Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962?

It was the response to Kennedy and the CIA's failed invasion that resulted in a sorry defeat at the Bay of Pigs in '61. The US had been backing a revolution aimed at deposing the new Cuban dictator Fidel Casto. The CIA tried repeatedly but failed to assassinate Castro, his brother Raul, and Che Guevera.

U.S.S. CANBERRA CAG2 block-ade

But like the country song says.....”wisdom in your youth would be a lot less fun”.

Later divulged info indicated, as I understand it, that it was nearly button pushing time. Or even more tense than what was ever indicated to the general public. Care to confirm?

I, also was 9 at the time & it seemed pretty serious to my parents & the news channels. But I wonder at times if the news media was ever accurate &/or trustworthy.

^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Dad was assigned to Ft. Ritchie, MD which serviced a hole in a mountain now declassified and revealed as Site R. When things got tense Dad and others got recalled 24/7 Things were pretty tense in post housing. None of that hiding under the desk crap. Nobody without clearance knew what Site R was but knew it merited multiple megaton-range strikes. We knew we'd pretty much be vaporized desks not withstanding. Nobody knew, seemed just as likely as not buttons would be pressed All you could do is keep going as normally as possible with your fingers crossed.

In Chicago we had been doing missile drills before the Cuban Missile Crisis. And none of that under the desk stuff. We had to go in the hallway to be away from windows. Back against the lockers, head between the knees. What if we had survived a nuclear attack? Then what?

gunzo
It was very close
At that time the public never knew

We had just moved into our new house on the farm. We were too busy getting the cows settled in and taking care of business. There was virtually no talk of it at school. It passed with little fanfare at our house.

kwg

I remember coming home from Pop Warner football practice, I was 11 years old, in Atlanta. I remember the guy on the radio in mom's car, basically saying, "We are likely to have a nuclear war starting tonight..."

My parents never talked about it, never made a move to make a fallout shelter or store up food.
Damn that was a dangerous time.

The killer is, the Commies had nuclear howitzers. We didn't know that we only knew the ICBMs.
So they got 25 of these howtzers, stationed 10 miles from the beach. We invade, like the generals wanted to, and in a few hours we got 150,000 Marines on the beach. Castro lights up the nukes and 150, 000 Marines are dead in 10 minutes.

Hello, World War 3.

Thank God Kennedy had the sense to ignore the generals.

I was at Yokota AFB, Japan , with a KB-50 outfit, we stood strip alert for 4 days, then went home.

Listen to Rock Chuck. If Kennedy hadn't chickened out at Bay of Pigs there likely never would have been a Cuban Missile Crisis.

I remember it as well as if it were yesterday. We were watching TV that night, when a news bulletin came on about the crisis, and that we were close to war with Russia. I went to bed and woke up during the night to the sound of airplanes, one after another, flying over our house. We lived then, and I still do, close to Ft. Campbell, KY, home of the 101st Airborne division. The flight path for planes using the airfield was above our place, and the division was being sent to Florida. I didn't know that, and I had a million thoughts as to what those planes were, even wondering if they were Russian bombers. It was scary to a 12 year old kid.

Sugar had an armed guard because of the shortage.

My Grandfather has that job at the Barq's plant and carried a 38.

We did have the drills at school and i had an Uncle on a ship in the blockade.

We also had the civil defense folks come to the school and talk about the shelters as well as a talk and taste sample of the items stored there.
There was a shelters all over back then being we were living around Keesler AFB.

We did not consider it frightening. Just being prepared.
My folks had water and food stored. We kids knew how to drain the hot water heater.
Just part of the late '50's and early '60's.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8XPzICHxXoQ

I believe it was Gen. Shoup who was commandant of the Marine Corps that went into the joint Chiefs of Staff meeting with a flip chart. First page was the island of Cuba. Next chart flipped over Cuba was scale size pic of Betio in the Tarawa atoll. Shoup went on to explain how it took
Something like 18,000 Marines 70 something hours to take the island from 4500 we’ll entrenched and thoroughly bombed Japanese naval infantrymen. And suffering over 1600 dead and over 2000 wounded in the process. Then he said something like "do the math"
Least thats the way I heard it. Prolly someone here can elaborate a bit better. Hell could be urban legend.

We never did any of that Civil Defense stuff. When you're living within five miles of a major strategic target it's pretty much pointless. We kids didn't consider it particularly frightening, probably because we couldn't comprehend the ramifications of it all and partly because there was nothing to do but hope for the best. But parents and older kids were definitely shook up.

Most of that stuff was just for feel good anyway. In a bomb attack, it wouldn't save anyone. It made the parents happy, though, that the schools 'cared'.

Actually if you don't get toasted by prompt radiation and the thermal and overpressure impulses your chances of at least short term survival are surprisingly good

That stuff was all in the fifties, by the time of the Cuban Missle Crisis we'd given up on it.