U-2 Shot Down Over Cuba: Missile Crisis Peaks

Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., flying a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft at 72,000 feet over eastern Cuba on the morning of October 27, 1962, was killed when a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile detonated near his plane, blowing off a wing and sending the aircraft spiraling into Cuban jungle. Anderson became the only combat fatality of the Cuban Missile Crisis and his death brought the world closer to nuclear war than any other single incident during those thirteen days. October 27, known within the Kennedy administration as "Black Saturday," was the most dangerous day of the crisis. Anderson's shootdown was not the only provocation. A separate U-2 strayed into Soviet airspace over Siberia during a routine air-sampling mission, prompting Soviet fighters to scramble. American fighter-interceptors armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles launched from Alaska to escort the wayward U-2 home. In Cuba, Soviet submarine B-59, depth-charged by American destroyers and unable to communicate with Moscow, came within one officer's dissenting vote of launching a nuclear torpedo. The decision to fire the SA-2 that killed Anderson was made locally by Soviet Lieutenant General Stepan Grechko and his deputy, without authorization from Moscow. Khrushchev had explicitly ordered that the missiles not be fired without his approval. When he learned of the shootdown, the Soviet premier was reportedly furious, recognizing that a single unauthorized action by a field commander had nearly forced both superpowers into an escalatory spiral neither could control. The ExComm, Kennedy's crisis advisory group, debated an immediate retaliatory airstrike on the SAM site that had downed Anderson. The Joint Chiefs unanimously recommended a full-scale air attack on Cuba followed by invasion. Kennedy resisted, choosing instead to intensify diplomatic pressure through a back-channel deal: the U.S. would publicly pledge not to invade Cuba and privately agree to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey, in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of missiles from Cuba. Khrushchev accepted the next morning. Anderson was posthumously awarded the first Air Force Cross ever presented. His death, and the cascade of near-misses that surrounded it on Black Saturday, demonstrated how close the world had come to annihilation through miscalculation, unauthorized action, and the fog of crisis.