The original photos that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis were developed at Westover by an exclusive technical squadron of airmen who then shipped them to Washington, D.C.
Fifty years ago Monday, Russell Berman was a teen-ager doing yard work after school in Holyoke when the lady he was working for called him into the house with an odd request.
“I want you to watch the television with me,” she told the boy. “The president is going to be on.”
All over the country, Americans stopped what they were doing as they took in a terrifying scenario: The president was telling the world it was on the brink of nuclear war.
It was Oct. 22, 1962. President John F. Kennedy revealed to the nation that the Soviet Union had been caught setting up nuclear warhead-bearing missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida. They had the potential to drop on Washington, D.C. The president said we would not allow the missiles to become operational.
Days earlier, an American U-2 spy plane had taken the incriminating photos. The missile site was in a country ruled by Communist dictator Fidel Castro, but the Kremlin was in control.
The confrontation that played out over 13 days became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it was something anyone who lived through it will never forget. Americans who lived anywhere near a military base or major city assumed they were early targets. Much of the rest of the world worried that if the blast didn’t get them, the nuclear fallout would.
In 1974, TV movie, “The Missiles of October,” told the story of that tension-filled time (although without the still-secret details of the agreement that resolved it), and the 2000 movie “13 Days” told it again.
Western Massachusetts played a crucial role in the crisis because it was home to Westover Air Force Base, then a major Strategic Air Command installation.
“Fifty years ago this was one of the largest military air bases in the entire country,” said M. Sgt. Andrew Biscoe of Westover, who is writing a book about the Chicopee base with the working title “Westover Heyday: the Strategic Air Command Years.”
In fact, the original photos that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis were developed at Westover by an exclusive technical squadron of airmen who then shipped them to Washington, D.C.
At the time, the United States had gone through a series of crises related to its “Cold War” with the Soviets. Only a year earlier, the Soviets had built the Berlin Wall in Germany, cutting Berlin from East Germany, and a group of Cuban exiles in this country had tried and failed to invade Communist Cuba to overthrow Castro in what came to be known as the Bay of Pigs.
Americans had long known the United States and Russia had Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, ICBMs for short, aimed at each other. Our Air Force had B-52 bombers – including those from Westover – in the air at all times, ready to divert to enemy targets on a moment’s notice. And all these missiles and airplanes carried nuclear weapons, capable of killing millions of people in an all-out war.
Vincent Ferraro
“We were in a state of hyper alert,” said Vincent Ferraro, professor of international politics at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley. “We were really expecting the end of the world at any point.”
As JFK addressed the nation, Stephen Jendrysik, of Chicopee, was correcting papers at his dining room table with the TV turned on. He was a first-year teacher at Chicopee Comprehensive High School.
“When the president invoked the Monroe Doctrine,” said Jendrysik, “I knew this was for real.”
The Monroe Doctrine, established by President James Monroe in 1823, decreed that any intervention by a European power in the Americas would be considered aggressive acts requiring a response by the United States.
“The president appealed to Chairman Krushchev to get the missiles out of Cuba,” Russell Berman recalled, referring to Soviet Premiere Nikita Krushchev.
“The United States and the Soviet Union were the two biggest powers at that time,” said 80-year-old Clodo Concepcion, of Springfield, a Cuban-American who was serving in the U.S. Air Force in Biloxi, Miss. “If they go to war, they annihilate each other.”
For 13 days, the planet’s future seemed to hang by a thread, as leaders scrambled behind the scenes to defuse the situation and the United States set up a blockade – officially labeled a “quarantine” – against Soviet ships heading to Cuba.
“The president put the entire nation on alert – very high alert,” said Biscoe. “‘Back then we had a huge armada of B-52 bombers and KC-135 refueling tankers, aerial partners that would fly missions all over the world and refuel in mid-air.”
10-12-12 - Chicopee- Republican Staff Photo by Don Treeger- Master Sgt. Andrew Biscoe poses under a model of a B-52 Bomber at the entrance to Westover Air Reserve Base.Meanwhile, Westover’s SAC leaders met in a bomb-proof underground bunker built in 1958 at the Notch in South Hadley. “It became where they hunkered down all through the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Biscoe.
Even little children were touched by a sense of doom. “I remember it being a nerve-wracking, tense time around the house,” said Louis Barry, of Granby, then a little boy in Boston.
Ed Lavelle, of Holyoke, overheard his elders worrying that if Westover were attacked, nearby homes like theirs would go, too.
Lavelle had immigrated to this country from Ireland a few years earlier. He recalls vividly where he was when the crisis was announced (watching TV at an uncle’s house with a cousin), but he also remembers the faith his family had in the president.
“The world revolved around Jack Kennedy for all the Irish,” he said. “Whatever he did, it was the right thing to do. And history proved it.”
“Krushchev seriously miscalculated what Kennedy would do,” said Ferraro, citing the president’s youth and his reputation as a playboy.
“Krushchev certainly had not anticipated being caught, and he tried to deny it for some time. He hadn’t counted on having photos being broadcast all over the world.
“Both Kennedy and Krushchev realized they were riding a tiger,” said Ferraro, and the question was how to let go.
In spite of calls from some American generals and European leaders to go to war, Kennedy secretly sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to work out a deal with the Soviet ambassador.
The United States would agree to remove its missiles from Turkey if the Soviets agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba. By Oct. 28, the crisis was over.
The public did not find out about the U.S. concession until years later. All they knew was that the Soviets had backed down. As then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously said: “We were eyeball to eyeball, and the other guy just blinked.”
Nikita Krushchev was ousted from leadership a year later. A “hotline” was established between Washington and Moscow, designed to ease communications and prevent further confrontations, and arms control agreements were signed.
At the time of the crisis, said Ferraro, the United States and the Soviet Union had 30,000 nuclear warheads each.
Now they have 1,250.