Fifty years ago, on Oct. 22, suddenly the routine day-to-day staff work at 15th Air Force headquarters came to a screeching halt due to a war crisis caused by the Soviet Union that came to be known as the Cuban missile crisis.One of the jobs that I had was senior controller for the 15th Air Force command post. This was a kind of extra-duty job. When the command post’s people were overwhelmed, or if they needed extra help, a few of us who were qualified as Strategic Air Command controllers were pulled in to assist in the mission. This was relatively routine until a serious crisis occurred in the United States — the Cuban missile crisis.The CIA, with its U-2 capabilities, had flown over Cuba and discovered that there were strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles on the island capable of reaching the United States. Florida is not far from Cuba, well within the range of those missiles.President John F. Kennedy had been to Russia, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev apparently thought he was young and inexperienced and could be bullied.The confrontations became serious, and within the SAC system, there was a series of defense conditions, or DEFCONs. DEFCON 5 was a day-to-day situation, and if you reached DEFCON 1, you were on the brink of a strategic nuclear exchange. The crisis deepened, and both countries started to take serious steps toward nuclear war.This potential conflict progressed to the point where SAC deployed numerous B-47 bombers to airfields across the southern United States. A crew would go to an airfield that had never been used by the military, and the intent was to disperse the B-47 fleet as widely as possible. The move was done in case the Soviet Union launched some of the missiles from Cuba or submarines. If a nuclear attack on the United States were to happen, we wanted to have our weapons as safe as possible.In the same mold, the airborne alert went into effect with B-52s fully fueled and flying on the perimeter of the Soviet Union. And we counted down all of our missiles to a minimum response time. At that point, we had the beginnings of the Minuteman missile system. I think we had one squadron at Malmstrom Air Force Base. We had taken some launch control panels, and we could’ve launched 10 Minuteman missiles, but there were hundreds of Atlas D’s and E’s and F’s that were on alert.The D’s were erected and loaded, as were the E’s and F’s. The F’s were silo mounted and had a one-minute countdown. The Titan 1s and the Titan 2s, all of which were ready to go on essentially a minute or less. Minuteman missiles could launch in 32 seconds.This was, needless to say, a serious confrontation. I had grown up in the B-47 business and had taken numerous courses on nuclear effects. My opinion was that if this had been a nuclear exchange, there was a high probability that the majority of the world would die. Nobody really knew what effects multiple warheads would cause, and we certainly didn’t understand what the final catastrophe would be if both sides launched nuclear weapons.I was pressed into duty on the 15th Air Force command post because when crisis started, it was on a 24-hour basis. With the alerts, and the participation of the intelligence people, the SAC go code was available at SAC headquarters down through individual weapons. Each crew member wore a badge around his neck, and the envelope had the codes in it. If the go code was issued, each crew member would open this envelope and read the codes. If they matched, that was the authority to go to war and use their weapons.As a controller in the command center, I had the messages but not the authentication. The message that would’ve launched all of this was called the Red Dot 4, which according to a SAC manual was classified secret. So the procedures and process were at the secret level, but the absolute availability of the go code itself was highly classified and highly compartmented. The intelligence people had to bring that particular code release into the command post so it could be broadcast as an authentication.The crisis came to a head on a Sunday. The radio had a broadcast about a Soviet trawler approaching Cuba, and there was a U.S. Navy destroyer blockading Cuba from any further deliveries from the Soviet Union. The crisis ended with the Soviets backing down.The possibility of all those nuclear systems being used is just appalling, and many of those same nuclear systems are still available.Later, I was involved at SAC headquarters in assigning the nuclear missile warheads to targets according to a document called the National Strategic Targeting Attack Policy, or NSTAP. The president approved this supposedly, but the secretary of defense signed it. The number of warheads was more than 1,000, and you essentially run out of targets. If you look at having the ability to destroy, just take the top 100 cities of any country that you want to attack or ours.If you think about 100 cities in the United States being obliterated, the ability to carry on survivors is pretty small. Those of us who went through that time have an appreciation of the horrors and hazards of a nuclear exchange. I’m not sure if that is or isn’t true in the current world, but it should be.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy talk June 3, 1961, in the residence of the U.S. ambassador in a suburb of Vienna. Photo by Associated Press file photo

Cuban leader Fidel Castro, center, speaks with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, right, as Cuban Foreign Minister Raul Roa looks on during the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 20, 1960, in New York. The world stood at the brink of war during October 1962 wh Photo by