and held the perimeter. The fighting developed into a siege that continued the next day.
Feeling confident, Kennedy ordered his men to hold the base for as long as possible, reassuring the base commander reinforcements were underway. In fact, after learning of the attack on Guantanamo Bay, it was decided Cuba was going to be invaded within no more than twelve hours, a decision Kennedy had made together with EXCOMM and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The necessary forces were ready thanks to the fact that this possibility had been anticipated, resulting in the necessary preparations being made just in case. X-Hour was set at 09:00 o’clock the next morning. Everything short of the use of nuclear weapons was authorized.
Meanwhile, after the final wave of bombers headed north back to their US airbases and the Cubans attacked Guantanamo, Kennedy experienced what was probably the oddest joint session of Congress any President had ever experienced. The session was called to issue a declaration of war, and the question on everybody’s mind was whether it would encompass Cuba or would be extended to the Soviet Union and maybe even its Warsaw Pact allies. Nearly half of the Congressmen attended by phone as they feared Washington DC would be hit by a Soviet nuclear attack just as they were all in session in the Capitol Building. The reasons for their absence was understandable, so the rules were bent to allow it.
It was a short televised session in which an exhausted, visibly tired Kennedy gave a speech: “I said to you before that if Cuba should possess a capacity to carry out offensive actions against the United States, we would act. This eventuality, has now become reality, and has led to an unprovoked nuclear attack against forces of the United States Navy. I ask Congress to declare war on Cuba and authorize the use of military force to remove the threat of nuclear attack against our country and our allies from that island.” Congress unanimously voted in favour. Immediately after that a Civil Defence Emergency message was issued. The fighting in Berlin erupted an hour later and when Kennedy was informed he ordered US forces to prepare for an imminent Soviet invasion of West Germany, something that Britain, France and of course West Germany itself also did. Kennedy, who’d barely caught any sleep at all in 36 hours, went to sleep at 12:15 AM on Sunday October 28th.
Chapter II: Proportional Response, Saturday October 27th 1962.
At 06:00 AM on Saturday October 27th the CIA delivered a memo that three of the four missile sites at San Cristobal and the two sites at Sagua la Grande seemed to be fully operational. Three hours later Radio Moscow broadcast a message from Khrushchev that contradicted the letter from the night before, offering a new trade: the missiles on Cuba would be removed in exchange for the removal of the Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey. Moscow’s proposition would make Kennedy’s position tenuous as the trade would look like a fair one despite the fact that the missiles, militarily not useful, were slated for removal anyway, a fact not known to the general public. Going along with this, while it seemed perfectly reasonable, could be seen as caving to Moscow’s threats.
At 11:03 AM a new message from Khrushchev arrived that reiterated the proposal and added the element of UN inspections. Turkey remained opposed to the removal of the Jupiter missiles, but Italian Prime Minister Fanfani offered to allow the withdrawal of the missiles at Apulia as a bargaining chip. What made the following events even more tragic was that the US considered the Jupiter missiles obsolescent and supplanted by the submarine launched Polaris missiles. Dismantling them was, therefore, not an issue as long as it didn’t appear like a tit for tat. Removing them a few months later, by which time the matter would’ve been forgotten, could be done.
Tensions, however, increased again around noon when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down and its pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson, was killed. Further low-level recon flights were fired upon as well, with one getting hit by a 37 mm shell, but these all returned to base. After learning of the shootdown and the death of the pilot, President Kennedy met the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, to discuss the matter around 04:00 PM. Against the Pentagon’s wishes he decided not to attack the SAM site responsible for the shootdown, but warned retaliation would follow if another US aircraft was downed. Throughout the day, Kennedy stayed in close contact with U Thant, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in an effort to broker some sort of agreement with the Soviet Union, using Thant as a go-between.
