could any longer be sent to observe what was
going on if the pilots’ lives were thereby exposed
to danger. ‘We are now in an entirely new ball
game.’
The final escalation of the crisis appears to have
been prompted by the kind of accident Kennedy
had always feared could lead to fatal miscalcula-
tion. Another U-2 plane had accidentally strayed
into Soviet airspace over Siberia and had been
damaged by a missile (it made it back to its base
in the US). But the next ‘accident’ might prove
more serious and the chances of it happening
would increase the longer the crisis lasted.
It is significant that Khrushchev avoided
making any public military preparations in the
Soviet Union, though in fact the Soviet armed
forces had been placed in full preparedness.
Khrushchev was anxious not to raise the temper-
ature further. Then news reached the Kremlin
that an American U-2 plane had been shot down
over Cuba. Khrushchev rightly feared that the
confrontation could slip out of his and Kennedy’s
control.
In the White House, meanwhile, Kennedy cau-
tiously pulled back from ordering immediate
armed action against Cuba and the Soviet instal-
lations. Everything was to be thought through
again and another message conveyed to the
Kremlin. Kennedy was rightly convinced that the
Russians did not want to fight any more than the
Americans. The president asked his brother to
arrange an immediate meeting with the Soviet
ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. Dobrynin has-
tened to the Justice Department within half an
hour of receiving the telephone call. Though
Robert Kennedy later denied it, the message he
gave the ambassador was practically an ultima-
tum. He told Dobrynin that by the following day,
Sunday, the Soviet Union would have to agree to
remove the bases and missiles or the US would
remove them. That was the stick. The carrot was
that the Jupiter missiles would be removed from
Turkey later, but not under Soviet threat. On the
suggestion of McGeorge Bundy, national security
adviser, no reply was sent to Khrushchev’s second
message; it was simply ignored. Instead, the pro-
posal contained in the first was accepted: if the
Soviets removed their missiles, the US would
undertake not to invade Cuba. These represented
the maximum concessions the president was
willing to make.
That same Saturday evening, after Robert
Kennedy returned to the White House, there was
considerable gloom. Would Khrushchev yield?
The president ordered the military to be ready to
invade Cuba. The decision about an air strike was
to be reviewed on Sunday. As everyone dispersed
that Saturday night they wondered whether they
would wake to a peaceful morning. In Moscow
Khrushchev was spending Saturday night in his
dacha. Kennedy’s reply reached him there on
Sunday morning, 28 October. He summoned the
Praesidium, which agreed to issue a positive
response to be broadcast immediately, since every
minute’s delay was considered to be dangerous.
Later that morning, the State Department
received the message over Radio Moscow that
Khrushchev had accepted the US proposals. The
‘offensive’ missiles would be removed under UN
supervision in exchange for the American under-
taking not to invade Cuba – to which Khrushchev
had added: nor any other nation of the Western
hemisphere.
Kennedy’s response was conciliatory. He
praised the Soviet leader’s ‘statesmanlike deci-
sion’, but would not help him to save face by
making public the US promise to remove the
American missiles from Turkey. The missile crisis
was over. But tension lingered on for some weeks.
The Americans were also demanding the removal
of Soviet bombers. The Russians gave way on that
issue only late in November. Castro, who had not
been consulted, was in a rage. Feeling that he had
been used, a pawn in the American–Soviet con-
frontation, he called Khrushchev a son of a bitch,
Mao Zedong stepped in to increase his rancour.
Castro refused to cooperate with the detailed
procedures for removing the missiles, but the
Russians honoured their undertaking to remove
them. Kennedy then lifted the quarantine of Cuba
and, exploiting Castro’s lack of cooperation,
watered down the US commitment not to invade
Cuba by writing to Khrushchev, ‘there need be
no fear of any invasion of Cuba while matters take
their present favourable course’ (italics added). No
treaty was ever concluded between the Soviet