Interesting Anniversary Today

[jabird56]

https://www1.nga.mil/MediaRoom/CubanMissileCrisis/Pages/default.aspx

We will never know how close we came to the line.....

[Curless]

We were very close...just read an article about this...not cool at all.

[Raleigh Marauder]

Here is the account of an incident in 1983. I hadn't heard of this until very recently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar m_incident

[PonyUP]

One of my favorite movies is on this subject and is remarkably pretty accurate. If you can get pass Kevin Costners terrible New England accent, I highly recommend 13 days


The Ice Bucket Approves of this message

[guspech750]

One of my favorite movies is on this subject and is remarkably pretty accurate. If you can get pass Kevin Costners terrible New England accent, I highly recommend 13 days


The Ice Bucket Approves of this message

Very good movie Brad. Very good indeed.


Sent from my iPhone 4S

DTR + 4.10's + Eaton swap = Wreeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom

[1stMerc]

They were saying on MSNBC someone found the speech that thank God President Kennedy didn't have to give.

[Haggis]

We should have nuked them anyway.

[WhatsUpDOHC]

We should have nuked them anyway.

Real mature, Gordon.

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[Haggis]

Real mature, Gordon.

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Thank you, Mark.

[Bluerauder]

https://www1.nga.mil/MediaRoom/CubanMissileCrisis/Pages/default.aspx

We will never know how close we came to the line.....

I remember all too well. :( I was 12 years old at the time. It was easy to tell that the adults were very nervous about this entire event and they got much more nervous and anxious as the situation continued to develop day-by-day. My Dad was visibly worried and I had NEVER seen him that way. Even at that age, I was painfully aware of how close we came and whether we would ever see another Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas. And, I was pretty sure that getting under a desk at school wasn't gonna be a whole lot of help.

[1stMerc]

Yeah, i was six at the time and blissfully unaware.

[cruzer]

I was sitting at a table aout 15 feet from the President when he received the word that the freighters carrying the atomic warheads had left the port in Russia. He was in Minneapolis/St.Paul on a political juncket. I was co-pilot on the back-up aircraft for Air Force One--an American Airlines Electra. When he got the news, my crew was told immediately go out, eat Dinner and go nto the hotel and get as much sleep as possible. Just before dawn , the next morning, we were awakened by Air Policemen with unsafetied machine guns and told to get dressed in 10 minutes---a terrifying high-speed limo ride to the airport, not allowed to contact anyone, including American Airlines, and we figured fuel and time to Washingto National Airport--route to be supplied after airborne. Air Force One had been sent to Navy Chicago the previous night for an engine change . We were told our flight ID was "White House One". We pre-flighted and were in the cockpit when the Secret Service agent assigned to the flight told us to start all 4 engines and leave the boarding stairs down, a violation of FAA regs--he said it was the President's orders---follow orders and argue later. A blacked-out limo roared up and three men, one was clearly identifiable as the President--he had a slight limp from the PT 109 incident. We closed the door and taxied in radio silence and blacked out. As we neared the runway we saw red-light wands used by agents to guide us into the gate and we were signaled to stop--our SS agent told us to look up---there ahead of us was Air Force One---totally blacked out. He had landed unseen and with no clearance. At this time the "President" came into the cockpit and stripped off his latex mask and we were informed that President Kennedy was on AF One. Agian, with no cleara nce, we took off right behind the jet. We were given a radio frequency by the SS and we eceived instructions to climb to best altitude and proceed at max allowable speed to D.C. and were given headings to fly---skip to D.C. arrival---we were told to break radio silence and use normal procedures--we were given a straight-in approach to Runway 18---which took us directly over the White House--which was ringed with active Nike sites--that was a thrill. We were parked at the Marine Terminal at Washington National Airport. I was told to stand in the door because I was closest in height to the President. We raised the door as the band played "Ruffles and Flourishes" followed by a 5 second delay , then "Hail to the Chief"--during the 5 second break, the following message was broadcast over the PA system---"Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States speaking from the Oval Office " You could hear a pin drop---they had fooled the Press, the General Staff, the Public for the first time. If you go to the "Sixth Floor Museum" web site and search "Capt. Maury Seitz" you will see a film about this incident.....the rest is history---and by the way, the recent news story about the compromise and negotiations that took place the day the freighters turned around is VERY accurate. Oh yes, I remember where I was. Maury

[WhatsUpDOHC]

DAMN MAURY!!

I owe you a beer or two - If only to hear you tell me this in person!

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[cruzer]

If the Good Lord keeps me healthy, I will be at Louisville and Atlanta--it's been7 years since MVIII--a lot of new people to meet--Hope to meet you, Maury:burnout::beer:

[1stMerc]

DAMN MAURY!!

I owe you a beer or two - If only to hear you tell me this in person!

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+2 that is awsome Maury.

[sailsmen]

My father was Navy Reserve. He was activated the begining of that Summer and sent to GITMO.

As a pilot he flew S2Fs out of GITMO, twin engine carrier based sub chasers, over the shipping lanes to conduct surveillance.

A friend of mine was a navigator on S2Fs and was there the same time as my father. He told me they would let ordinance go off at the fence line to remind the Cubans we can take you out at any time.

