by James Philip
Whilst this author has always been sceptical about the more Machiavellian manoeuvrings of Curtis Lemay that fateful weekend in October 1962; this author wishes to make it crystal clear that she does not subscribe to the simple-minded, neo-determinist view that John F. Kennedy deliberately went to war because he believed it was the last best chance of destroying the Red Menace once and for all time. JFK was no angel. He was the womanising, playboy, drug addicted son of a ruthless and immensely wealthy former bootlegger. Years after his death we discovered JFK suffered from Addison’s disease. Throughout his Presidency he was wracked with agonising back and joint pain, he was often virtually incontinent, high on pain killers. Nevertheless, the verdict of history is that he was plainly not, per se, a bad man. For all that he came from a family legendary for its mendacity, he was – not more than Curtis LeMay – Machiavelli reincarnated. Both before and after the war JFK’s Presidency was punctuated with charismatic leadership, real moral courage, and a deeply held commitment to the rights of all Americans. He wanted his children to grow up in a better, fairer, more peaceful world. There might have been men around him advocating a devastating first strike but John Fitzgerald Kennedy would never, under any circumstances, have authorised it just because he could.
We shall come back to exactly why JFK unleashed the hounds of Hell later. First let us examine the actual balance of terror in October 1962. In this examination the author asks American readers to remember one thing, and one thing only. JFK and his inner circle might not have fully comprehended the true threat posed to the USA and its allies by Soviet nuclear forces, but he and his advisors knew – to within a few tens of megatons – the true capability of his own forces.
Strategic Nuclear Capability
To avoid confusion this author defines Strategic Nuclear Capability as being one side’s ability to strike at the other’s continental mass.
Given that it is tempting to be seduced by purely statistical methods of accounting, the numbers need to be qualified. Not so much because the raw numbers fail to convey the crushing superiority of US Forces – because they do – but because, they tend to significantly under estimate the totality of the strategic overkill represented by those forces.
US weapon systems were more technologically advanced, accomplished and reliable than their Soviet counterparts, and the day to day combat readiness of the same was much higher on the US side. Likewise, US delivery systems were more numerous, more varied and stationed all around the Soviet Union. US command and control systems were also inherently superior and more effective than their Soviet counterparts.
There was only one area in which Soviet preparations for nuclear war were markedly superior to those in the United States, or any of its allies; and that was in the sphere of civil defence. However, since a full scale civil defence mobilisation in the middle of a crisis would have been a clear signal to the Kennedy Administration that the Soviets were contemplating a first strike, no such mobilisation actually took place and therefore, Soviet planning in this area was never tested.
By October 1962 the US had a stockpile of over 26,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviets some 3,300. Of these weapons the US had around 3500 weapons on quick alert status, or ready for immediate activation which could be targeted on the Soviet Union, whereas the Soviets had less than 250 which could, theoretically, be targeted on the continental USA.
On Saturday 27th October 1962 the Soviets had no more than 42 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICMBs), of which less than two-thirds were operational. The remainder of the Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear strike capability was comprised of a force of some 160 long-range Bear and Bison heavy bombers each capable of carrying one or two free fall bombs.
According to the Official History of the Strategic Air Command, Volume II, 1962 to 1964 published in 1987, SAC had 2,907 ‘fully generated’ nuclear weapons to hand. Of these, 1,528 were on ‘quick alert’ status (that is, ready for immediate deployment). These weapons were distributed between 160 silo based operational ICBMs, and a long-range strategic bomber force equipped with B-47s and B-52s. On that day, as on every day in that period, at least sixteen ‘bombed up’ B-52s were in the air at any one time flying missions to fail safe points short of Soviet territory, or loitering out of range of enemy radar over the Arctic, the North Pacific, or the Indian Oceans. In those days when the first Polaris submarines were only recently entering service, the 600 B-52s of SAC were like loaded guns permanently held at the head of the Soviet leadership.
