Existing comment:
On the Brink of Catastrophe:
On October 27, the crisis started spiraling out of control. Events of the previous nine days had unleashed forces that were moving beyond the reach of the only two men who could control them. The day is remembered as "Black Saturday," because of two separate incidents.
Taking off from a US Air Force Base in Alaska, an American pilot strayed into Soviet airspace. The United States later explained that the pilot had lost his bearings while on an air sampling mission over the North Pole. The incident could easily have been interpreted by the Soviets as a provocation -- a preliminary reconnaissance mission preceding a nuclear attack on Soviet soil.
Almost simultaneously, an American U-2 plane was shot down over the village of Veguitas by order of two Soviet officers on the ground in Cuba. The pilot died instantly. The Ex Comm assumed -- mistakenly -- that the order had come from Moscow and interpreted it as a deliberate escalation. The President was urged to order a retaliatory strike against the surface-to-air-missile (SAM) site that had launched the missile; but in a show of restraint, he decided to wait, averting an incident that might have escalated into a nuclear exchange. |