He saw the missles on the decks of the Russian freighters with his own eyes in July.

When my father would tell me the story he would always end it the same way. Had the President asked him in July are there Russian Missles in Cuba he would have assumed the President had the proper clearances and rsponded yes sir!

[sailsmen]

A news paper article about my father's service in the Navy;
Joseph of Covington is an ex-Navy pilot, the type who landed his Grumman built, twin•engine S2F-2 subhunter aircraft on the pitch•ing deck of an aircraft carrier. He is tall, ruggedly handsome, knowledgeable, softspoken. A former Navy commander who's also a first class saltwater yachtsman and a dry-wit individual who can creep up on you with his wit.
In short, he was no dry dock, deskbound swabjockey during his Navy career. He was an officer, a proud Annapolis grad. One of those "no•sweat" pilots who could spot a flattop churning through angry seas even though the ship looked about the size of a pair of postage stamps pitching and rolling far below.
Joe's the kind of self•effacing man who could ease an attack plane - say a Douglas AD3 - onto a wildly careening flat-top that's plowing through mountainous waves at 35 knots, into the teeth of a gale that threatens to tear his windframe. A man who awa y after it's all over, stroll, in fact, toward the bridge nonchalantly. Inwardly happy - but daring not to show it - that the aircraft didn't get away from him and smash into triple rows of other S2F-1's parked on the big deck. Any man who can manhandle one of those big Pratt and Whitney engines of a Douglas AD-3 carrier attack plane, who can peel off in a tight turn toward the carrier, pulling contrails from his wingtips, popping wheels and flaps at the bottom of his descent, then half Slipping around in the screaming air to kiss 'the teakwood deck, left wheelirrst, then right, engine burbling; cut the fuel flow with the mixture control. Kill the switches, then leave that baby behind you for the crewchief to worry about and head for the bellytank and a hot cup of Joe•
He is definetly a man to be reckoned with. And still all those heroics, all those exploits are not really Joe's tour de force, his "piece de resistance," his raison d' etre. On a
windswept day, at the height of the global-tensioned Cold War between the United States and Russia, when the halls at the Pentagon and the
Politburo were at their most gut-clenching, Joe achieved far more than his 15 minutes of fame; he rewrote the U.S. Navy's pioneering
history log. From 1952-1958 Joe was a Navy special check flight instructor, flag lieutenant and aide to Admirals William Miller and James Thach who were the commanders of Hunter Killer Forces coordinating destroyers, helicopters, attack submarines, patrol aircraft and carrier aircraft to combat the Russian submarine threat.

And -then, on one momentous day when the Skipper pointed to him and said, "son, there's a major job I want you to volunteer for. You've got 24 hours to think it over, and then, son, get it done!" That, in a nutshell, is how volunteers were born in the U.S. Navy. So, one day, aboard the U.S.S. Aircraft Carrier Antietem. With cirrostratus clouds painted across a cobalt
sky over the Atlantic Ocean, in a stretch of water where Russian subs might be lurking - they were the Cold War enemy, remember, and they
were capable of launching a hot Veronska missile into downtown New York City - Joe coaxed his sixfoot frame into a Hunter
Killer airplane, slammed the canopy shut, shoved the throttle to the firewall and took off from the aircraft carrier and flew into destiny.

Aboard his plane was a 2,200 pound bomb loaded with TNT and a magnetic device that was programmed to seek out Russian subs once it hit
the water. Sitting in the cockpit, searching the breathtaking expanse of ocean below him, Joe, at that moment, at precisely 1300
hours, was the anti-submarine command carrier pilot who would drop the first atomic depth charge in operational suitability tests for the
Navy. The nuclear device was of course removed from the warhead this being a test, but, even so, when the 2,200 pound bomb hit the water -
and plunged to about 40 feet before it exploded - the force was both powerful and visceral. It sent a concussion wave of terrible immensity
against the Antietam and, had the warhead been armed with a nuclear device, rather than mere TNT, and had there been a real Russian
submarine down there, the sub would have been blown to pieces and the flattop probably would have listed dangerously to port.

In fact, when Joe returned to the carrier, landed, relaxed for a moment while the ticking of the plane's engine sounded like
sweet music as it cooled, he saw the exec-officer storming toward him .."Holy Mother of God," the exec bellowed, "I thought you
guys were going to drop a dud." "He was petrified," Joe said of the other officer. "The blast was, indeed, something to behold. And, just think,
had we dropped a bomb – a fish, the navy calls it – with the nuclear warhead attached, there would have been a mushroom cloud over
the Atlantic that New Yorkers would still be talking about." It is difficult to imagine, in this day and age, for people not living in the 1950s, to comprehend just how critical the Cold War was between the U.S. and Russia. But it was, after all, a cold war affright with tension, but, said Joe "it never got hot." Had there been a real Russian sub in the Atlantic, that close to the American shores, and had the bomb Joe dropped been armed with a nuclear device, he, acting in an official capacity, likely would have triggered World War III. As it was, Joe, and his
flight, returning to the flattop in standard delta formation, managed to scare the bejeebers out of every gob perched on the flight deck watching the pioneering test.