One Hell of a Gamble by Aleksandr Fursenko

Author:Aleksandr Fursenko
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780393245516
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

“We Don’t Need Cuba”

Some more ominous news reached Khrushchev at the end of the month. The September crisis was turning up evidence of widespread dissatisfaction in the ranks of the Soviet armed forces. The army chief of staff, Zakharov, briefed the leadership on September 20 that the GRU had reports of soldiers complaining about fighting for Cuba. “There is opposition in the various parts of the Soviet armed forces to the TASS declaration,” Zakharov reported. The opposition stemmed from a pervasive feeling that the situation around Cuba might lead to war. One soldier was quoted as saying, “We don’t need Cuba.”50

The Defense Ministry smoothed over most of the complication introduced into Soviet planning by the scare of early September. A few days after Zakharov’s warning of dissension in the ranks, he and Admiral Fokin, the chief of Soviet naval operations, directed a more hopeful report to the Kremlin on the smooth implementation of the Anadyr plan. Since June 114 shipments had been dispatched to Cuba, with 94 already at their destination. There were only another 35 to go. All loading was scheduled to be completed by October 20, with the last shipment to reach Cuba before November 5, the deadline established because of the impending U.S. election.51 To improve the security of the ships in the last phase of the maritime operation, the Defense Ministry distributed 23-millimeter guns to the commercial freighters.52

But Kennedy’s tough stance on Cuba, especially his decision to call up an additional 150,000 men, had forced one significant change in the Anadyr plan. Believing that a noisy naval deployment would inevitably “attract the attention of the Whole World [which] would harm the Soviet Union,” the Soviet military suggested canceling the deployment of a squadron of surface ships, drawn from the Northern, Baltic, and Pacific fleets. Khrushchev agreed with the recommendation but felt the need for even more caution. Fearing that a submarine base might be inopportune at that moment, he also canceled the deployment of a squadron of the Soviet Union’s new strategic submarines. The Hotel-class submarines carried intermediate-range nuclear missiles, which like the land-based R-12s and R-14s would add significantly to Soviet strategic strength. However, the submarines would be even more difficult to hide from U.S. intelligence than the land-based missiles. The U.S. Navy’s listening posts, and those controlled by the NATO allies Great Britain and West Germany, would be able to pick up the movement of the submarines once they entered the North Sea. In light of his concern about the American reaction to a fleet of Soviet submarines moving into the North Atlantic, Khrushchev authorized the Soviet navy to send only four diesel-electric Foxtrot submarines. Each submarine carried a payload of twenty-two torpedoes, and it was decided that on all four submarines one of those torpedoes would be nuclear tipped. Scheduled to leave the Kolskii Gulf on October 1, the submarines would reach Cuba in a month.53

While Khrushchev acted in anticipation of a U.S. intelligence breakthrough, ironically the Kennedy administration took a step that would complicate its ability to detect the missiles.

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