At 01:00 PM, US navy destroyers Beale, Cony, Murray and Barry began investigating a sonar contact. At 04:17 PM, USS Beale made contact with Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 and began making attempts to “communicate” by pinging with active sonar and dropping practice depth charges. USS Cony added to the attempts to establish contact by dropping hand grenades into the water. The B-59’s crew misperceived these taunts as attacks and the exhausted Captain Valentin Savitsky thought the same, though aware of American tactics, as communications with Moscow could not be established. Believing the war had already begun, he furiously ordered a 15 kiloton nuclear torpedo to be readied. The crew, fatalistic at this point, figured like their captain that if they were going to go down they would take some Americans with them.
At 04:30 PM, EXCOMM decided to agree to Khrushchev’s proposed trade that had come in earlier that morning. The US would remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey as they were obsolete and slated for removal anyway, as long as the withdrawal of the missiles was kept secret. In return for this concession, the US agreed not to invade. The Soviets, in turn, would remove their missiles from Cuba. Just as cooler heads prevailed and a diplomatic resolution to the crisis had been agreed upon, things tragically spun out of control. If Captain Savitsky of Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 had surfaced to radio Moscow to learn war hadn’t begun, he wouldn’t have launched his nuclear torpedo and nothing would have happened.
At 05:15 PM, the readied nuclear torpedo was launched on Savitsky’s orders. Travelling at forty knots, it closed the distance in less than a minute and evaporated USS Beale and USS Cony along with their crews, while the accompanying Murray and Barry were crippled beyond repair with most of the men serving on them killed. The blast blinded dozens of men on nearby aircraft carrier USS Randolph, lightly damaging her and several of her escorting destroyers. Meanwhile, the B-59 was hit by an underwater shockwave that made its hull buckle and doomed her crew as she sank to the bottom with one watertight compartment after the other buckling as she descended past her crush depth.
The President was notified of the nuclear attack, resulting in the loss of four ships and roughly one thousand men, no more than twenty minutes after the fact. EXCOMM reconvened immediately in an emergency session. The question at hand was who had fired first and if the nuclear detonation had been accidental or not. The USS Randolph’s radio had been protected by the ship’s steel hull and because the ship was a little further away from the explosion than the four affected ships, enabling it to inform the Pentagon that a Soviet submarine had unleashed the nuclear attack. The readiness level of US forces was raised to DEFCON 1, the highest possible level, which was reserved for when nuclear war was imminent or had already begun.
It was proposed to him to enact SIOP-63 (Single Integrated Operational Plan), but he balked at the idea of a massive nuclear attack against the Soviets and Chinese. He decided on a moderate, proportional response. The result was nonetheless an escalation: at 06:00 PM Kennedy ordered the US Navy to find and eliminate Soviet naval vessels to the west of the 60th meridian west and for the US Air Force to pre-emptively destroy the operational Soviet missile sites on Cuba through an airstrike. The US Navy based at Chesapeake Bay took to sea in numbers to carry out this search and destroy order, aided by aerial reconnaissance.
After the order for an airstrike was given and the navy escalated into a shooting war, Kennedy reviewed the plans for an air attack devised by General Taylor earlier: three airfields with nuclear-capable IL-28 medium bombers would be bombed along with all known IRBM and MRBM sites, but Taylor reminded the President there might be unknown launch sites missed by the CIA and the U-2 overflights. Kennedy accepted a nuclear strike on US soil could happen and nonetheless gave the final go-ahead for the airstrikes at 07:00 PM. The first bombs would fall at 07:45 PM. US forces also prepared themselves for an invasion of Cuba, a possibility that became ever more likely as the crisis continued. The USS Enterprise and the USS Independence and their carrier groups west and south of Jamaica respectively were ordered to set a course to Cuba to provide air support to an invasion of Cuba, if necessary. Battleship USS New Jersey was also hastily reactivated; she was chosen as she was in the best material condition compared to her sister ships, having received an overhaul just before her decommissioning. As a mixture of fresh recruits and WW II and Korean war veterans were brought aboard, a handful of 20 kiloton nuclear shells were added to her arsenal as well. She steamed out of Bayonne, New Jersey, the next morning. She rushed south at a speed of 31 knots.
