11. LeMay encourages the President to take military action
Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay virulently opposed the naval quarantine imposed by President Kennedy and argued vigorously for bombing missions to destroy the missiles already installed in Cuba. Even after the crisis was averted through diplomatic means, LeMay argued for an attack on Cuba anyway, destroying the missile sites as the Russians were in the process of dismantling them and removing Castro from power. LeMay continuously clashed with President Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara throughout the crisis, insisting that American bombers were sufficient to resolve the situation and that the Soviets would not respond with military action. In his assessment of Soviet resolve he was wrong, as subsequent events proved. Had Kennedy followed LeMay’s recommendations, a nuclear attack would have occurred on the United States.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, review of formerly classified documents under their control revealed that the missile sites in Cuba had been given the authority to launch their weapons at the discretion of local commanders if they were deemed to be under attack. Even the provocative reconnaissance missions ordered by LeMay – without presidential authorization – were sufficient to allow the site commanders to launch their weapons, more than twenty of which were operational. Each of the Soviet warheads installed and ready to launch were equivalent to 50 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. LeMay’s opposition to the president was so strong that Robert Kennedy warned the Soviets during negotiations that failure to arrive at a diplomatic solution to the crisis could result in the Pentagon taking action without presidential authorization, in effect executing a coup within the United States government.