'They handled it exactly the right way': How the Kennedys averted the 1962 Cuban missile crisis

Between 14 and 28 October 1962, the world came to the brink of nuclear war. According to insiders who spoke to the BBC, the expertise of President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert saved the day.

It was, said a BBC Panorama presenter on 29 October 1962, "the most dangerous week in the whole history of mankind".

On 14 October, US aerial photographs had shown that the Soviets had secretly been installing nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba, 90 miles (150km) from the US coast. Over the following 14 days, a confrontation between the two superpowers threatened to boil over – and the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. 

The crisis was ultimately averted when the Soviets agreed to remove their weapons. In the years since then, insiders have spoken to the BBC, revealing surprising insights into the tactics behind the scenes during 14 days that shook the world. The Soviets' climb-down, it turned out, was influenced by US President John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy's expert statesmanship – and a chance conversation overheard in a Washington bar.

Throughout the summer of 1962, more than 40,000 Soviet soldiers, engineers and technicians arrived in the Cuban port of Havana, posing as tourists and agricultural specialists, and covertly installing nuclear missiles on the island. 

On 14 October, a US spy plane spotted evidence of the missiles, sparking the crisis. Arthur Lundahl, then the CIA's head of photo intelligence, told the BBC's Timewatch in 1992 about the moment when they realised exactly what they were seeing. "I put my head over the eyepiece and adjusted the viewfinders and took one long look at that. And I looked up at them and I said, 'I know what you're thinking. And I'm thinking the same thing… We're looking at Soviet-type medium-range ballistic missile sites, right?'"

In fact, Soviet activity in Cuba had sparked concerns in the US for weeks beforehand, prompting President Kennedy to request more detailed intelligence. According to the US Secretary of Defense at that time, Robert McNamara, the spy plane revelation came after multiple previous warnings.

"I think the [US military] received 5,000 reports of missiles being introduced into Cuba, and they investigated them and finally concluded they were erroneous," he told Timewatch. "They couldn't believe that wise political authorities… would run the risk of introducing those missiles into Cuba because there was very little advantage to be gained by it and very heavy risks associated with it."

A high-stakes poker game

The discovery of Soviet missiles on Cuba was kept secret from the world by order of the US president, until he announced it in a speech on 22 October. In the meantime, Kennedy had a pre-arranged meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, on 18 October. 

What happened next was relayed to the BBC in 2002 by Gromyko's translator that day, the British-educated Viktor Sukhodrev. "We went, as usual, to the Oval Office. Kennedy was sitting in his customary rocking chair and Gromyko was sort of next to him and there were two couches opposite each other and a little table in between with a drawer," he told the BBC's former Moscow correspondent Allan Little. "It was civilised, if not the friendliest of discussions. I somehow felt that Kennedy was rather tense."

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