In response to these factors the Soviet and Cuban governments agreed, at a meeting between leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro in July 1962, to place nuclear missiles on Cuba to deter a future US invasion.

According to Naftali, Soviet foreign policy planners were concerned that Castro's break with Escalante foreshadowed a Cuban drift toward China, and they sought to solidify the Soviet-Cuban relationship through the missile basing program.

[16] At the initiative of the CIA Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Bissell, and approved by the new President John F. Kennedy, the US launched the attempted Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961 using CIA-trained forces of Cuban expatriates.

[23] In January 1962, US Air Force General Edward Lansdale described the plans to overthrow the Cuban government in a top-secret report, addressed to Kennedy and officials involved with Operation Mongoose.

[25] In February 1962, the US launched an embargo against Cuba,[26] and Lansdale presented a 26-page, top-secret timetable for implementation of the overthrow of the Cuban government, mandating guerrilla operations to begin in August and September.

[35] The half-hearted nature of the Bay of Pigs invasion reinforced his impression that Kennedy was indecisive and, as one Soviet aide wrote, "too young, intellectual, not prepared well for decision making in crisis situations... too intelligent and too weak".

As Graham Allison, the director of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, pointed out, "The Soviet Union could not right the nuclear imbalance by deploying new ICBMs on its own soil.

"[59] On 11 October in another Senate speech, Sen Keating reaffirmed his earlier warning of 31 August and stated that, "Construction has begun on at least a half dozen launching sites for intermediate range tactical missiles.

In a meeting with members of the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance (COMOR) on 10 September 1962, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy restricted further U-2 flights over Cuban airspace.

[91] Kennedy conferred with members of EXCOMM and other top advisers throughout 21 October and considered the two remaining options: an air strike primarily against the Cuban missile bases or a naval blockade of Cuba.

Since it would take place in international waters, Kennedy obtained the approval of the OAS for military action under the hemispheric defence provisions of the Rio Treaty: Latin American participation in the quarantine now involved two Argentine destroyers which were to report to the US Commander South Atlantic [COMSOLANT] at Trinidad on November 9.

Khrushchev stated, "if you weigh the present situation with a cool head without giving way to passion, you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot afford not to decline the despotic demands of the USA".

TAC and the Military Air Transport Service had problems: the concentration of aircraft in Florida strained command and support echelons, which were facing critical undermanning in security, armaments, and communications.

Absence of permission to use war-reserve stocks of conventional munitions forced TAC to scrounge supplies, and the lack of airlift assets to support a major airborne drop necessitated the call-up of 24 reserve squadrons.

In response, Kennedy issued Security Action Memorandum 199, authorizing the loading of nuclear weapons onto aircraft under the command of SACEUR, which had the duty of carrying out first air strikes on the Soviet Union.

The implicit threat of air strikes on Cuba followed by an invasion allowed the United States to exert pressure in future talks, and the prospect of military action helped to accelerate Khrushchev's proposal for a compromise.

[111] The escalating situation also caused Khrushchev to abandon plans for a possible Warsaw Pact invasion of Albania, which was being discussed in the Eastern Bloc following the Vlora incident the previous year.

On the morning of 27 October, a U-2F (the third CIA U-2A, modified for air-to-air refuelling) piloted by USAF Major Rudolf Anderson,[131] departed its forward operating location at McCoy AFB, Florida.

At 4:00 pm EDT, Kennedy recalled members of EXCOMM to the White House and ordered that a message should immediately be sent to U Thant asking the Soviets to suspend work on the missiles while negotiations were carried out.

2) We, on our part, would agree—upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations, to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments (a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against the invasion of Cuba."

At 12:12 am EDT, on 27 October, the US informed its NATO allies that "the situation is growing shorter.... the United States may find it necessary within a very short time in its interest and that of its fellow nations in the Western Hemisphere to take whatever military action may be necessary."

President Kennedy had been told in early 1961 that a nuclear war would probably kill a third of humanity, with most or all of those deaths concentrated in the US, the USSR, Europe and China,[162] and Khrushchev may have received a similar estimate.

[citation needed] At the time when the Kennedy administration believed that the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved, nuclear tactical rockets remained in Cuba which were not part of the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding and the Americans did not know about them.

[clarification needed][failed verification] Because the withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles from NATO bases in Italy and Turkey was not made public at the time,[174] Khrushchev appeared to have lost the conflict and become weakened.

[44]: 311 A few weeks after the crisis, during an interview with British communist newspaper the Daily Worker, Guevara was still fuming over the perceived Soviet betrayal and told correspondent Sam Russell that, if the missiles had been under Cuban control they would have been launched.

"[195][196] At least four contingency strikes were armed and launched from Florida against Cuban airfields and suspected missile sites in 1963 and 1964, although all were diverted to the Pinecastle Range Complex after the planes had passed Andros island.

[202] Seven crew died when a Military Air Transport Service Boeing C-135B Stratolifter delivering ammunition to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base stalled and crashed on landing approach on 23 October.

They learned that on 27 October 1962, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph had located a diesel-powered, nuclear-armed Soviet Project 641 (NATO designation Foxtrot) submarine, the B-59, near Cuba.

[212] Khrushchev feared that Castro's hurt pride and widespread Cuban indignation over the concessions he had made to Kennedy might lead to a breakdown of the agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States.

During a tense, four-hour meeting, Mikoyan convinced Castro that despite Moscow's desire to help, it would be in breach of an unpublished Soviet law, which did not actually exist, to transfer the missiles permanently into Cuban hands and provide them with an independent nuclear deterrent.