Cuban missile crisis - 1962 - Obama visit

[Ameriscot]

Obama's visit to Cuba reminds me of the crisis. Anyone my age or older will remember it. I was 10. Obama was only a year old.

I remember there being a lot of tension. I don't remember asking my parents about it, but I remember one day in class asking my 5th grade teacher if there was going to be a war. Can't recall his reply but I think he told us we didn't need to worry.

http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis

http://www.historytoday.com/john-swift/cuban-missile-crisis

 

[IKE]

I remember having 'drills' in class when it was going on, they taught us to get under our desks......desks must have been made really, really well back then.

 

[Ameriscot]

I remember having 'drills' in class when it was going on, they taught us to get under our desks......desks must have been made really, really well back then.

I only remember doing those in 1st and 2nd grade - 1958 and 59. Yea, they must have been bomb proof!

 

[Wrigley's]

I just saw a documentary on this very subject. It was about a guy on one of the four Russian subs, the one that had the nuke bomb on it. It took three men with three keys (in total) to launch the nuke, and one of them, Vasili Arkhipov, refused to stick his key in the detonator.
I think the doc was called "the man who saved the world."

 

[Ameriscot]

I just saw a documentary on this very subject. It was about a guy on one of the four Russian subs, the one that had the nuke bomb on it. It took three men with three keys (in total) to launch the nuke, and one of them, Vasili Arkhipov, refused to stick his key in the detonator.
I think the doc was called "the man who saved the world."

I think I might have seen this. I know I've seen dramas on this.

 

[Wrigley's]

I think I might have seen this. I know I've seen dramas on this.

It was the first I'd heard of it...not the Cuban missile crisis but that guy Vasili. I was 9 (about..not good at math), but I didn't pay much attention to it because I figured the amount my parents were freaking out was adequate.

 

[Ameriscot]

It was the first I'd heard of it...not the Cuban missile crisis but that guy Vasili. I was 9 (about..not good at math), but I didn't pay much attention to it because I figured the amount my parents were freaking out was adequate.

You must have been 11. I was 10 and I'm 64 now.

I'll look up the documentary.

 

[Don M.]

Obama's visit to Cuba reminds me of the crisis. Anyone my age or older will remember it. I was 10. Obama was only a year old.

I remember there being a lot of tension. I don't remember asking my parents about it, but I remember one day in class asking my 5th grade teacher if there was going to be a war. Can't recall his reply but I think he told us we didn't need to worry.

http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis

http://www.historytoday.com/john-swift/cuban-missile-crisis

Most people don't realize just how close we came to Nuclear War during that crisis. I was stationed in Germany, in the USAF, at that time. We went on Full Alert for about 3 days. We had every available F-105 fueled, armed with a MarkII bomb, the pilots in the cockpit, and waiting for the word to start engines and launch. For them, it would have probably been a one way mission. We had all written what could have been our last letters home, with the hope that there would be someone there to receive it. Everyone was at their duty stations, and we were glued to the radios broadcasting the Armed Forces News. When word was received that Khrushchev had "blinked", and the Soviet ships had turned around, there was a collective sigh of relief, and a massive cheer. We stayed on full alert for another day, until it was clear that the ships were indeed on their way back to Russia, then things wound down to a more normal routine. Over the next week, there were a lot of drunken parties, both on base, and in the surrounding towns, as everyone...GI's and Germans...celebrated still being Alive.

 

[Ameriscot]

Don, that must have been incredibly scary!!

 

[Debby]

I just saw a documentary on this very subject. It was about a guy on one of the four Russian subs, the one that had the nuke bomb on it. It took three men with three keys (in total) to launch the nuke, and one of them, Vasili Arkhipov, refused to stick his key in the detonator.
I think the doc was called "the man who saved the world."

Wasn't there a movie recently by that name, The Man Who Saved The World?

And you mention three men and three keys but wasn't some nuclear site in the States recently made 'notorious' because the guys who were in charge have been relieved of duty because of failing drug tests or something? Yep, quick search came up with this:

'...The entire Air Force chain of command of a missile base responsible for one-third of our land-based missiles was removed a few weeks ago because of a scandal involving drugs and cheating on tests...Last year, 17 missileers at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota were removed from duty after performing poorly on an inspection. At Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, three missileers are under investigation for drug possession and 91 have been implicated in a scandal involving cheating on routine tests.



' http://www.cbsnews.com/news/whos-minding-the-nuclear-weapons/

Now that's scary.

 

[Don M.]

Don, that must have been incredibly scary!!

Scary was hardly the word for it. We were all wondering how many more days, or hours, we had. The local Germans knew something Big was going on, because the base was on total lock down...no civilian workers allowed to enter. I don't know what kind of news the people back home were getting, but if they saw what we were doing, they would have been leaving the cities in droves.

Then, just a year later, we were sitting in the barracks, playing poker, and one of the guys came running through shouting that Kennedy had been shot. We quickly turned on our radios, as we changed back into our fatigues, and got ready for another Alert...which came within minutes. No one knew what was happening, but again, we went on high alert for a couple of days.

Yup, the early 60's were some scary times...makes these Muslim terrorist threats seem paltry, by comparison.

 

[Ameriscot]

Scary was hardly the word for it. We were all wondering how many more days, or hours, we had. The local Germans knew something Big was going on, because the base was on total lock down...no civilian workers allowed to enter. I don't know what kind of news the people back home were getting, but if they saw what we were doing, they would have been leaving the cities in droves.

