Washington Post reporter Dobbs (Saboteurs) is a master at telling stories as they unfold and from a variety of perspectives. In this re-examination of the 1963 Bay of Pigs face-off between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Dobbs combines visits to Cuba, discussions with Russian participants and fingertip command of archival and printed U.S. sources to describe a wild ride that—contrary to the myth of Kennedy's steel-nerved crisis management—was shaped by improvisation, guesswork and blind luck. Dobbs's protagonists act not out of malevolence, incompetence or machismo. Kennedy, Khrushchev and their advisers emerge as men desperately seeking a handle on a situation no one wanted and no one could resolve.

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.

Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane; the movement of Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis; the activities of CIA agents inside Cuba; and the crash landing of an American F-106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board.

Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev--rational, intel ligent men separated by an ocean of ideological suspicion--agonize over the possibility of war. He shows how these two leaders recognized the 'terrifying realities of the nuclear age while Castro--never swayed by conventional political considerations-- demonstrated the messianic ambition of a man selected by history for a unique mission. As the story unfolds, Dobbs brings us onto the de~ks of American ships patrolling Cuba; inside sweltering Soviet submarines and missile units as they ready their warheads; and onto the streets of Miami, where anti-Castro exiles plot the dictator's overthrow.

  Based on exhaustive new research and told in breathtaking prose, here is a riveting account of history's most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time.

List of Maps

Preface

CHAPTER ONE: Americans

CHAPTER TWO: Russians

CHAPTER THREE: Cubans

CHAPTER FOUR: "Eyeball to Eyeball"

CHAPTER FIVE: "Till Hell Freezes Over"

CHAPTER SIX: Intel

CHAPTER SEVEN: Nukes

CHAPTER EIGHT: Strike First

CHAPTER NINE: Hunt for the Grozny

CHAPTER TEN: Shootdown

CHAPTER ELEVEN: "Some Sonofabitch"

CHAPTER TWELVE: "Run Like Hell"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Cat and Mouse

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: "Crate and Return"

Afterword

Acknowledgments and a Note on Sources

Notes

Index