Michael Dobbs - One Minute to Midnight

Castro was accustomed to daunting odds. A cold calculation of the balance of forces suggested that his position had improved rather than weakened since the revolutionary war, when his troops were vastly outnumbered by Batista’s soldiers. He now had three hundred thousand armed men under his direct command in addition to the backing of the Soviet Union. He had a vast array of modern military equipment, including antiaircraft guns, T-54 tanks, and MiG-21 fighter jets. If all else failed, his Soviet allies had tactical nuclear weapons hidden in the hills behind Tarara beach and other likely landing spots that could wipe out an American beachhead in a matter of minutes.

The arrival of these weapons completely changed the calculation of how long Cuba could hold out against an invasion. A few months earlier, Russian military experts had estimated that it would take a U.S. invading force just three or four days to seize control of the island. That was no longer the case. Whatever happened, the yanquis would be in for a prolonged and bloody fight.

The Marine regiment selected to lead the attack over Tarara beach—renamed Red beach in the American invasion plan—was at that moment steaming off the north coast of Cuba, on its way back from Operation ORTSAC. The Pentagon had canceled the exercises on Vieques following President Kennedy’s speech. The Marines were no longer preparing for the overthrow of an imaginary dictator. They had turned their sights on a real one.

Spirits were high aboard the helicopter carrier USS Okinawa, the temporary regimental headquarters. The Marines spent their time practicing boat-boarding drills, sharpening their bayonets, doing press-ups, and cursing Fidel. A Marine sergeant led the chanting as his men double-timed around the football field-sized deck.

“Where are we gonna go?”

“Gonna go to Cuba.”

“Whatta we gonna do?”

“Gonna castrate Castro.”

Below deck, officers from the 2nd Marine Division pored over Operations Plan 316, which envisaged an all-out invasion of Cuba involving 120,000 U.S. troops. The plan was for the Marines to attack east of Havana, at Tarara, while the 1st Armored Division landed through the port of Mariel to the west. In the meantime, the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions would conduct a paratroop assault behind enemy lines. In its initial sweep, the invading force would skirt Havana and head directly for the missile sites.

Many of the officers on board the Okinawa had been preparing for an invasion of Cuba for more than a year. Several had fought at Iwo Jima and Inchon, and were itching to get back into combat. They had studied the landing beaches, mapped out the routes inland, and perused Cuban “Most Wanted” lists. The invasion plan had been expanded and refined until it now included such details as the time the chaplain would arrive on the beach (H-hour plus 27 minutes) and quantities of civilian food relief (2,209 tons of canned chicken, 7,454 tons of rice, and 138 tons of powdered eggs).

The assault over Red beach and neighboring Blue beach would take the form of a classic amphibious landing, in the tradition of Normandy and Okinawa. The attack would begin with naval gunfire and air strikes. Underwater demolition teams would clear the beach area of mines. Amphibious tractors would arrive carrying troops, followed by larger landing craft, including the flat-bottomed Higgins boats familiar from D-Day. The Marines would link up with helicopter-borne assault troops landing inland to occupy roads and high ground.

The planners had given barely any thought to the possibility that the enemy might use tactical nuclear weapons to wipe out the beachheads. Defenses against “nuclear, chemical, and biological” attack consisted of face masks and chemical agent detector kits. Otherwise, troops were instructed to clearly mark “contaminated areas” and report burst and yield data for “every delivered nuclear fire” to higher headquarters. The seemingly routine task of drawing up a nuclear/chemical defense plan was given to a somewhat dim-witted major who “spent his time on things that were not the highest priority.”

Whatever happened, casualties were likely to be heavy. The Marines were prepared for five hundred dead the first day alone—mainly on Tarara beach—and a further two thousand injured. Total casualties during the first ten days of fighting were estimated at over eighteen thousand, including four thousand dead. The Marine Corps would account for nearly half.

And that was without the participation of Soviet combat troops or the use of nuclear weapons.

At the Pentagon, reporters had convinced themselves that an interception of a Soviet ship was imminent. Tension had been mounting all day, and officials would reveal nothing about the movement of Soviet ships. The president had ordered “no leaks.”

The Pentagon spokesman was Arthur Sylvester, a former journalist who had spent thirty-seven years on the Newark Evening News. He had tried to stall reporters all day with what his assistant termed “diversionary replies involving tides, sea conditions, and weather.” He refused to confirm or deny rumors that five or six Soviet ships had turned back. But the excuses were wearing thin and the press was clamoring for news.

Finally, late in the afternoon, McNamara authorized a cautiously worded statement. “Some of the Bloc vessels proceeding toward Cuba appear to have altered course. Other vessels are proceeding toward Cuba. No intercepts have yet been necessary.”

Soon, Walter Cronkite, dubbed by opinion polls “the most trusted man in America,” was delivering a special report on CBS News in his rich baritone. He, too, stalled for time. “It was beginning to look this day as though it might be one of armed conflict between Soviet vessels and American warships on the sea-lanes leading to Cuba. But there has been no confrontation as far as we know.”

Correspondents were standing by at the United Nations, the White House, the Pentagon. None of them knew very much. “There is still considerable belief that the confrontation in the Caribbean could come tonight,” reported George Herman from outside the White House. “Everybody’s lips are sealed,” said Charles Von Fremd at the Pentagon. “We are under what amounts to a wartime censorship system.”

“There is not a great deal of optimism tonight,” concluded Cronkite, his tiredness visible in the heavy lines under his eyes.

Castro exuded calm resolve when he arrived at Soviet military headquarters at El Chico. Dressed in a combat jacket and peaked cap, he shook hands briskly with his hosts. He then spent an hour and a half listening to their reports, jotting down notes on a memo pad, and asking questions through an interpreter. He struck one of the Soviet generals present as “purposeful and completely unruffled, as though war were not imminent and his life’s work not at risk.”

The comandante en jefe wanted to coordinate future military action between the two armies, and make sure they could communicate with each other. He quickly agreed with the Soviets on a plan to redeploy his antiaircraft weapons. The most powerful guns in the Cuban arsenal were two 100mm artillery pieces, with nineteen-foot barrels, capable of hitting targets eight miles away. Fidel would send one of the big guns to guard the Aleksandrovsk at the port of La Isabela and the other to protect Colonel Sidorov’s R-12 regiment near Sagua la Grande, which had made the most progress toward getting its missiles ready for launch. Other missile positions would be protected by one 57mm gun and two 37mm guns.

It was difficult for Castro to know whether the Soviets would ever use the nuclear warheads that remained under their tight control. He knew what he would do if the decision was up to him. If he had learned anything from his exhaustive study of revolutionary movements and his own experiences as a revolutionary, it was that it was suicidal to wait for the enemy to attack. From the capture of the Bastille onward, fortune had always favored the bold. “A force that remains in its barracks is lost,” Castro had concluded, after witnessing the failure of an antigovernment insurrection in Colombia in 1948.