My rational brain knew it wasn’t the end of the world, but a thirteen year old imagination demanded verification.
It was 4 am and I had been startled awake by the siren, a siren I had heard many times before, this time accompanied by the screech of the F-4 Phantom II jets taking off from Oceania Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
I reached over to the nightstand, grabbed my transistor radio and hastily turned it on. Everything seemed to be normal with the world. The Four Seasons sang “Sherry, Sherry baby” and it helped cool the boil of my thirteen-year-old emotions.
I had slowly been conditioned to respond this way. The fairyland my of youth was slowly being replaced the reality of the cold war and possible annihilation. By this time, I had seen “On the Beach” and a television adaptation of “Alas, Babylon” and I still remember the little girl who went blind because she stared at a distant mushroom cloud.
It was bad enough to be thirteen and I didn’t need all of[[ 3/27/2024 1:32 AM Check for the actual date the Independence left Norfolk]] the world’s bullshit on top of it. At age 12 I got on my knees and prayed that I would make it to my 13th birthday, that the world with people would still be around.
The Phantoms were on their way to the USS Independence. My father, John, boarded the carrier just a few days previous. This was his second cruise of 1962, the first being aboard the USS Wasp for five months on a tour of the North Atlantic. The Independence was on its way to the Caribbean and to an unknown history.
The siren belonged to the local volunteer fire department. As often as I heard it, I couldn’t get used to it.
The incident hadn’t happened yet, but it was brewing. It was early October 1962. Soon I would be forced to pay attention to the news. If I had been paying attention, I would have known this: The Soviets had set off 19 nuclear explosions since September in spite of an agreed upon moratorium. On the 15th of October the headline on the paper was Defending Jets Swarm US Skies in Maneuver. A military exercise was being conducted in both the United States and Europe simulating a response to a mass missile attack based on the premise that hundreds of bases in NORAD and SAC had been destroyed and a invasion force of 200 enemy bombers were on the way to finish the job. During the twelve-hour operation all US commercial flights were canceled. Meanwhile J. Edgar Hoover made a speech declaring that Cuba posed a threat to the United States by supporting the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico which was advocating violence to achieve independence.
I am not certain if the USS Independence was part of the military maneuvers. I am sure that my father didn’t know what he was getting into as he walked up the gangplank with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
In September, there had been some hint of what would is known as The Cuban Missile Crisis. Ships had been observed coming from the USSR with crates that might have been carrying missiles. Some sketchy intelligence suggested that there might be something going on. U2 flights had been suspended due to an accidental fly over of Soviet airspace. Did the Soviets know that this surveillance had stopped and took the opportunity to deploy missiles to Cuba?
Sketchy evidence provided just enough doubt and anxiety that led to the resumption of U2 flyovers of Cuba. While I was busy trying to acclimate to my first year in high school (which started with 8th grade in Virginia) U2 flights were taking photos of Soviet missile installations. On October 15 the CIA knew and quickly the news was spread to those who needed to know. Seven days later John F. Kennedy spoke on the 22nd of October and then whole world knew.
An attack option was on the table. The military was all for it, but Deputy Director of the CIA Marshall Carter said, “You put out all the missiles. This isn’t the end; this is the beginning.” It would be the first day of World War III. Eventually Kennedy would chose to blockade, a decision that may have saved us all.
I am not sure I internalized the fact that my father was in the path of danger.
In 1960 he had the opportunity to learn about jet aircraft. At the end of my sixth grade a moving van showed up at our house in Mountain View, California and moved our belongings to Memphis, Tennessee. After six months of training there he was assigned to another training program in Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
The next stop was six months later in Virginia Beach, Virginia and he was assigned to Attack Squadron 64, a naval air unit that flew the A4D Skyhawk.
The Skyhawk was a lightweight aircraft with a top speed of more than 670 miles per hour. It could deliver a variety of missiles, bombs and other munitions. It was capable of carrying a bomb load equivalent to that of a World War II-era Boeing B-17 bomber, and could deliver nuclear weapons using a low altitude bombing system and a “loft” delivery technique.
And so my father found himself circling Cuba.