In October 1962, the world came closer to nuclear annihilation than most of us will ever fully appreciate. For thirteen extraordinary days, two superpowers confronted one another across ninety miles of Caribbean sea, and the future of civilisation hung in the balance.
But the Cuban Missile Crisis was not quite the heroic diplomatic triumph we were taught at school. Behind the familiar photographs of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev lies a far more disturbing story of secret military operations, political miscalculations, nuclear weapons and decisions that could have ended in catastrophe.
In Part One of this two-part Rearview Mirror Chronicles special, we travel back to the Cold War, the rise of Fidel Castro, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the extraordinary Soviet operation to place nuclear missiles on Cuba. We also uncover a little-known account of American involvement in the invasion, before following the American spy plane whose photographs exposed Khrushchev's enormous gamble.
By the time President Kennedy addresses the American people on 22 October 1962, the world is holding its breath. American warships are preparing to intercept Soviet vessels, nuclear missiles are being readied in Cuba, and neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev knows quite how to escape the confrontation they have created.
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