As early as August 1962 there were concerns about the Soviet Union shipping missiles to Cuba. Reports on the ground said that trucks were passing through small towns in Cuba with loads that were too long to make turns.
Defensive missiles would not cause that problem, medium range ballistic missiles would.
It was on Oct. 14 that a U-2 spy plane piloted by Major Richard Heyser took 928 pictures of selected sites in western Cuba. The photographs were interpreted by the National Photographic Interpretation Center. Their conclusion was the photographs showed medium range ballistic missiles being deployed in Cuba.
President Kennedy was shown the photographs on the morning of Oct. 16. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously agreed that a full-scale attack and invasion was the only solution. Kennedy disagreed. He felt that attacking the missile launch sites by air would trigger the Soviet Union to take over Berlin, another political hot spot at that time.
One of the options presented was a naval blockade of ships carrying missiles or other military cargo. Ships with food or other necessities of life would be allowed to pass through.
On October 22, President
Kennedy presented a nation-wide speech on all three television networks. His speech included “ All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, will be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers.”
During the speech, a directive went out to all US forces worldwide, placing them on high alert. Mac McKinnon was in the military at that time and says that the bases in Korea where he was stationed, were on high alert and ready for action.
The United States Navy boarded several ships heading to Cuba but found no weapons and allowed them to pass through. But as time passed the tensions grew.
There were no articles published in the Dublin Progress newspaper about Dublin’s reaction to these national events. In my conversations with people recently, here are some remembrances they had.
In Dublin the school children went through “tornado drills” where the bell was rung and students filed into the hallways where they sat on the floor pressed their backs against the walls and covered their head with their hands.
The kids were told that they were tornado drills, but undoubtedly it was preparation for a possible Soviet attack.
Doors to the classrooms were closed so that any flying glass from the windows would not blow into the hallways where the kids were.
Buses were lined up outside the schools ready to take the students to a safer place at a moments notice.
There were special church services at night where congregations prayed that the Soviet ships would turn back. Some wondered if there would be a world left when they got up the next morning.
The people in Dublin were well aware of the destructive force that nuclear weapons had.
What we did not know is how far-reaching the destruction would go. Carswell Air Force Base, 80 miles away in Fort Worth, was considered the closest site that we thought the Soviet Union would strike.
Would the nuclear blast’s rolling shock wave and atomic radiation come as far as Dublin? We did not know.
The standoff lasted 13 days until Oct. 26 at 6 PM. The State Department received a message from the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev.
A compromise was reached that the Soviet Union would remove missiles from Cuba. Unknown to the American people, Kennedy also agreed to remove missiles from Turkey which were pointed at cities in the Soviet Union. That part of the agreement wasn’t allowed to be known until years later.
The closeness of nuclear war prompted the creation of a nuclear hotline between the United States and the Soviet Union providing instant communication between the two nations.
We are fortunate for everything we have in America. When you go to bed tonight, pray for peace in our nation and around the world.