Khrushchev was informed of the nuclear detonation thanks to a Soviet cargo ship that noticed the mushroom cloud in the distance and notified Moscow. He learned the news and reportedly the first thing he asked was: “Was it us or was it them?” Admiral Gorshkov informed him by phone that submarine B-59 was missing and that other submarines reported being under attack from the Americans too. Orders were sent out that Soviet naval ships were to retaliate against American ships, as it was initially believed the Americans had fired the first shots of this undeclared war. Within an hour of Kennedy’s search and destroy order and Khrushchev’s authorization to strike back, twenty Soviet ships and eight American ones had been sunk. Meanwhile, Khrushchev phoned Anatoly Dobrynin to call the White House and personally ask Kennedy whether a state of war existed between the two superpowers. After the twenty minute discussion by phone ended, if the shouting match between the President and the Soviet Ambassador deserves to be called that, Dobrynin hung up with a sense of finality. He reported back to Moscow that when Kennedy answered the phone he was furious about the nuclear strike, which he perceived as a Soviet sneak attack, though Dobrynin added the Americans may have been at fault by provoking the B-59’s captain into attacking. Though he hadn’t gotten around to asking this, he told Moscow the two countries were de facto at war.
The Soviet Premier resolved to personally speak to Kennedy by phone as he knew just how enormous the discrepancy between the Soviet and American forces really was. He knew the Soviet Union couldn’t “win” in any sense of the word and intended to negotiate a ceasefire and announce his unconditional withdrawal from Cuba. Missiles surrounded the country and US bombers were in the air waiting for the order to attack; the USSR had much less to strike back with.
This conference didn’t happen as hardliners stopped it: Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Shelepin secretly phoned his protégé Semichastny, who’d succeeded him as KGB chief. Khrushchev was arrested, taken out to a forest outside Moscow and was shot. Shelepin, Semichastny and other hardliners agreed to rule by committee, removing pro-Khruschev officers from command and seizing control of the strategic missile forces and the strategic bombers in a matter of hours. They did not know their 3000+ warheads and handful of ICBMs didn’t compare to the US’s 27.000+ warheads and pressed ahead. Kennedy waited for a phone call that would never come. A recall order could have been issued, but it wasn’t. The hardliners, not knowing just how disadvantaged the USSR was, decided to retaliate forcefully against perceived US aggression and eliminate the nuclear threat. The coup d’état had progressed smoothly.
In the meantime, the first wave of some 200 US aircraft reached Cuba at 07:45 PM. Having seen the attackers coming on radar, the Cubans took to the skies. US Air Force F-105 Thunderchiefs and US Navy F-4 Phantom IIs overwhelmed the defending MiG-15s, losing only five aircraft to the enemy’s seventeen planes downed. Some American aircraft were lost to surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns, but the first wave eventually silenced most SAM sites. The second wave attacked the missile sites, destroying trailers and transporter-erector-launchers, rupturing fuel lines and spreading missile parts across the landscape as missiles blew apart in secondary explosions. The second wave also struck the hangars of the airfields where the IL-28 bombers were stationed. Cuban MiG-15s and Soviet MiG-21s from bases further away attempted to intervene, but couldn’t stop the onslaught. Undeterred by their losses so far, the third and final wave hit the missile sites and airfields again just to be sure and at this point there were no more MiGs left to respond, leaving air defence up to Cuban anti-aircraft gunners and a handful of surviving SAM sites. About 90 minutes after it all began, around 09:15 PM, it was over. Fire, shrapnel, torn bodies, wreckage and burning rocket fuel was all that was left. Reconnaissance flights continued to look for missile sites after the attack (crucially, two launchers and five SS-4 missiles escaped the attention of the Americans as well as the FROG-7 tactical nuclear missiles on the island). After the first reports came in, Kennedy was elated for the first time during the crisis, believing this could end without nuclear Armageddon.
Meanwhile, Castro considered the aerial offensive the prelude to an invasion. He ordered an attack to take control of the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay. An artillery bombardment pounded the base for over an hour, at which point Castro believed the enemy’s defences had been softened enough. A division sized human wave attack supported by a handful of T-55 and T-34 tanks attacked the base’s defences, commanded by Fidel’s brother Raul. Over 10.000 Soviet troops were deployed in support as well. US soldiers and marines bravely fought and held the perimeter. The fighting developed into a siege that continued the next day.