Then, just a year later, we were sitting in the barracks, playing poker, and one of the guys came running through shouting that Kennedy had been shot. We quickly turned on our radios, as we changed back into our fatigues, and got ready for another Alert...which came within minutes. No one knew what was happening, but again, we went on high alert for a couple of days.

Yup, the early 60's were some scary times...makes these Muslim terrorist threats seem paltry, by comparison.

I can just imagine! I was 11 when JFK was killed but I'll never forget that day and how the adults reacted.

 

[IKE]

I can just imagine! I was 11 when JFK was killed but I'll never forget that day and how the adults reacted.

I was in school and can recall them playing the news over the PA system.......I recall watching my teacher cry at the front of the class while we all sat quietly and listened to the broadcast.

 

[Wrigley's]

Wasn't there a movie recently by that name, The Man Who Saved The World?

And you mention three men and three keys but wasn't some nuclear site in the States recently made 'notorious' because the guys who were in charge have been relieved of duty because of failing drug tests or something? Yep, quick search came up with this:

'...The entire Air Force chain of command of a missile base responsible for one-third of our land-based missiles was removed a few weeks ago because of a scandal involving drugs and cheating on tests...Last year, 17 missileers at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota were removed from duty after performing poorly on an inspection. At Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, three missileers are under investigation for drug possession and 91 have been implicated in a scandal involving cheating on routine tests.



' http://www.cbsnews.com/news/whos-minding-the-nuclear-weapons/

Now that's scary.

I just looked that up. The movie was about a different guy, named Stanislov Petrov. It was 1983, and his story is that he got a report that we shot five missiles at Russia but he had the good sense to double-check that it was a false report.

That's TWO Russian who saved our bacon. I have a new-found love of Russians.

tsk, and I let my buddy's talk me out of getting one of those Russian Bride catalogs back in 88.

 

[Wrigley's]

Scary was hardly the word for it. We were all wondering how many more days, or hours, we had. The local Germans knew something Big was going on, because the base was on total lock down...no civilian workers allowed to enter. I don't know what kind of news the people back home were getting, but if they saw what we were doing, they would have been leaving the cities in droves.

Then, just a year later, we were sitting in the barracks, playing poker, and one of the guys came running through shouting that Kennedy had been shot. We quickly turned on our radios, as we changed back into our fatigues, and got ready for another Alert...which came within minutes. No one knew what was happening, but again, we went on high alert for a couple of days.

Yup, the early 60's were some scary times...makes these Muslim terrorist threats seem paltry, by comparison.

Just want to say thank you for your service. My brother enlisted in the AF around '68, and our grandparents cried, figuring he was headed for Nam. He didn't go there, but he was willing. He was in for 25 years but didn't see any action. Fortuitous timing I guess.

 

[Wrigley's]

You must have been 11. I was 10 and I'm 64 now.

I'll look up the documentary.

My b'day is in Dec, though, so I turned 11 right after we knew I would live to see it.

I started having trouble remembering how old I am when I turned 38. I was 37 for about 3 years. It wasn't vanity - sometimes I gave myself an extra year or two.

 

[Ameriscot]

My b'day is in Dec, though, so I turned 11 right after we knew I would live to see it.

I started having trouble remembering how old I am when I turned 38. I was 37 for about 3 years. It wasn't vanity - sometimes I gave myself an extra year or two.

Understand! I sometimes have to think about how old I am!

 

[Wrigley's]

Understand! I sometimes have to think about how old I am!

I try to avoid thinking about it. I'm sure it takes years off of me.

 

[Ameriscot]

I try to avoid thinking about it. I'm sure it takes years off of me.

I'm fine with being 64, I just forget sometimes!

 

[Laurie]

Don, that must have been incredibly scary!!

It was. I was on anti-submarine base on the west coast of the UK. We had every plane we could muster flying fully armed 16 hour sorties. They were dropping sonar buoys all over the North Atlantic, and we had planes from every country in NATO dropping in for refuelling and fresh rations. We liked to think that we knew where every Soviet sub was, but I doubt if we did.

When I suggested my wife of eighteen months left our on-base married quarter for somewhere safer there was no argument. A flat "My place is by your side looking after you." was the end of all discussion.

 

[Manatee]

I was 28 at that time, married and had a little boy. I was glad that I had put in my military time and done with it. It was still spooky.
Years later I spoke to people who had been in Miami at that time. They said the railroad trains carrying army tanks were endless.

 

[Ralphy1]

I rember teaching in a little rural school and if a war began we were to stay with the children until they were all picked up by their parents; pretty silly when you think about a nuclear exchange with the deadly fallout from nukes hitting major cities on the east coast that would have doomed us all...

 

[Ameriscot]

It was. I was on anti-submarine base on the west coast of the UK. We had every plane we could muster flying fully armed 16 hour sorties. They were dropping sonar buoys all over the North Atlantic, and we had planes from every country in NATO dropping in for refuelling and fresh rations. We liked to think that we knew where every Soviet sub was, but I doubt if we did.

When I suggested my wife of eighteen months left our on-base married quarter for somewhere safer there was no argument. A flat "My place is by your side looking after you." was the end of all discussion.

Were you at Faslane?

 

[Laurie]

Were you at Faslane?

No, St Mawgan. Although Faslane was a major naval base, I don't think it had really developed as the main nuclear hub by then. That was still Rosyth.

In fact, I don't think Faslane was ever an anti-submarine base, exactly the opposite - it looked after them, though I believe some convoy escorts, particularly the smaller ones like corvettes, operated from that area during the war.