Cold Fire by John Boyko

Author:John Boyko [Boyko, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-80895-0
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2016-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

Kennedy had recently read The Guns of August, the sorry tale of miscalculations that tripped Europe into the First World War. He feared that the superpowers would do it again, but this time with weapons that would render the consequences immeasurably more catastrophic.54 All it would take was a commander adhering to some obsolete standard operating procedure, an overzealous officer, or even a crazy gunner or pilot to start something that neither he nor Khrushchev intended or, once begun, could stop.

In the navy, Kennedy had learned the oxymoron of military efficiency, and he knew just how war’s fog can affect judgment. The Bay of Pigs had taught him how easily military planning could go awry and how expert guarantees were often just hopes, and facts mere guesses. In a private conversation with his brother, Kennedy observed, “These brass hats have one great advantage in their favour. If we listen to them and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”55

Diefenbaker shared Kennedy’s trepidation about his own brass hats. Maintaining civilian control over military decisions, after all, had been a crucial concern in the establishment of NORAD and the acceptance of nuclear weapons in Canada. Now, and without his knowledge, those fears were being justified.

America’s Defense Condition (DEFCON) system has five levels. Only the commander in chief—the president—can move various branches of the military, or all of them together, from one level to the next. Each level brings the armed forces to predetermined states of alertness. DEFCON 5 represents normal. DEFCON 1 is active war. At 4:49 p.m. on Monday, October 22, just over two hours before Kennedy’s televised speech and twenty-five minutes before Merchant sat down with Diefenbaker, NORAD’s commander, American general John Gerhart, was ordered to move his American forces to DEFCON 3. It is the maximum peacetime alert. It assumes imminent action.

Gerhart’s actions were coordinated with America’s Strategic Air Command, which had B-52 bomber fleets fuelled and armed, with personnel suited up and standing by. One of eight squadrons circled in the air waiting for the order to deliver their deadly payloads. B-47 bombers were loaded with nuclear weapons and scrambled to locations around the country. Missiles equipped with 1.5-kiloton warheads were installed on F-106 fighter jets.

Because of NORAD’s military integration, Canadian forces needed to come to the same alert level as their American counterparts. However, General Gerhart’s request to do so did not arrive at Air Chief Marshal Frank Miller’s office until after the president’s 7 p.m. speech.56 As chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Miller, like Gerhart, had latitude in implementing military actions, but only at the behest of his civilian masters—in Canada’s case, the defence minister acting on the wishes of the Cabinet and prime minister.

When Defence Minister Harkness returned to his office after watching Kennedy on television, an anxious but stoic Miller was waiting. Harkness agreed that the order to raise Canada’s alert level to the equivalent of the American’s DEFCON 3 should be issued at once.

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