The Trueman and Eisenhower Administrations had poured untold treasure into the creation of SAC, bequeathing to their successor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy the instrument of Armageddon. In comparison the Soviet bomber force had been designed to frighten the West, and little else. Its most advanced component, the Myasishchev M-4 Molot (NATO codename Bison) was a four-engine jet bomber significantly less capable and advanced than any of its American of British counterparts. The Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO codename Bear) was a four engine turboprop bomber. Both aircraft had first flown in the early fifties and neither had been produced in large numbers. It is unlikely that more than a hundred – perhaps fifty of each type – were combat ready on 27th October 1962. Unlike SAC, the Soviets lacked the resources, or the confidence to maintain a round the clock airborne strike force.
Both the Americans and the Soviets had been progressively building up their local and continental air defence systems. The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), jointly set up by the USA and Canada had already turned the air space between Alaska in the west and Newfoundland in the east into a vast aerial killing ground. There was as yet no NORAD defence against ICBM strikes, but any unauthorised aircraft straying into Canadian or North America airspace would almost certainly be destroyed long before reaching the major cities of either nation. Soviet air defences were less sophisticated but increasingly potent, comprising layered radar and missile belts and large numbers of interceptors. However, the Soviet air defence system was strongest opposite Europe, whereas the biggest threat came from SAC bombers attacking over the Arctic or from the fastnesses of the North Pacific, or from the south over the Himalayas.
It is estimated that perhaps as many as forty Bears and Bisons attempted to attack North American targets. None of them breached NORAD’s kill zone. All fourteen nuclear strikes on Canadian and United States territory were by ICBMs (three launched from Cuba in the first phase of the exchange, and eleven launched from the Soviet Union in the minutes before, or during the US’s so-called ‘retaliatory strike’).
Before the October War the CIA had believed the US had a strategic nuclear advantage of at least six to one. The Soviets believed that they had a disadvantage of at least seventeen to one. In terms of the actual weight of the attack US forces (and their allies) delivered on targets in the Soviet Union, in practice, the US and its allies, demonstrated a first strike advantage of approximately 100 to 150 to one.
In addition to SAC, the US had other strategic nuclear strike assets located around the world. The United States Navy’s Atlantic Command had seven Polaris-armed ballistic missile submarines based at Holy Loch in Scotland. Notwithstanding that the early models of their submarine launched missiles were as unreliable as the Soviets’ land-based ICBMs these seven boats carried 112 SLBMs with sufficient range to hit Moscow from a firing position one hundred feet beneath the surface of the Norwegian Sea. Pacific Command had eight SSM-N-8A Regulus and 16 MACE cruise missiles capable of striking targets deep inside Asiatic Russia. There were also three fleet aircraft carriers, each carrying up to forty nuclear weapons, and another fifty free fall weapons available to shore based bombers.
It was only in the European theatre of operations that Soviet forces had any kind of parity. There were between four and five thousand US nuclear weapons in Europe but the majority were designated for battlefield use, 155 and 203 mm artillery shells, land mines, or air space denial short range surface-to-air missiles. In terms of weapons which could hit targets in the Soviet Union, European
Command had 105 Thor and Jupiter missiles based in the UK and Turkey, 48 Mace cruise missiles, two Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean with a combined throw of around eighty weapons, and elsewhere in Europe around fifty free fall bombs deliverable by American aircraft.
This calculation took no regard for the RAF V-Bomber force of about 150 sophisticated long-range four-engine bombers based on the East Coast of England. While the RAF didn’t routinely fly failsafe missions along SAC lines, a proportion of its Vulcans, Valiants and Victors was constantly on QRA (quick reaction alert) at the end of their runways, fuelled and bombed up and ready to go at four minutes notice.
If the Soviets lacked a viable strategic first strike capability against the United States, the scales of the European balance of terror were rather more closely aligned. In October 1962 the Soviets had some five hundred SS-4s and SS-5s, medium range ballistic missiles with approximate ranges of 1,300 and 2,000 miles respectively. It is not known how many of these assets were based in Europe and how many were based in the east, threatening targets in the Pacific. Notwithstanding that a similar number of Soviet missiles struck targets in both east (in China) and west (in Europe), it is postulated that the split was probably 75-25 (with a much larger number of missiles being destroyed on the ground in Europe than in Asia due to the more concentrated, carpet bombing tactics applied in the west.
It was entirely predictable that in the event of an all out nuclear exchange that the greater part of any ‘collateral damage’ suffered by NATO would inevitably be in Europe.
