Michael Dobbs - One Minute to Midnight

An hour before landing at Eielson, he had been scheduled to rendezvous with the Duck Butt air rescue plane circling above Barter Island, off the northern coast of Alaska. They had promised to “leave a light on in the window” for him to see on his return, but there had been no sign of them at the appointed time. He was unable either to reach Duck Butt or pick up the radio beacon on Barter, even though both should have been within range. He began broadcasting messages in the clear, hoping someone would steer him in the right direction. Perhaps he had never even reached the North Pole. Dazzled by the aurora borealis, his fixes had been based on “wishful hoping” rather than definite sightings of stars.

Suddenly, Duck Butt came on the line, over the single sideband radio. They said they would fire flares every five minutes, starting immediately. The U-2 driver strained his eyes, but he could see nothing. They fired another flare. Still nothing. Alone in the vast blackness, Maultsby had difficulty fighting off “a panic attack.” He was “either many miles east or west of Barter Island… but which?”

A few minutes earlier, the navigator from the Duck Butt air rescue plane had called again, and asked him if he could identify a star. On the horizon ahead was the familiar shape of Orion, the Hunter. It was easily identifiable by the three bright stars in the middle that made up Orion’s Belt. A little higher up in the sky, on Orion’s right shoulder, was the large red star Betelgeuse. Further down, on the constellation’s left knee, lay Rigel, one of the brightest stars in the sky.

“I can see Orion about fifteen degrees left of the nose of the aircraft,” Maultsby radioed back.

There was a pause as navigators aboard Duck Butt and at Eielson consulted almanacs and star charts to figure out the position of the missing U-2. After some hurried calculations, the Duck Butt navigator called back with an order to steer ten degrees left.

Shortly after receiving this instruction, Maultsby got another call over his sideband radio. This time, the voice was unfamiliar. Whoever it was used his correct call sign, and told him to steer thirty degrees right. Within the space of a few minutes, Maultsby had received calls from two different radio stations, ordering him to turn in opposite directions.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked himself.

The befuddled pilot did not know it yet, but he had flown over the border of the Soviet Union at 7:59 a.m. Alaska time (11:59 a.m. in Washington). He had hit landfall on one of the most desolate places on earth, on the northern shore of the Chukot Peninsula, more than one thousand miles off course.

As he crossed the border, at least six Soviet interceptor jets took off from two different airfields in Chukotka. Their mission: to shoot down the intruder plane.

More than four thousand miles away, at the White House in Washington, President Kennedy walked down the hallway from the Cabinet Room to meet with a delegation of state governors concerned about civil defense. He was still focused on how to reply to the latest message from Khrushchev and had no idea about the drama unfolding in the skies above Chukotka. He struck the assembled governors as “unusually somber and harried,” but this did not stop them from wondering aloud whether he was being “forceful enough” with the Soviet leader.

Governor Edmund Brown of California was particularly blunt. “Mr. President,” he asked. “Many people wonder why you changed your mind about the Bay of Pigs and aborted the attack. Will you change your mind again?”

Kennedy made clear that he was irritated by the second-guessing. “I chose the quarantine because I wondered if our people are ready for the bomb,” he replied evenly.

Many governors felt that the federal authorities had not done enough to protect Americans from the threat of the bomb. “It was all so empty,” one of them complained, referring to the U.S. civil defense program. After years of propaganda about “Duck and Cover” and bomb shelters in everyone’s backyard, Americans were almost numb to the dangers facing them. The mere mention of “civil defense” at a McNamara press conference earlier in the week had triggered chortles of laughter from the assembled journalists. Bert the Turtle, the cheery cartoon character invented by the Truman administration to help children defend themselves against the atomic bomb, had become a national joke.

Civil defense films showed pictures of children diving under their desks and rolling themselves into a ball. Adults were taught similar drills in offices and factories, but many people questioned their effectiveness. “Upon seeing the brilliant flash of a nuclear explosion, bend over and place your head firmly between your legs,” advised a poster pasted to the walls of student dorms. “Then kiss your ass goodbye.”

Despite a massive public relations campaign promoting shelters, little had been accomplished by the fall of 1962. Civil defense officials reported to the governors that shelter signs had been posted on fewer than 800 public buildings across the country, providing a total of 640,000 spaces. Emergency food supplies were located in only 112 buildings. If the Soviets attacked that weekend, there was shelter and rations available for just 170,000 Americans.

The possibility of Soviet retaliation against American civilians worried the president as he reviewed plans for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. There was a risk that the Soviets would fire their missiles rather than permit their capture. By White House calculations, 92 million Americans lived within range of the missiles already deployed on the island. Earlier in the week, Kennedy had asked his top civil defense official about the feasibility of evacuating Miami “before attacking the missile sites.” Assistant Defense Secretary Steuart Pittman felt that an evacuation was impractical and would only create “a hell of a mess.” The idea was dropped.

In the absence of government action, ordinary Americans were left to fend for themselves. Waves of panic buying swept through some cities, but bypassed others. Residents of Los Angeles rushed to local supermarkets following a rumor that they would be closed if war began. Grocery stores reported a 20 percent jump in sales in Miami after a local official said everyone should maintain a two-week supply of food. There was a run on bottled water in Washington; the dean of the National Cathedral ordered the basement to be flooded as an emergency reservoir. Gun stores in Texas and Virginia recorded brisk sales of rifles and handguns. A Richmond gun dealer explained that Virginians were arming themselves not against Russians, but against “city dwellers who might seek shelter in rural areas.”

While the president was closeted with the governors, his spokesman called a dozen journalists into his West Wing office. Kennedy was worried that Khrushchev’s offer of a Cuba-Turkey missile swap would go down well with international public opinion, undercutting the American negotiating position. The White House needed to get something out quickly.

Reading from a hastily prepared text, Salinger told reporters that the latest Soviet message was just one of “several inconsistent and conflicting proposals” made by Moscow within “the last twenty-four hours.” The crisis had been caused by Soviet actions in Cuba, not American actions in Turkey. The “first imperative” was to stop work on the Soviet missile bases and make them “inoperable.” After that had been accomplished, anything could be discussed.