Quick answer: How did the United States find the Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962?
On Sunday, October 14, 1962, an Air Force U-2 flying at about 72,000 feet took 928 photographs over western Cuba. The next day, photo interpreters in Washington measured objects near San Cristóbal against what they knew of Soviet rockets, and on October 16 President Kennedy was shown medium-range ballistic missile sites ninety miles from Florida.
In October 1962 the people who read America's spy photographs worked on the upper floors of a building at Fifth and K Streets in Washington, above a Ford dealership. On Monday, October 15, eight cans of film came up their stairs from a U-2 flight over western Cuba the day before, 928 frames shot in about six minutes. Interpreter Vince DiRenzo knew that ground from a month earlier, and outside San Cristóbal he found two long tents and eight objects under canvas, all the same length. Dino Brugioni kept a binder on Soviet rockets built partly on manuals passed to the West by Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel on the Soviet General Staff, and the measurement matched a missile photographed in Red Square. Director Arthur Lundahl had everything measured again, and by evening the news had reached the White House. McGeorge Bundy told the president the next morning, October 16. Kennedy gathered a small group that became the Executive Committee, or ExComm. On the first day most of them wanted to bomb the sites, and some argued for an invasion. Over the following days Robert McNamara came around to a naval blockade, and Robert Kennedy argued against a surprise attack as Pearl Harbor in reverse. Kennedy chose the blockade, called it a quarantine, and announced it on television on October 22, the same evening Penkovsky was arrested in Moscow. Strategic Air Command went to DEFCON 2 for the only time in its history. On October 24 Soviet ships stopped short of the quarantine line. Two letters then came from Khrushchev, a personal one offering to remove the missiles in exchange for a promise not to invade Cuba, and a harder one demanding the removal of American missiles from Turkey. On October 27, Black Saturday, Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down and killed over Cuba, and aboard a Soviet submarine Vasili Arkhipov refused to agree to fire a nuclear torpedo. Kennedy answered the first letter and sent Robert Kennedy to the Soviet ambassador with a private assurance about Turkey. On October 28 Moscow announced the missiles would come out. Years later, over dinner in Annapolis, Ted Sorensen told John that the Bay of Pigs taught Kennedy that in April 1961 he had heard a conclusion without ever hearing the argument, and that in October he made sure he heard all of it.
Why it matters for leaders: Kennedy's first instinct on October 16 was to strike, the same as nearly everyone in the room. What changed the outcome was a leader who kept the argument going long enough to find a better option, and who trusted the people above the car dealership to tell him what the photographs actually showed.
Q: Who first spotted the Soviet missiles in the U-2 photographs?
A: Photo interpreter Vince DiRenzo found and measured the objects near San Cristóbal on October 15, 1962. Dino Brugioni matched the length to Soviet missile data, and director Arthur Lundahl briefed President Kennedy and his advisers with the photographs on October 16.
Q: Where did the photo interpreters work during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
A: They worked on the upper floors of the Steuart Motor Company Building at Fifth and K Streets NW in Washington, above a working Ford dealership, at the National Photographic Interpretation Center.
Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/nine-hundred-and-twenty-eight-photographs
By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation