1962: The Apocalypse

These are the list of events that lead to the East-West nuclear war of 1962.

Ubangui Chari
The OTL Oubangui-Chari (or Ubangi-Shari), was a French colonial territory in today's Central African Republic. Anti-colonial rebels take to the streets as a ATL Cholera outbreak in the River Chari kills 400. France intervenes and averts any further suffering. The Soviets offer there support and several crates of medicinal, pistols and bullets to the anti-colonial rebels.

Guatamala
The Guatemalan president General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes assumed powerand authorized the training of 5,000 anti-Castro Cubans in Guatemala. He also provided airstrips in the region of Petén for what later became the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 as in our time line.

Korea
South Korea's president Yun Bo-seon (Korea:윤보선, Hanja:尹潽善,) was taken ill for 8 days after a ATL heart attack in his home on January 5th, 1962. Presiden Kim Il-sung's hope of invading the south were dashed as president Yun Bo-seon mad a full recovery on the 13th and was discharged from hospital that day.

Cuba
As early as August 1962, the United States suspected the Soviets of building missile facilities in Cuba. During that month, its intelligence services gathered information about sightings by ground observers of Russian-built MiG-21fighters and Il-28 light bombers. U-2 spyplanes found S-75 Dvina (NATO designation SA-2) surface-to-air missile sites at eight different locations. CIA director John A. McCone was suspicious and many in the American goverment feared a Soviet attack from Cuba.

On August 10, he wrote a memo to President Kennedy in which he guessed that the Soviets were preparing to introduce ballistic missiles into Cuba. The ‘hawks’ in the military became angerye and planed for the worse. On August 13, an USAF Air Force Strategic Air Command U-2 was shot down as it overflew Sakhalin Island in the Far East by mistake. The Soviets lodged a protest and the US apologized. 2 days later a Taiwanese-operated U-2 was shot down over Shanghai China, probably to a SAM missile.

Air Force General Curtis LeMay presented a pre-invasion bombing plan to Kennedy on September 1st-3rd, while spy flights and minor military harassment from US forces at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were the subject of continual Cuban diplomatic complaints to the US government.



On September 7, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós spoke at the UN General Assembly and said Cuba would not back down to an American invasion. After Adlai Stevenson shows aerial photos of Cuban missiles to the United Nations to the security council that day.

US officials were worried that one of the Cuban or Soviet SAMs in Cuba might shoot down a CIA U-2, initiating another international incident. On September 17th, Navy reconnaissance aircraft photographed the Soviet ship Kasimov with large crates on its deck the size and shape of Il-28 light bombers.

At 13:13 UTC, on October 1st, the US informed its NATO allies that "the situation is growing shorter... the United States may find it necessary within a very short time in its interest and that of its fellow nations in the Western Hemisphere to take whatever military action may be necessary." To add to the concern, at 8 am the CIA reported that all missiles in Cuba were ready for action.



The US Navy dropped a series of minor "signaling depth charges" on a Soviet submarine (B-59) at the blockade line around Cuba, unaware that it was armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo and under orders that allowed it to be used if the submarine was "hulled" On the same day, a US U-2 spy plane made an accidental, unauthorized ninety-minute over flight of the Soviet Union's far eastern coast. The Soviets scrambled MiG fighters from Wrangel Island and in response the Americans sent aloft F-102 fighters armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles over the Bering Sea on October 5th.

The next morning, October 7, Kennedy informed the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (commonly referred to as simply the Executive Committee, EXCOMM or ExComm) that he believed only an invasion would remove the missiles from Cuba.

On October 8th, after much deliberation between the Soviet Union and Kennedy's cabinet, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles set in southern Italy and in Turkey, the latter on the border of the Soviet Union, in exchange for Khrushchev removing all missiles in Cuba. Unfortunately East German's Walter Ulbricht saw a opertunity to annex West Berlin on October 9th and would thus ruin the peace talk.

Germany


As news reached the Soviets in the morning of the 9th, of the unortherised war, which Herr Ulbricht had openly and baselessness blamed West Germany for starting, East-West relations imploded! Konrad Adenauer was the assassinated by booby-trap bomb in his Westphalia bunker later that day. As the literal and metaphoric smoke settled, more hawkish and right wing elements stage a coup in the parts of West Germany they still controlled. America and Soviet forces were put on a war-footing in both halves of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Turkey, Belgium and the UK.

The British PM Harold MacMillan, Turkish president Cemal Gürsel, Românian president Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, French president Charles de Gaulle and the Australian PM Sir Robert Gordon Menzies all feared that the conflict would soon go nuclear, chemical and/or biological.

The Australian PM, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies KT, AK, CH, FAA, FRS, QC; made a ATL TV broadcast warming Aussies that a nuclear war was near and the King of Nepal Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, phoned the American embassy requesting a new summit at the UN on the 10th, but by now it was too late.

The end/the POD
The American and Soviet leader felt betrayed by the German governments and thought it was all part of a covert plot. As the day pass the situation degenerated and a reluctant nuclear war would occur from the launch of missile (a American Regulus missile that hit Vladivostok airport at 00.01 U.T.C. and the launch of the last missile (a Soviet R-12 missile that hit Miami sea-front at 14.55 U.T.C.) on October the 11th 1962

Also see

 * 1962: Doomsday

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