"Cuban Sightseeing Tour 1962" by Mike Machat. At 12:30 PM, November 4, 1962, Col. Clyde D. East of the 20th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, 363rd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, departed MacDill AFB, Fla., and turned his McDonnell RF-101C Voodoo to a southerly heading -- destination, Havana, Cuba. The Voodoo leveled at 500 feet and 500 knots and 16 minutes later streaked across Havana harbor on a "verification flight," ensuring through its photographs, that the "Missiles of October" were being removed and returned to the Soviet Union. The United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962 after a routine Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance mission detected the deployment of Soviet ICBMs just 90 miles from the Florida coast. Although aerial reconnaissance has played an important part in modern warfare, this episode showed the need and importance of effective photo reconnaissance. Successful aerial reconnaissance coupled with brilliant statesmanshop enabled the world to avoid war.

Page created by:
Patrick Mahon
Vero Beach Fl
dawg@gate.net

A good page about the "Voodoo"
http://www.sinosa.com/~tanseyj/vodoo.htm

For a transcript of the Executive Committee Meeting in the Oval Office  18 October, 1962
regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis

click here.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/AU/excomm.html

pau