Whatever else the movers and shakers in Washington knew about the strategic balance of terror; the virtual destruction of Western Europe was a given.
Even now, fifty years later, there are senior politicians and shapers of opinion who – flying in the face of the fact of history - deny this.
Chapter 8
Monday 29th October 1962
09:15 Hours Local (08:15 Hours GMT)
St Catherine’s Hospital for Women, Rabat-Mdina
That morning Marija Calleja had left the house just after seven o’clock and walked down the gentle slope to the bus stop on the Gzira waterfront overlooking the eerily empty anchorage of Sliema Creek.
The big, predatory grey silhouettes of the ships of the 7th Destroyer Squadron hadn’t returned to their anchorage in the sheltered blue waters of the Creek. Neither had the minesweepers or the ungainly LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) usually moored in the shallower water nearer the sea wall or at the end of the Royal Marines’ embarkation jetty on Manoel Island. Over twenty-four hours later the semi-organised panic and commotion of the early hours of Sunday morning had been replaced with an atmosphere of horribly uneasy calm. There were unsmiling armed men in Naval and Army uniforms on the sea wall and directing traffic and in the sky jet engines quartered the heavens.
Marija’s mother had pleaded with her to stay at home.
Radio Malta was playing patriotic music and asking everybody to ‘keep calm’ every fifteen minutes. It had been announced that there would be a dusk to dawn curfew the coming evening. A state of martial law had been declared. Marija didn’t know what that meant, just that it sounded very bad.
Her little brother, Joe, had started complaining about ‘British Imperialist oppression’ and that the ‘proletariat should stand up to the English bully boys.” She’d given him what she hoped was a withering look, told him not to be stupid and to go to work as normal.
“Will the buses be running?” Her mother had demanded in her most plaintive of tones.
“I don’t know,” she’d retorted. “But if they are I will go to work. As normal!”
It was often remarked upon how the myriad of little things that seemed to dominate other people’s lives left Marija Calleja untouched, and that she had an uncanny knack of serenely breezing through the day to day minor tribulations that tripped up practically everybody else. It wasn’t true, of course. It was simply that she’d decided, many years ago that her ‘life cup’ was always going to be half full, rather than half empty.
At the waterfront bus stop opposite Triq It Torri – the road that climbed the hill at a right angle to the harbour and cut across the base of the Tigne Peninsula linking Gzira with the Sliema - Marija had discovered that the buses were running normally. The buses were not actually running on time, or with any particular reference to the printed timetables, but the buses were running, more or less, normally by the lights of buses on Malta. That morning, normal felt very strange and the crowd at the bus stop was unusually subdued, a nod or a terse ‘hello’ passed for greetings whereas before the weekend conversations would have flowed, possibly volubly.
It was a bright, sunny late October morning and few people wore coats. The last air raid siren had shut down a little after six o’clock yesterday morning and afterwards the streets had filled with people spilling out of basements. There had been nothing to see except the empty anchorages of Marsamxett, and Sliema and Lazaretto Creeks and the starry sky slowly turning to grey with the new dawn.
Marija settled in a window seat on the left hand side of the bus as it rumbled around the harbour following the sea wall, past the entrance bridge – now heavily barricaded – to the headquarters of the British Mediterranean Fleet on Manoel Island. As the bus turned left and dragged painfully around the corner Marija saw that Lazaretto Creek – customarily crowded with vessels of all sizes - was almost as empty as Sliema Creek. Apart from the big, slab-sided accommodation and depot ship HMS Maidstone and a single destroyer – HMS Cassandra - moored alongside all the big ships were gone. Further along she got her first sight down the length of Marsamxett where the destroyers came to take on oil and ammunition. Accustomed to spying the long, low shark-like silhouettes of as many as half-dozen submarines sheltering under the ramparts of Fort Manoel it was a little unnerving to see the whole length of the anchorage completely empty. All the big ships that could raise steam and the submarines were gone.
