Thirteen Days in October

A day-by-day examination of the world's most dangerous nuclear standoff.

BY MICHAEL DOBBS, RACHEL DOBBS | OCTOBER 8, 2012

On Oct. 7, the Soviet ship Aleksandrovsk sails for Cuba with 44 short-range FKR warheads and 24 warheads for long-range R-14 missiles. Meanwhile, the cargo ship Orenburg arrives in Mariel carrying seven R-12 missiles. On Oct. 8, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos condemns the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba before the U.N. General Assembly. Dorticos states that "If we are attacked, we will defend ourselves -- we have sufficient means ... we have our inevitable weapons." Above, Dorticos stands between Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

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Michael Dobbs is a prizewinning foreign correspondent and the author of a bestselling book about the Cuban missile crisis, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. He writes Foreign Policy's On the Brink blog.

Rachel Dobbs is a research assistant with the Cuban Missile Crisis +50 project. You can follow the project on Twitter: @missilecrisis62.