Feeling confident, Kennedy ordered his men to hold the base for as long as possible, reassuring the base commander reinforcements were underway. In fact, after learning of the attack on Guantanamo Bay, it was decided Cuba was going to be invaded within no more than twelve hours, a decision Kennedy had made together with EXCOMM and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The necessary forces were ready thanks to the fact that this possibility had been anticipated, resulting in the necessary preparations being made just in case. X-Hour was set at 09:00 o’clock the next morning. Everything short of the use of nuclear weapons was authorized.
Meanwhile, after the final wave of bombers headed north back to their US airbases and the Cubans attacked Guantanamo, Kennedy experienced what was probably the oddest joint session of Congress any President had ever experienced. The session was called to issue a declaration of war, and the question on everybody’s mind was whether it would encompass Cuba or would be extended to the Soviet Union and maybe even its Warsaw Pact allies. Nearly half of the Congressmen attended by phone as they feared Washington DC would be hit by a Soviet nuclear attack just as they were all in session in the Capitol Building. The reasons for their absence was understandable, so the rules were bent to allow it.
It was a short televised session in which an exhausted, visibly tired Kennedy gave a speech: “I said to you before that if Cuba should possess a capacity to carry out offensive actions against the United States, we would act. This eventuality, has now become reality, and has led to an unprovoked nuclear attack against forces of the United States Navy. I ask Congress to declare war on Cuba and authorize the use of military force to remove the threat of nuclear attack against our country and our allies from that island.” Congress unanimously voted in favour. Immediately after that a Civil Defence Emergency message was issued. The fighting in Berlin erupted an hour later and when Kennedy was informed he ordered US forces to prepare for an imminent Soviet invasion of West Germany, something that Britain, France and of course West Germany itself also did. Kennedy, who’d barely caught any sleep at all in 36 hours, went to sleep at 12:15 AM on Sunday October 28th.
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Is this a standard procedure? I haven't heard of using hand grenades underwater at any point
Not sure if this was standard procedure, but I read about the hand grenades on this site. As far as the practice depth charges, that happened for sure.
That's impossible, she could just barely reach 32 knots when built and this is 20 years later, half of that spent in reserve, with a crew that just got aboard.
I expect the Chinese to basically tell the Soviets they're sitting this one out, but ready the PLA to invade the Soviet Far East just in case
This sounds a lot like the PoD of @Amerigo Vespucci's Cuban Missile War TL, @Onkel Willie; did you draw inspiration from that?
marathag
Banned
It's still early. I get the impression so far that the Soviets won't do as well as they did in that TL
Personally, I think in this TL, this would have spasmed to the USN pretty much starting WWIII on their own, the with SAC quickly following, with the Soviet wondering why ICBMs were raining down on them, before they even new that the Sub was late in reporting
Too many of the top guys had predelegated launch authority, and many of the early PALs were able to be be bypassed
Personally, I think in this TL, this would have spasmed to the USN pretty much starting WWIII on their own, the with SAC quickly following, with the Soviet wondering why ICBMs were raining down on them, before they even new that the Sub was late in reporting
Too many of the top guys had predelegated launch authority, and many of the early PALs were able to be be bypassed
Yeah, the submarine thinking the war has started and launching the nuclear torpedo, and Khrushchev getting removed by hardliners, are basically the same plot as Cuban Missile War.
Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. So far, it tracks it very closely. Have you read Amerigo's timeline, @Onkel Willie ?
I just sort of assumed "thousands of nuclear detonations" included tactical level stuff and not just ICBM's.
I remember reading that over a decade ago when I joined the forum. I admit I used it for fact checking, but more of my own twists will follow as the TL progresses and of course in a significantly different writing style. And the B-59 of course makes for an excellent PoD.
SuperZtar64
Banned
Oh my god, a Cuban Missile War timeline
Watched faster than the speed of light. Today is a good day.
Watched faster than the speed of light. Today is a good day.