At the circus-shaped bus station outside the citadel gates to Valetta she stepped off one bus onto another, which sat twenty minutes on its stand while the driver smoked two cigarettes and conversed loudly in Maltese spiced with ribald pigeon English with his friends. Eventually, the bus set off down the gentle incline into war-scarred Floriana. She remembered travelling this same route as a child. In those days it had seemed to her that every other building was in ruin. Rubble from the war was still piled in great mounds, in summer the pulverized stone dust blew across the streets like swirling sandy devils every time the wind gusted from the south west. The rebuilding had only really begun in the last few years and in many areas the old wounds were as yet, hardly less raw than they’d been twenty years ago.
The scandal of the snail like pace of the reconstruction was the one thing she and Joe agreed about. Ever since the war the British had populated Malta’s anchorages with warships, expensive castles of steel, and filled the Archipelago’s skies with modern jet aircraft that seemed like machines straight out of futuristic science fiction comics; and yet the pace of rebuilding and reconstruction was maddeningly slow. In flaunting their military power before the Maltese people while so many of the islanders still lived in hovels without piped water and electricity the British had been their own worst enemy in recent years. While it was true that the British employed thousands of Maltese in the dockyards and in their colonial administration, and that the military formed the backbone of the archipelago’s medical services and that the ongoing ‘occupation’ – if that was what it was – was essentially benign, it did little to appease the ‘Malta for the Maltese’ movement. Marija found the trend of nationalistic sentiments and the erosion of old loyalties very sad. Partly, this was because she knew she owed ‘the British’ her life but it was also because she feared what might happen if and when the Mother country abandoned ‘little’ Malta. There was no one political party that spoke for the Maltese people or even a significant proportion of them; only disparate groupings of nationalists, communists and liberals. What would
happen to an archipelago of small islands in the middle of a great sea with a population of some three hundred thousand souls that was only capable of feeding a third of its people from its own resources. Malta had no oil, hardly any fresh water, its land was arid and difficult to cultivate. Ever since the time of the Knights of St John – possibly, since the dawn of civilization – Malta had been the trading crossroads of the central Mediterranean and under the guardianship of the Royal Navy it had, Hitler’s War apart, basked in what everybody understood had been a dangerously false sense of security.
The sight of the empty anchorages left Marija with a nagging feeling of emptiness, as if the soul had been hollowed out of the old world. She’d grown up taking the presence of the big grey warships in the Creeks around Valetta for granted. That they were gone today was troubling; that one day they might be gone forever was...almost unthinkable.
Out of the city the country - a patchwork of fields delineated with chest high dry stone walls - the bus picked up speed as it chugged, rattled and bounced along the pot-holed roads. The British used to trouble themselves with the potholes. Not now, why would they? They’d soon be gone if, or if not gone, on their way home if the gossip and the stories in the Times of Malta were to be believed. It was over three years now since the Royal Naval Dockyards had been sold to a local company – Messrs C & H Bailey - and independence was only a matter of time. So why bother filling the potholes in the roads?
Passing Ta’Qali airfield she’d expected to see all the jet fighters and helicopters gone. Instead, two sleek shark-like fighters swooped in to land as the bus stopped at a crossroads. She was reassured to glimpse several other silvery jets were parked in their blast shielded hardstands across the other side of the airfield.
Ahead, the twin cities of Mdina and Rabat stood on the rising ground overlooking Ta’Qali. As a girl she’d spent endless hours on the ramparts of the hill top city gazing down on the aircraft, Spitfires, Hurricanes, twin engine Beaufighters in those seemingly long ago days in the 1940s, taking off and landing. After the war those aircraft had been replaced with the first jet fighters; Meteors, Vampires, Hunters. She’d thought their whistling, thundering engines sounded like God’s fury as they climbed high in the azure blue skies over the ancient walled cities on the hill. From her bedroom window in old Rabat she’d awakened every morning to an eagle’s eye view of the south of the island. She could see Sliema and Valetta, and sometimes if it wasn’t too hazy the big ships manoeuvring outside Marsamxett or the entrance to the Grand Harbour. Sweeping her eye from left to right she could see the rooftops of the Three Cities – Floriana, Vittoriosa and Cospicua – across to Luqa, the flattest place on the whole Maltese Archipelago and the biggest airbase, and further west to where the fishing village of Marsaxlokk lay hidden in the morning mist. On those timeless sunny childhood mornings how could she not believe that Malta was God’s own island?