Cuban Missile Crisis timeline

14 October 1962

US U-2 spy plane piloted by Major Heyser takes hundreds of photos of newly built installations in the Cuban countryside

15 October 1962

CIA analysts spot launchers, missiles and transport trucks, that indicate the Soviets building sites to launch missiles capable of striking targets nearly across the US

16 October 1962

President John F. Kennedy meets with a team of advisors (EXCOMM, to discuss a response to the missile threat. Secretary of Defense McNamara gives three options 1. diplomacy with Castro and Khrushchev, 2. a naval quarantine of Cuba and 3. an air attack to destroy the missile sites. Kennedy chooses a quarantine to buy time to negotiate the withdrawal of missiles

22 October 1962

JFK reveals the missile threat to the American public, and announces the quarantine (prevent ships carrying weapons to reach Cuba), as well as demand that the Soviets withdraw their missiles. US forces worldwide are placed on DEFCON 3.
US ambassador to the Soviets delivers to Khrushchev a letter from JFK, in which JFK demands that USSR withdraws their missiles from Cuba

18 October 1962

JFK meets Soviet minister of foreign affairs (Gromyko), who claims that the weapons were for defensive purposes only.

23 October 1962

US air force and navy begin low-level photo reconnaissance missions over Cuba

photo evidence of missiles being ready for launch is found

25 October 1962

US raises readiness level of of Strategic Air Command (SAC) to DEFCON 2, for the first time

Kennedy responds to Khrushchev’s telegram stating that the US was forced into action after receiving repeated false assurances that the missiles in Cuba were only for defensive purposes

24 October 1962

Khrushchev accuses JFK of threatening the USSR. The USSR warns that the US actions would lead to war in a broadcast of a telegram from Khrushchev to Kennedy

26 October 1962

Castro urges Khrushchev begin a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US, which is ignored by Khrushchev
Khrushchev sends a letter to JFK offering to jointly de-escalate, where USSR will cease the shipping of armaments to Cuba and the US will promise not to invade Cuba.

27 October 1962

A US U-2 spy plane flying over the USSR eastern coast is shot down, not on Khrushchev’s orders
USSR additionally demands the US to withdraw from Turkey
US offers to promise not to attack Cuba.
Attorney general Robert F. Kennedy meets with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin to communicate US’s existing plans to remove missiles from Turkey. This information was not and could not have been made known to the public
Kennedy agrees to secretly remove all missiles in Turkey, and possibly those in southern Italy.

28 October 1962

Khrushchev writes an open letter to JFK (broadcasted), discloses that missiles are being dismantled and removed from Cuba

Official length of the Cuban Missile Crisis

16 to 28 October 1962, 13 days.

Monroe Doctrine

• opposed foreign interference (European colonialism) in the Western Hemisphere

• cited as grounds for intervention by JFK in the crisis

• Latin America as the background of US

  • preponderant economic influence of US in Latin america

    • maintained by US sponsored governments that protected US capitalist interests (Pro-US regimes)

    • eg. banana republic and United Fruit Co.

Korean war significance in CW terms

• militarisation of the Cold war

• building up of arms race

Issue of Berlin in Europe

• loss of skilled labour in the east due to Brain drain in the 50s

  • resulting blockade by Red Army

  • checkpoint Charlie incident

• Symbolic: physical manifestation of the Cold War

  • test of credibility

  • US cannot be seen as giving into Soviets

  • capability of the US in defending its allies despite being surrounded by Soviets

22 October 1961 to 28 October 1961

Checkpoint Charlie incident:

• 22 October: dispute over whether East German border guards were authorised to examine the travel documents of a US diplomat based in West Berlin. Lightner was heading to East Berlin from the West to watch an Opera show.

• 27 October: ten soviet and ten American tanks face off across the checkpoint

• 28 October: the stand-off ends on following US-Soviet understanding to withdraw tanks

1952

Pro-US Batista regime seizes power in Cuba

1954

Guatemalan Coup: democratically elected Guatemalan president Arbenz deposed in a coup supported by the CIA

1 January 1959

Cuban Revolution Ends, Castro is officially in power.

April 1959

Castro meets Nixon —→ proof that Cuban-US relations were not doomed from the start

May 1959

Castro nationalises private property and redistributes land—→ American companies cannot own sugar plantations

February 1960

Cuba engages in trade talks with the USSR

April 1960

Castro nationalises US industries to process Soviet oil, despite US warnings to not do so

May 1960

Cuba formalises diplomatic relations with USSR

November 1960

US embargos Cuba

17-20 April 1961

Bay of Pigs invasion

• US attempts to retake Cuba

  • reinforcing of Cuban need for security against the US

  • pushed further towards the Soviets

• Khrushchev calls it a global issue