Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, major cold war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. On Apr. 17, 1961, an armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast of Cuba.
..... Click the link for more information. , the USSR increased its support of Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, and in the summer of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev secretly decided to install ballistic missiles in Cuba. When U.S. reconnaissance flights revealed the clandestine construction of missile launching sites, President Kennedy publicly denounced (Oct. 22, 1962) the Soviet actions. He imposed a naval blockade on Cuba and declared that any missile launched from Cuba would warrant a full-scale retaliatory attack by the United States against the Soviet Union. On Oct. 24, Russian ships carrying missiles to Cuba turned back, and when Khrushchev agreed (Oct. 28) to withdraw the missiles and dismantle the missile sites, the crisis ended as suddenly as it had begun. The United States ended its blockade on Nov. 20, and by the end of the year the missiles and bombers were removed from Cuba. The United States, in return, pledged not to invade Cuba, and subsequently secretly removed ballistic missiles it had placed in Turkey.

Bibliography

See R. F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (1969, repr. 1971); A. Chayes, The Cuban Missile Crisis (1974); R. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989); A. Fursenko and T. Naftali, "One Hell of a Gamble" (1997); E. R. May and P. D. Zelikow, ed., The Kennedy Tapes (1997); M. Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War (2004).

Cuban missile crisis

(1962) Major confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. In October 1962 a U.S. spy plane detected a ballistic missile on a launching site in Cuba. Pres. John F. Kennedy placed a naval blockade around the island, and for several days the U.S. and the Soviet Union hovered on the brink of war. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev finally agreed to remove the missiles in return for a secret commitment from the U.S. to withdraw its own missiles from Turkey and to never invade Cuba. The incident increased tensions during the Cold War and fueled the nuclear arms race between the two countries. See also Fidel Castro.

President Kennedy called Krushchev’s bluff, forcing dismantling of missile sites (1962). [Am. Hist.: Van Doren, 581–582]

See : Test