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. 12, another Soviet ship, the Kimovsk, leaves from Kaliningrad with five R-14 missiles destined for Cuba. Meanwhile, the Poltava leaves Nikolaev in the Black Sea with a further seven R-14 missiles. A U.S. agent based in Cuba reports a Soviet military installation near San Cristobal to the CIA. As late as Oct. 13, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States -- Anatoly Dobryin, shown above -- is unaware of missile deployment by the Kremlin and vehemently denies that the USSR has nuclear weapons in Cuba. On Oct. 14, a U-2 plane, piloted by Major Richard S. Heyser, obtains the first hard photo evidence of MRBMs in Cuba, a mjor turning point in the crisis.

AFP/Getty Images

 

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.