For most British people the weekend of 27/28 October 1962 could so
very easily have been their last weekend on earth, yet astonishingly
the fact that Britain's nuclear deterrent forces went to an
unprecedented level of readiness was kept secret from the public. Thor
nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles stood on a round-the-clock wartime
state of alert ready to be fired, these were the 'other' missiles of
the Cuban Missile Crisis, which made Britain, in effect, America's
launch pad. During the height of the crisis both RAF Bomber Command
and the US Strategic Air Command were poised at the highest states of
readiness. Both were ordered to a level of war readiness unparalleled
throughout the whole of the forty years of Cold War. There is evidence
to suggest that had the US needed to launch an air strike against
Russian missiles in Cuba, President Kennedy might have been willing to
absorb a Soviet nuclear assault on a NATO ally without retaliation, if
it would have avoided escalation to World War Three. It is sobering to
those who lived through that period that, the British Ambassador to
Cuba commented: 'If it was a nuclear war we were headed for, Cuba was
perhaps a better place to be than Britain!'
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Britain and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781781599167
Publisert
2015
Utgiver
Vendor
Pen & Sword Aviation (ORIM)
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter