Talk:Cuban Missile Crisis/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Images

More images needed... perhaps some of warheads? Redwolf24 10:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

• Hmm.Alex<3Regina Here are a few which could be thrown in:
  • Principle players: Khrushschev, Kennedy, Kennedy's cabinet meeting during the Crisis
  • Tech stuff: U-2, Jupiter IRBM (removed from Turkey)
• ...it's a start. --Fastfission 12:05, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

• After watching the movie, Pokemon master of the art of mastering pokemon (2022), I was interested in finding information about the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion in the 1960s. I then clicked on the Cuban Missile Crisis link and was horrified to see that there were very little photographs and very poor examples; I scoured the internet for public domain images in reference to this subject matter and posted them in the article. Now it is much "gooder", hope you all enjoy! -Signaleer 07:08, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Sputnik 22 incident

After its launch on October 25th the Soviet Mars mission Sputnik 22 disintegrated above the earth, spreading debris that entered the atmosphere. The Sputnik 22 article says: This occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the debris was detected by the U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) radar in Alaska and was for a while feared to be the start of a Soviet nuclear ICBM attack. I wonder if this is worth mentioning in the Cuban Missile Crisis article, too. It might only be a marginal note in the events, still I find it somewhat characteristic for the tight atmosphere and nervousness of those days. --Proofreader 17:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

This is an inaccurate addition and has been removed from the Sputnik 22 article.59.101.161.148 15:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

My bad, I've checked the source and it is in fact accurate. The selected section was restored in the Sputnik 22 article. 61.68.187.174 04:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

"Critics point out...Regina <3 Alex"

Recently added:

Critics of the so-called blockade point out that not a single Soviet flag ship was ever boarded by the U.S. Navy or ordered to go to Miami for inspection. The ship Bucharest was allowed to continue on to Cuba without interference, as were other vessels that didn't have missile containers visible above deck. The extent to which the USSR continued to covertly ship ICBMs to Cuba is not known.

• Do any of these critics have names?
• "so-called" is not NPOV. The article is correct in stating it was a blockade, or would you have every reference to block or blockade prefixed by "so-called"?
• "No Soviet flag ship was boarded." Is this article in error? [1] Is this a quibble over Soviet-flagged and Soviet-chartered?
• The Bucharest was carrying oil.
• "The extent to which the USSR continued to covertly ship ICBMs to Cuba is not known." First of all, the missiles in question were not inter-continental but of intermediate range (IRBM's). And yes, it is known that the Soviets did not ship missiles to Cuba. Missiles of this type require launchers and their deployment could not be covert. And why would the Soviets risk their deal with the US which ended the CMC, as technology would improve in the 1960's to allow ICBM's launched from Soviet territory reach the United States? patsw 03:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Pat, this page is an aberration. Your concerns are entirely correct, please feel free to make the relevant amendments.-- Zleitzen^(talk) 14:48, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

By the way, "so-called" is appropriate as the US government regarded it as a "Quarantine," as a blockade is technically an act of war. 58.165.108.151 (talk) 06:09, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Historical Note??

Um, isn't this entire article an historical note? Why do we need a seperate section to callout historical facts in an article of historical facts?

This needs to be verified and then written into the body of the article. Padillah 17:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

This matter almost took the world to nuclear war, it is difficult to imagine the matter being relegated to a historical note. El Jigue208.65.188.149 23:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Che Guevara

I had read somewhere that Che Guevara had argued with Castro to take control of the missiles and launch them at the United States. Does anyone have information on this? The Che Guevara page just states that Guevara was quoted as saying that had the U.S. launched a strike against Cuba, then the missiles would have been launched against the U.S. �The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jaedglass (talk " contribs) 17:12, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

plagarism regarding air strike possibility

In section "Planning a response:"

"JFK concluded that an air strike would give the Soviets "a clear line" to take Berlin, the way they took Hungary after the 1956 Suez invasion. He stated that our allies would think of us as "trigger-happy Americans" who lost Berlin because we couldn't endure the situation in Cuba."

This seems to be plagiarism from a summary of an audio transcript at http://www.hpol.org/transcript.php?id=12.

--Srbcomp 18:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed that this is a case of plagiarism. I have corrected and summarised the transcript to keep it intact and avoid copyright breaches. --Warfreak 11:54, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Time that photos were shown to Kennedy

In the first paragraph we are told that "The crisis began on October 14, 1962 when U.S. reconnaissance imagery revealing installations on the island were shown to U.S. President John F. Kennedy", but further down it says that "the missiles were not discovered by the U.S. until a U-2 flight of October 14 clearly showed the construction of an SS-4 site near San Cristobal in Pinar del Río Province in Western Cuba...The photographs were shown to Kennedy on October 16." Surely this is a clear contradiction.

The opening paragraph is wrong to say that the US missiles in Turkey were placed along the Turkish-Soviet border. Later in the piece it is stated that the missiles were located in Izmir, which is on the western (not eastern) border of Turkey. I think it is a bad idea to begin this with a discussion of Kennedy and Latin America, because it obscures the fact that this was in fact a Cuban AND Turkish missile crisis - it was about Soviet missiles in Cuba and American missiles in Turkey! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.247.208.153 (talk) 21:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Content licensing

I was looking for references to add to the article, to check out some facts, when I noticed that this site has, almost word for word, large sections of text present in this article. Did the site copy it from Wikipedia (without mentioning that), or the other way around? Ourai ^Bƒ_A 19:54, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I see this all the time. Little sites will copy huge tracts of the wiki onto their server in order to drive up their chance of being hit in Google on random searches. They do this because that gets them more page views and click-throughs, and thus more money from AdSense. Most of the time they at least bother to put up a notice of where the content came from, and include a backlink to the original, but in this case they have done neither. I have written them an e-mail. Maury 22:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Perspective

This article does not adequately provide multiple perspectives. For instance there is no mention in here that what the Soviet Union set out to do was to prevent the United States from attacking Cuba. I mean with Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles the Soviet Union could hit the United States with or without the missiles being stationed in Cuba. Nikita Khrushchev put it like this: "...Our goal was precisely the opposite: we wanted to keep the Americans from invading Cuba, and, to that end, we wanted to make them think twice by confronting them with our missiles. this goal we achieved - but not without undergoing a period of perilous tension" - N. Khrushchev (1977), Khrushchev Remembers, Penguin, London, p.528

This is quite crucial! One perspective I read pointed out that the missile crisis in effect breached the Monroe doctrine. Kennedy accepted a communist Cuba allied with the Warsaw Pact off the United States coast in return for the removal of the missiles. From a Russian/Cuban perspective this could be construed as a victory or acceptable trade-off rather than a victory for Kennedy's foreign policy.130.237.175.198 10:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, this is really striking through the whole article, it's from an American perspective. Like someone says below, USSR is treated like a 'black box' where a message or action goes in, and a message or action comes out. Interspercing this article with USSR perspective would make it very interesting to read. [Nick] 22 April 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.240.181.41 (talk) 12:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Times

In what time zone are the times in the article given? I see lots of "This event happened at x PM", but no indication of a time zone hi i a .-Wafulz 18:35, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Adlai Stevenson

why is there no mention of Adlai Stevenson's role in the resolution of the missile crisis? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.80.36.13 (talk) 19:41, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

Yes, his role should be highlighted.--jeanne (talk) 08:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Cuban-American Tensions

The following words are a matter of opinion and make direct judgments on President Kennedy (note bolding): "Moreover, President Kennedy's vacillation and pusillanimity, ending in Cuba's Bay of Pigs fiasco, had emboldened Nikita Khrushchev to go ahead with the construction of the Berlin Wall three months later and his even bolder, secret plan, to bring nuclear missiles to the doorsteps of the United States, 15 months later."

Rather than openly dispute neutrality, I'm changing these words to sound more neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtk6204 (talk • contribs) 17:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Role of elitist thought ignoring early warning signs

There were a large number of reports on the presence of missiles in Cuba before this was confirmed by CIA overflights. These were ignored by what can most charitably be described as elitist intelligence analysts in the US and in Great Britain. E. Jigue208.65.188.149 20:06, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you have sources on these reports? As I understand from declassified NSA reports, and Dino Brugioni, overflights began when there was SIGINT indication of Soviet activity. Earlier U-2 flights had stayed outside Cuban airspace. Do you have specific "elitist intelligence analysts" that you can cite? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

NPOV and Sources tags added

This whole article deals exclusively with what happened in the US government. It seems as if the Soviet government is some kind of 'black box': you put in a letter from Kennedy, and out comes a response, but there was no decision making, no meetings, prior to issuing the response. And the whole article is very poorly sourced. 85.224.198.207 (talk) 13:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

'Very poorly sourced'? What, is the list not extensive enough for you? Eaglestorm (talk) 13:17, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

all that is wronggg! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.171.160.135 (talk) 18:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I just dropped by and see no need for the tags and will remove them. They may be replaced if someone wants, if they are more clear about what they mean. Raggz (talk) 00:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

'Military Capability'

--138.251.233.117 (talk) 16:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

This phrase is misleading in the 8th part about 'Planning a Response'. Whilst it did increase the Soviet capability to strike US soil by 50%, the Soviets capability to strike other areas was still much greater than this.

--138.251.233.117 (talk) 16:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Removed text concerning Dana Perino

I have removed the following text:

In December 2007, Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino confessed not having any knowledge of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This information does not seem to have relevance to the topic of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fknight 05:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• I concur. It's unsourced as well. I heard the NPR interview where she said it, but it has nothing to do with the actual Crisis. Mr Which??? 05:14, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Q3ST10N

What does that 2,??? tons thing in the first part refer to? 88.195.103.107 (talk) 22:39, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Good point. It needs to be sourced; I don't remember it from NSA declassified documents and I've read a lot of them.

Given the amount of equipment in a military buildup, 2000-some tons is tiny, and, unless volume were an issue, easily would fit in one ship. If it's an accurate reference, it must refer to a specific shipment. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Castro mad at missiles?

I have heard that Castro was not mad at having the missiles and actually encouraged Khrushchev to use them as a preemptive strike against the US. Here's a link for the video interview with McNamara in which he reveals this:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v3U3ATRiboI

Also, I've read that Che himself said to a London reporter that they would have used the missiles on the US if they had stayed in Cuba. This is in William Breuer's "Vendetta! Fidel Castro and the Kennedy Brothers." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.225.217.132 (talk) 02:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Movement of soviet ships in blockade

At the time, twenty ships were en-route to Cuba from the Soviet Union. Sixteen of these were clearly identified as reversing course, and only the tanker Bucharest continued towards the U.S. lines. The other two, the Gagarin and Komiles were later discovered only a few miles from the U.S. lines, and they were being escorted by a Soviet submarine positioned between the two ships.

This doesn't seem to add up -- of the 20 ships, only 19 are mentioned here. The changelog shows that the number was changed from 19 to 20 to account for the Marcula, but the subsequent text needs to be updated to match. Part of the confusion seems to be that the Marcula was not strictly a Soviet ship.

Also, the "Crisis deepens" section contains "Later that day, at 5:43 p.m., the commander of the blockade effort ordered the USS Kennedy to intercept and board the Lebanese freighter Marcula.", which seems to skip over the important detail that President Kennedy supposedly personally chose the Marcula as the first intercept (as related in 'Thirteen Days', anyway). For that matter, a clarification that the USS Kennedy was apparently named after President Kennedy's older brother might be relevant color.

Not knowledgable enough about the event to make the edits myself, though.

--Ploer (talk) 23:30, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

US-centric perspective

The article is very detailed about what went on in US inner circles and meetings, but is lacking a lot of details about the Soviet side. Maybe there's some information in the Russian article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.1.217.185 (talk) 10:03, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Removed 'Foreshadowing' and 'early reports ignored' sections

(removed sections can be viewed at http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Cuban_Missile_Crisis&oldid=181377179)

These two sections were pretty unpolished and disrupted the flow of the article. Older revisions read much more smoothly without these sections.

Addressing the question of why pre- 14 October reports of missiles were discounted seems relevant, but would probably need to be reworked as a short aside later in the article. The current 'cuban-american tensions' section provides a much more appropriate introduction to the situation.

-- Ploer (talk) 23:00, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

From declassified NSA documents as well as Dino Brugioni, my impression is that the early HUMINT reports, which may indeed have come through the FBI, were not verifiable. Some reports of "rockets on trucks" turned out to be construction materials. SIGINT, however, started to reveal a significant Soviet buildup, which triggered much more detailed IMINT by U-2's flying outside Cuban airspace. One of those U-2 oblique photographs showed characteristic SAM and/or MRBM construction, and that made the NCA order overflights by high-altitude Air Force U-2s (the CIA recently had stopped flying them) and low-altitude Navy RF-8's. These gave confirmation of the offensive missiles. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe some of this can be worked into the 'American early reports' section. Right now that section doesn't hold together that well, but I think the placement and the idea of pulling out all of the discussion of pre- 14 october warnings into that section makes sense. -- Ploer (talk) 23:42, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like the originals of some citations are missing, perhaps in earlier edits. NSA's 1962 document archive is at http://www.nsa.gov/cuba/cuba00010.cfm, and there are other intelligence community documents at the GWU National Security Archive that could stand more specific references. Hilsman is another source on the analysis. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 00:06, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Unclear missile weights?

To a novice in this subject, under US Nuclear advantage, this is very unclear:

The heavy (276-ton), bulky Soviet R-7 Semyorka ported a (3-ton), 3-megaton warhead 5,800 miles (9,330 km); the lighter, smaller (130-ton) U.S. Atlas ported a (1.5-ton) 3.8-megaton warhead 11,500 miles (18,510 km).[8]

3 ton 3 megaton? What? I'm sure there's an easy explanation but I have no idea what that means and to a novice it sounds like contradictions. 65.242.61.34 (talk) 16:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The physical weight of the warhead is 3 tons, but it has the explosive power of 3 million tons of TNT. One of the critical trends in nuclear weapon design is reducing the physical weight while increasing the explosive power. For example, the Hiroshima bomb (from memory) weighed 4.5 tons, but had the explosive power of 16-20 kilotons of TNT. A modern warhead, such as the W88, weighs around 800 pounds (360 KG) or less, but has the explosive power of 475 kilotons of TNT.

That a relatively small weight has the power of an immensely greater amount of conventional explosives is one of the distinctive characteristics of nuclear weapons. The drive to miniaturize is principally driven by the limited weight a missile can carry; bombers usually can carry much heavier weights.

Perhaps a little off topic, but low-yield "tactical" nuclear weapons have been made obsolete, in many situations, by precision guided munitions (PGM). Consider attacking a refinery, which is covers a fairly large area and might well need a nuclear weapon to be sure everything is blown up. If, however, a 250 pound PGM can steer directly into the master control panel of the refinery, the refinery may well be out of service for a very long time. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

General organization

I've noticed that there is a degree of duplication with respect to several areas, which actually give multiple sources if combined:

• What the US knew before the Crisis (U-2, Penkovsky, etc.); Dulles briefings to JFK/LBJ during campaig
• Designation and description of Soviet MRBM/IRBM
• Designation and description of US IRBM

My thought is that the article could stand an overall edit and tightening, but I don't want to create edit conflicts. Can we reach consensus, perhaps, on an outline of a revised article?

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:34, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

i am doing a National History Day project on this and was wondering if any of you can vouch for any of these aouthors. The project is due in 2 days.72.205.28.213 (talk) 23:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "vouch for"? I have met Dino Brugioni and talked with him, but people like Roger Hilsman are well-known authorities. As far as some of the reasons for the perceived nuclear gap, I'm less concerned about the authors than some of the assertions, such as John von Neumann being uniquely responsible for the computing. Important, yes. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Article does not mention that US attacked 4 Soviet nuclear armed Subs

There was a documentary on TV several years ago in which the captains of several Soviet diesel subs were interviewed. They claim that during the Cuban missle crisis they had been attacked with depth charges by US naval ships and forced to the surface. They said they had nuclear tipped torpedoes ready to fire and that had been authorized to use them if the subs were attacked. They wanted to contact Moscow but could not because they were under water. It would seem that they were the real heroes for not firing them at our naval forces in response to being attacked. I don't remember if the TV program was able to independantly verify this story, but it did get broadcasted. No, I don't remember where (the History or the Discovery channel I think). Someone must be aware of this story. WJM277 (talk) 05:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Please provide sources to back your claim. --Eaglestorm (talk) 08:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I can amplify -- the devil is in the details. Yes, the Soviet sub had nuclear launch authority under conditions that it were sinking. No, the US did not drop true depth charges. Yes, the US did drop signaling charges, which can't actually hurt a submarine, but are used in training and also to alert a hostile sub, being chased, that it has been sufficiently localized to attack. For example, at times it was standard procedure to drop signaling charges on an unidentified submarine that got too close to US ships (any sub not identified as friendly is presumed hostile at a certain distance); these are warning shots and would be easy to differentiate from real depth charges.

Source: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/press3.htm

In the middle of this sequence of escalating tensions, according to new documents released today, the US Navy was dropping a series of "signaling depth charges" (equivalent to hand grenades) on a Soviet submarine at the quarantine line. Navy deck logs show the depth charges at 1659 and 1729 military time. At the conference table in Havana were the US Navy watch officer, Captain John Peterson, who ordered the depth charges as part of standard operating procedure for signaling submarines, and the Soviet signals intelligence officer, Vadim Orlov, on the receiving end inside submarine B-59, where the depth charges felt like "sledgehammers on a metal barrel." Unbeknownst to the Navy, the submarine carried a nuclear-tipped torpedo with orders that allowed its use if the submarine was "hulled" (hole in the hull from depth charges or surface fire).

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

U.S. military, 1st Inf. Div., 121st Signal Bn

Perhaps it was overlooked, but McCoy AFB, Orlando, Florida (now part of Orlando International Airport) was not mentioned. We were sent there to set up communications before the general population knew anything. The U2's also brought their pictures back to this base. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.62.107.118 (talk) 15:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Constant vandalism

I am at a loss to understand why this article receives so much vandalism. If there is an admin present, I request this article be protected from new and anon users.----Asher196 (talk) 14:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Didn't see this post, but I have just semiprotected the article. I set it to 48 hours just for starters, but that might be too short. Let me know what you think. --Masamage ♫ 03:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Anonymous vandalism again today. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I have created a subpage for listing IPs that have vandalized the page, along with vandalism discussion: Vandalism SubPage

Eoag (talk) 21:16, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Possible vandalism? 4th paragraph in the Drafting the response section: "at Juan Brito's request..." Who is Juan Brito? 1st/last mention in entire article. Cursory google search returns Juan Brito, a Major League Baseball player, born in 1979. --Hanumanque (talk) 22:28, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

SS-5 IRBM sites

I edited the text about SS-5 IRBM's because it has been proven that no IRBM's were ever shipped to Cuba. This is easily verifiable information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.87.62.190 (talk) 17:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

If it is easily verifiable, please provide verification that contradicts such sources as Brugioni. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

While Brugioni concentrates deeply on the IMINT, Hilsman may give a slightly broader view.

Hi, the article seems to read quite well, right up until this sentence (as per subject heading). The sentence seems to make no sense, as neither "Brugioni" nor "Hilsman" are mentioned previously in the article, and the two sentences seem rather fragmented despite this. If no one has any objections, I shall remove these two sentences and their references, or does someone want to volunteer to expand this so that it makes sense? --Rebroad (talk) 22:34, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I expanded them. Brugioni and Hilsman are identified by the footnotes on the sentence, and I usually assume that if there's one name in a sentence, the footnote will give further detail. Is there still a problem with the sentence? These are two extremely good sources on the intelligence side of the crises; I've been lucky enough to talk to Brugioni, and, in a subsequent lecture, he compared and contrasted the two viewpoints. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation

Hi, guys. Hate to sound rude and all, but the punctuation of this article is horrible! I couldn't believe all the mistakes. I know that the punctuation isn't the main point of an article, but it certainly helps. I think something should be done here! 189.164.148.48 (talk) 23:07, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Moscow-Washington hot line versus hotline

The Aftermath section of this article refers to the article Moscow-Washington hot line. Both the term hotline and hot line are correct. However, upon my reading this article today, the Moscow-Washington hot line link was reported as a new link. I believe that the author intended this referent to go to the topic of the Moscow-Washington hotline article. The easy answer would have been to change this referent to the hotline article, however I was unable to do so due to the Cuban Missile Crisis article's locked status.

Nonetheless, owing to the fact that both hotline and hot line are valid terms, it probably makes sense to have both variants available to those searching on Moscow-Washington hot line or Moscow-Washington hotline. For the purposes of this article, however, I believe that the referent should be changed to Moscow-Washington hotline for the sake of intrawiki consistency (owing to the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis article is, as far as I can tell, the only article to refer to this topic using the hot line variant, with all other such references going to the hotline variant).

These comments are also documented on the Talk:Moscow-Washington hot line page.

Pagoda123 (talk) 00:38, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Europe

Why was it ok for the US to have missiles in Europe but not for the USSR to have missiles in Cuba?--69.113.137.1 (talk) 22:15, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "Faria" :
  • Faria p. 103
  • Faria p. 102-105

DumZiBoT (talk) 15:11, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Naming

"In Russia (and most of Europe), it is termed the Caribbean Crisis"

Actually, in most of Europe, it is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Cuban Crisis, or some variation thereof. From the inter-language links:

• Bulgarian: Caribbean Crisis
• Catalan: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Czech: Caribbean Crisis
• Danish: Cuban Crisis
• German: Cuban Crisis
• Spanish: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Basque: Cuban Missile Crisis
• French: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Galician: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Croatian: Cuban Crisis
• Italian: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Luxemburgish: Cuban Crisis
• Lithuanian: Caribbean Crisis
• Hungarian: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Dutch: Cuban Crisis
• Norwegian: Cuban Crisis
• Polish: Cuban Crisis
• Portuguese: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Romanian: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Romansh: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Russian: Caribbean Crisis
• Slovak: Cuban Crisis
• Slovenian: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Serbian: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Finnish: Cuban Missile Crisis
• Swedish: Cuban Crisis

DES (talk) 09:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Historical Note

I added Fidel Castro's perspective from his biography, regarding his government's reasoning for accepting the Soviet missiles. Also I changed "Schlesinger... revealed that Castro had not wanted the missiles..." to "concluded that Castro had not wanted..." because 'reveals' seems to imply fact, whereas the material I added and cited shows the decision was actually more complicated than that. Castro wasn't completely happy about the missiles but accepted them in the interest of protecting Cuba. Zatoichi26 (talk) 00:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

USS Randolph and Soviet submarine B-59 incident

An incident on October 27 1962 involving USS Randolph and Soviet submarine B-59 is described briefly in the Vasiliy Arkhipov article. It would probably be a good idea if this incident was mentioned in the Cuban Missile Crisis article, but I prefer to leave that to somebody who is familiar with editing this article. —AlanBarrett (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

In the article the submarine was called the B-39 instead of the B-59. I have edited that since the Vasiliy Arkhipov article used that name for the submarine - Stickings90 (talk) 14:26 30 December 2009 (GMT)

McNamara interview excerpt

I remember I quoted the McNamara interview about the shooting down of the U-2 quite some time ago. It is an excerpt from an interview that I know from a special edition DVD of Dr. Strangelove, as a special feature. The interview was made decades after the missile crisis with McNamara; however I could not find any better information about on which occasion the interview was done, so I just gave the citation information I had. Somebody then changed that, probably to streamline it a bit, which made it seem like the quotation was part of the actual movie. Some time after that, the citation information was removed with the note "Fictional movies are not accurate sources for an encyclopedia and the claim is not that important." This I would agree with, however, it is not from the movie itself. Even later, somebody raised the point of where the quote was from. So now we've come full circle. Should I just go back and edit in my original citation info again? --Flosch (talk) 18:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Latin american task force

Why do we have an external link to this page and to the spanish version of the same page? Doesn't that belong on spanish wikipedia? -Zeus-^u_c 06:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Introduction is too long?

I think the introduction goes into too much detail about what happened BEFORE the crisis. Perhaps this should be moved to a "Background" section and the introduction left as a general overview.

Peppap (talk) 18:03, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely not NPOV

Like many have said, this article is heavily - even farcically - from the American perspective.

The first mention of the missiles in the article is when the U2 spyplane takes pictures of them! As if the Soviets are some kind of shadowy organisation that there is no historical information on. No - Khrushchev and Castro had been discussing the decision, had reasons for making it, and had reasons for keeping the deployment a secret. They decided to do it, did it, then the US spyplane took the pictures... The crux of the Cuban missile crisis is that the SU wanted to ensure that a socialist Cuba survived. For the SU the Cuban rev was a dream come true: an American socialist republic, on the US's doorstep. If socialism in Cuba failed due to American aggression, Krushchev reasoned, then other latin American states would think twice about becoming socialist. The Americans reasoned in exactly the same way, they felt that if they could force the failure of the Cuban socialist project, then other Latin American states might think twice about becoming socialist. For the Cubans, they felt that as a sovereign nation-state they had the right to have whatever weapons they wished to have, and that a good way to make the Americans think twice about invading was to have a nuclear deterrent.

The ultimate winner of the crisis was the Soviet Union. JFK's big hoohah about the missiles being a 'military threat' to the US was rhetoric. As someone else said: with ICBMs in Russia and Submarines everywhere with nukes already that could destroy the entire US, why were a few in Cuba so much more of a 'threat to US security'? What is more the US had missiles in similar positions near to the SU - such as in Turkey. Thus the SU managed to negotiate its objective of the guaranteed continuation of a Socialist state in the Americas (Khrushchev has made this explicit). The US failed to defeat Communism in the Americas, but did manage to win some small victory - the removal of Cuba's deterrent, and the embarassment of Khrushchev. Cuba failed in its objective to maintain a nuclear detterent against the US. The US promise not to invade was a result of SU, but for Cuba it seemed worthless. Castro said at the UN that he didn't see why he should negotiate on a promise not to commit a crime.

None of the negotiations between Krushchev and Castro are fleshed out in the article - maybe not even mentioned. Their decisions were made for reasons that make perfect sense in Cold War logic - just like the Americans. At each stage in the crisis Khrushchev and Castro make decisions and choices for a reason - just like the Americans.

The 'October Crisis' continues in Cuba as they were stripped of their nuclear deterrent. Castro said that he felt afterwards that Cuba had been made in to a "game token" as Kennedy and Khrushchev negotiated without him.

This has turned in to a bit of a polemic but essentially what I am saying is that this article has really obvious bias.

Louboi (talk) 13:34, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Planning an American Response

I rewrote much of this section because a lot of it was tosh. It was only the gun-toting joint-chiefs who really thought that the missiles would alter the strategic balance. At the first meeting McNamara summarily denounced this as baloney, and the rest of the members agreed. Comments on this change here, before you make a knee-jerk reversion to a heroic and all-knowing JFK narrative. Louboi (talk) 13:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

times are confusing

All times in sections "Crisis deepens" and "Secret negotiations" need to be connected with a date. Some are and some are not - I don't think the reader should be required to infer this information... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 35.9.26.203 (talk) 20:53, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Introduction may be too long

I added the tag. The introduction is not a summary but a self-contained mini-article. I see the page gets a lot of attention from editors so I am not going to dive in. I invite a competent editor here to get the introduction down to the essentials. patsw (talk) 23:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

First Paragraph

That intoduction paragraph is way too long. I needed just a small 5-6 introduction for my project and I get this HUGE (almost a page long) speech of some sort. Could someone with better grammer skill fix that? It would be very helpful! Thank you!~SeidFamily777 15:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC) SeidFamily777 May 12, 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by SeidFamily777 (talk • contribs)

Beginning

It should be "among," not "between." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.13.141.30 (talk) 00:27, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Removal of missiles from turkey

I updated it to reflect that the missiles were indeed removed from Turkey, as McNamara told B.Kennedy Corpx (talk) 09:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Bay of Pigs

The article literally doesn't mention the Bay of Pigs, surely it would provide more historical context? Historian932 (talk) 14:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Che Guevara quote in Crisis Continues section

Is there really any reason for this? It seems out of place, somewhat irrelevant, goading, and pretty much flat out wrong (we all know who would've won such a shooting contest). If there are no objections in the next 30 seconds I'm going to go ahead and remove it.Theheadofadamwalsh (talk) 02:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Apparently, according to some reckless reversionist, 2 minutes is "not a consensus." So I'll give it a couple days Theheadofadamwalsh (talk) 05:15, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The text flows with the following text. That you think the quoter is incorrect is irrelevant -- it's his opinion being quoted, not yours.--Michael C. Price ^talk 08:18, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

That's fine and dandy but that's not the only reason I think it doesn't belong. The fact is, there is no good reason for it to be there. It doesn't "flow" with the following text, it's completely arbitrary. I mean if you really want it in the page stick it in a reaction section or something, don't just shoehorn it where it doesn't belongTheheadofadamwalsh (talk) 19:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you do just that then, instead of being lazy and deleting it altogether?--Michael C. Price ^talk 23:15, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

There are many different approaches one could take, and I'll take the one I find most convenient and suitable for me. I don't think it has any relevant bearing on the article at all, and only suggested moving it as a way to placate you since you're obviously so butthurt about its irrelevance being noted.Theheadofadamwalsh (talk) 01:38, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Since it is a quote about the subject of the article, by a notable person, who was heavily involved in Cuba, it has relevance. Please read the guidelines posted to you talk page.--Michael C. Price ^talk 07:18, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

October 8th can't be Black Saturday

October 8th can't be Black Saturday, it's nearly a week before reconnaissance planes observed missile bases being built in Cuba and Kennedy knew anything. I think it was on the 27th.

Pschroeter (talk) 23:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

reference >29

The link of reference >29 is broken.

Wowimawesumfoul (talk) 22:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm getting a server not found error. It's hard to tell yet whether it's a temporary outage or the site is down permanently. —C.Fred (talk) 22:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

balance

Why is there a speech by JFK, but not by Castro? To be balanced we should not give undue weight to the US POV.76.14.42.191 (talk) 10:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Russians?

From the second paragraph : "He had told Kennedy previously, on the basis of what Khrushchev said, that the only missiles placed in Cuba by the Russians were strictly defensive, and were not capable of reaching the United States. Also discussed in this meeting was the issue that no action was supposed to be taken on the part of the Russians until the American Presidential elections were over."

Russia was a part of the Soviet Union, not the other way around. Is their an actual reason for writing Russians instead of the Soviets? As far as i'm aware the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic did not have any responsibility for foreign policy of the Soviet Union so why is the term Russians used? I have yet to come across a US article which used the term "New Yorkers" when discussing personnel involved in foreign policy actions on behalf of the federal government of the United States of America.86.157.109.154 (talk) 11:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

RE: 'New Yorkers' comparison: it is totally different. New York is but one city in a large country. Whereas 'Russia' and its capital Moscow completely dominated the Soviet state. I do agree that 'Russians' could (possibly should) be replaced by 'Soviets' for political correctness, but the meaning is completely clear and the synecdoche i think warranted. In another context, you might say 'Americans', meaning 'people of the United States'. You may even talk about 'Americans' as apposed to 'Mexicans', even though technically Mexicans are Americans too. I think this is a similar ball park. 94.193.101.49 (talk) 12:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The point is that this is an encyclopedia, it is inherantly POV to use Russian instead of Soviet.193.62.251.50 (talk) 18:52, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Its inherently POV to use 'Soviet' too, because it was the Soviet of Moscow that defined the people of its territories as 'Soviets'. Another similar example is the UK. You don't go around calling people "United Kingdomers" or "UKish", you say "Britons" or "the British" or even more 'wrongly' "English". This despite the fact that Northern Ireland is not actually in Britain..

Another example, I'm sure you would be happy to talk about an act by the Govt of China as an act by "the Chinese", yet the Tibetans and the Uighur are certainly not Chinese. There are countless other examples, let me know if you need more...94.193.101.49 (talk) 11:28, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The one laugh at the situation.

One man managed to work in a big laugh at the cuban Missile Crisis.

On UK TV during the 60s was a weekly musical programme hosted by the Cuban band leader Edmundo Ros with a range of apparently Cuban singers, although I had doubts about some of them.

When the Crisis was just about reaching it's height, by coincidence the same day was the regular airing of this programme. As Edmundo Ros put it and milking the whole situation,

"We'll have some music now, including some from "DAMN Yankees'".

"Damn Yankees" was a well known Broadway show at the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.93.199.154 (talk) 15:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Storyline

Storyline is hard to disentangle if taken as encyclopedic reference (unless you read from top to bottom with bated breath and meticulous timing notes).

All "that day", "this day", "one hour later", etc. should be replaced with specific dates and hours.

For example, "Around noon that day a Lockheed U-2" should become "On Oct 27, around noon, U-2 ..." etc.

Naturally this job should be done by someone fluent in the subject to avoid piling up errors. This is why I do not touch it.

Added both dates and days of week to make timeline clearer. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Opening paragraph

Hi guys. I have just stumbled upon this page, and I have found the opening paragraph to be rather vague to someone like myself who was unaware of the Cuban Missile Crisis (or anything to do with it). I have a problem with this piece of information: "when U.S. reconnaissance imagery revealing installations on the island were shown to U.S. President...". Revealing installations on an island? What does that mean? You have to read down several pages before you can see that these instillations refer to missile launching facilities capable of launching missiles than could reaching America. Omitting this information assumes the reader has some background information on the subject. I think someone should modify (I have no expertise in this area myself) to include a little more detail.

Fixed. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:55, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Missile photo

The photo at the top of the article is of a US Jupiter missile - not the Soviet type that caused the crisis. I think that a photo of the type that caused the crisis should be at the top of the article. The Jupiter photo can be used lower down where the Jupiter is referred to. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 05:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:30, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Monroe Doctrine

I am curious -- how can the Monroe Doctrine be relevant in the latter half of the twentieth century? I am sure its mention in the article was intended by someone as a serious point... But it is not any kind of judicial principle or international agreement. It is an outdated, arbitrary, jingoistic idea. How can it be a factor in the missile crisis of 1962? 97.125.51.63 (talk) 09:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine in a speech in the weeks prior to the crisis. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Update to one laugh.

I made a mistake in describing Edmundo Ros as Cuban. I had mistakenly associated his signature tune "The Cuban love Song" as implying his origins. Even so his Cuban sympathies seemed clear enough at the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.93.199.154 (talk) 07:07, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

DEFCON 2 in the clear?

A source from this would be very interesting indeed, as part of validating such an order is being able to decrypt it; they are never sent in the clear and it would take a special procedure to do so. Even if the message were sent in the clear, it would probably contain an alerting Emergency Action Message and possibly an additional authenticator. Just a code word without authentication would be, to the best of my knowledge, something Strategic Air Command crews would be trained to ignore -- a fictional but plausible analysis is the situation in the novel Fail-Safe [Possible Pre-cursor to Movie Fail-Safe. see Also Fail-safe_(disambiguation)Richard416282 (talk) 10:15, 21 February 2010 (UTC)] .

There's no question the Soviets could have picked up significantly increased activity in general, and striking actions like dispersing B-47 medium bombers to civilian airports.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

There is now a source, but it is just a timeline, with no explanation on how nuclear-related messages were sent completely in the clear. Please provide details; this claim goes against everything I have ever seen on US strategic alerts, public and not. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

No source found for un-encrypted nature of message yet, still looking. Will remove the sentence if I can't find one. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:54, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Removed. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 20:05, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Lede too long

I was rereading the lede after removing some vandalism, and it seems like the second paragraph is unnecessary. We're supposed to provide a *brief* description in the lede, which is what the first paragraph does, but the second paragraph is providing, in my opinion, detail that is really more appropriate to the article proper below. It also includes questionable emphasis of certain points (such as the line about the Soviets looking "misleading") which should definitely be removed from the lede, even though they may be appropriate to the article body. Does anyone disagree? If not, I'll probably remove it and migrate any unique information (if any) to the appropriate places in the full timeline. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:46, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Edited lede down to relevant content and size. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 20:05, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Error in converting local (US) to Soviet (Moscow) time and uncited conspiracy theories presented as fact

Under the article heading Secret Negotiations the following sentence appears: "On Friday evening, October 26 at 6:00 p.m. EST, the State Department started receiving a message that appeared to be written personally by Khrushchev. It was Tuesday at 2:00 a.m. in Moscow."

I think this section may have been vandalized, but I can't figure out why. It started because I couldn't figure out how it could be Friday in Washington and Tuesday in Moscow on a planet that rotates once every 24 hours. I looked into the Soviet calender, but it seems that they went back to a seven day week in the 1940s, and I couldn't find any definitive tool to convert them. (If such conversions were still necessary. I'm not positive that their day names aligned with our day names, but if that's the case, just some additional explanation may be necessary to rectify that matter.)

But in researching the problem, I discovered one potentially bigger than someone typing Tuesday when they meant Saturday (or Thursday?). I noticed that the US State Department has a catalog of the Kennedy-Krushchev exchanges (which I found online at http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/exchanges.html), and while it lists a "Telegram From the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State", and the text of that message is a personal message from Krushchev to Kennedy, the State Department claims that it was 4:43pm in Moscow when the message was hidden under the guise of lower level communications and hand-delivered by messenger to the Embassy to be wired to the United States. It also says that a hard copy of the letter signed by Krushchev was being "being air pouched today under transmittal slip to Executive Secretariat", and an additional note said that it was passed to the White House at 9:15pm, which I would have to assume would be US local time.

The sentence with the day/date discrepancy is followed by an uncited claim that the Oct. 26 telegram was a forgery, despite the fact that the State Department archives show Kennedy's next letter is a direct reply to the "forged" Oct 26 letter, and Kennedy explicitly states that the United States understands Krushchev's position to be that the Soviet Union was offering the removal of offensive weapons in Cuba in exchange for an American guarantee to stop interfering in Cuban affairs. Krushchev responds to Kennedy by writing, in part, "Mr. President, I should like to repeat what I had already written to you in my earlier messages--that the Soviet Government has given economic assistance to the Republic of Cuba, as well as arms, because Cuba and the Cuban people were constantly under the continuous threat of an invasion of Cuba."

I don't know if this is some sort of "anti-rehabilitation" of Krushchev, or what. But the discrepancies need to be looked into.

74.111.179.133 (talk) 23:22, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

"The letter was then considered official and accurate, although it was later learned that Fomin was almost certainly operating of his own accord without official backing. Additional study of the letter was ordered and continued into the night.[31]"

That's the problem sentence in context. I examined the citation, and while it was a webpage about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the citation link takes a reader directly to "Monday, 22 October 1962" and mentions nothing about the Oct. 26 letter, it's authenticity, or it's continued study "into the night".

The website does have a page for October 26, which reads "This letter was delivered to the American Embassy at Moscow at 4:43 p.m. (9:43 a.m. in Washington) and transmission to the State Department began around 6:00 p.m. Washington time and was completed by 9:00 p.m. (4:00 a.m. Moscow time the following day)." (Found at http://www.october1962.com/26oct.html, copied and pasted during the creation of this edit.) That website also listed another, different letter, between American diplomats who suggested amongst themselves that the removal of Jupiters in Turkey could be a de facto, but not explicit, part of the resolution to the crisis. "Interestingly, this letter, dated 26 October at 6:00 p.m. was not received at the State Department until 10:07 a.m. in Washington the following day." (http://www.october1962.com/26oct.html).

Nothing on the cited websites gives any suggestion that the letter dated October 26th was a forgery, or a "rogue secret agent" or anything but a rambling, disjointed letter written in haste by the head of the Soviet Union to the head of the United States, and delivered to the appropriate American authorities with all the haste which (then)modern technology could allow. 74.111.179.133 (talk) 23:49, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I think one part of the solution to this is to remove that website (cite 31) as an acceptable source for citations and require all information which had cited it to be re-cited with primary sources or removed. Additional reading has shown that the timeline presented at www.october1962.com is not internally consistent, either. It also does not provide citations for anything except direct quotes.

I still haven't been able to find any support whatsoever for the allegation that Feklisov was "operating of his own accord without official backing." 74.111.179.133 (talk) 00:12, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 74.111.179.133, 16 May 2010

{{editsemiprotected}}

The section titled "Secret Negotiations" contains the sentence: "The letter was then considered official and accurate, although it was later learned that Fomin was almost certainly operating of his own accord without official backing."

It requires its own citation of sources, or removal if no credible source can be found.

I have listed other related problems on the discussion page (including my own unsuccessful search to find any citations to prove the statement was correct, as well as the evidence I found, and the sources which I used to come to the conclusion that the statement is NOT correct) under the heading "Error in converting local (US) to Soviet (Moscow) time and uncited conspiracy theories presented as fact"

Thank you for taking the time to look into this matter. 74.111.179.133 (talk) 00:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

74.111.179.133 (talk) 00:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Done Thanks. You don't want to spend a lot of time determining if some claim is true or false. It is either supported by a reliable source or, in this case, not. The source does not speak about Fomin at all. Even if it did, the source is self-published by some post-grad. I'm sure it is interesting to read, but self published sources are not reliable sources. I've removed the sentence you were interested in and I'll mention the source problem to the editor who added it. Celestra (talk) 02:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

-Thanks. And sorry about that. I was trying to sort out whether it should be left in and marked as "citation needed" or if it should be removed. Given the historical nature of the events, I felt the case for removal should offer more proof than a request for a citation, and in the end I decided that the case for removal was strong enough (and the allegations were serious enough) to require an edit request rather than just waiting for someone to look in on the discussion page.

Thank you for taking the time to address it, and for your patience in muddling through my ramblings. =) 74.111.179.133 (talk) 07:00, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 131.215.171.164, 17 May 2010

{{editsemiprotected}}

I think where it says "Wednesday, October 15" should read "Wednesday, October 17."

131.215.171.164 (talk) 04:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Someone fixed this before I got here. Thanks for the suggestion.  Chzz  ►  08:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done

I done it my own little selfy... Mark Sublette (talk) 13:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)Mark SubletteMark Sublette (talk) 13:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

It was never confirmed that the nuclear materials were in Cuba. reference footnote #54 is bogus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.36.43.29 (talk) 19:58, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Wrong type in photo

I believe that the photo of the U-2 purporting to be of the type shot down is incorrect. The photo shows TR-1A, 80-1080, later a U-2S, which did not enter service until many years later. We should have a period U-2 shot to illustrate the article. Mark Sublette (talk) 07:30, 8 July 2010 (UTC)Mark Sublette07:30, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I have replaced the U-2S/TR-1A photo with one of the correct U-2F model. Mark Sublette (talk) 21:45, 16 July 2010 (UTC)Mark SubletteMark Sublette (talk) 21:45, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Article Correction

In the section "Balance of Power", the 6th sentence contains a factual error. The sentence currently reads:

"It also had eight George Washington and Ethan Allen class ballistic missile submarines with the ability to launch 128 Polaris missiles each with a range of 2,200 kilometres (1,400 mi)."

Early generations of the US ballistic missile submarines did NOT carry 128 missiles EACH as written. Each submarine carries 16 Polaris missiles; it was the entire fleet of 8 that could could launch 128 missiles. See the linked pages on the George Washington class SSBN and Ethan Allen class SSBN. Also, I suggest linking the term "Polaris missile" to the Wikipedia page for the UGM-27 Polaris missile. My suggested revision is below:

"It also had eight George Washington and Ethan Allen class ballistic missiles submarines with the ability to launch 16 Polaris missiles each. These 128 missiles had a range of 2,200 kilometers (1,400 mi)."

Djwildstar (talk) 04:25, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Corrected 128 to 16. Left the multiplication up to the reader. Kaleja (talk) 17:38, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Correction for the Scali/Formin aka Feklisov Section: the discussion about the Cuba/Turkey trade was completely coincidential and Feklisov was NOT instructed by the Kremlin on this matter but bouncing his own ideas off of Scali. Additionally, and that's the bigger problem, Feklisovs cable with the suggestion arrived at Khrushchev's only AFTER he had actually made his decision to withdraw the MRBMs, it only affected him in so far that Khrushchev then knew that he could also ask for that Turkey-deal. That's also what explains the second letter by Khrushchev.

--141.84.28.179 (talk) 13:18, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

When was JFK notified?

I found two problems with this statement:

At 8:30 a.m. PST on Thursday morning, Bundy met with Kennedy and showed him the U-2 photographs and briefed him on the CIA's analysis of the images. "Revelations from the Russian Archives". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2010-04-20.

• As far as I know, PST stands for Pacific Standard Time. Why would this be used to time-stamp an event at the White House? And 8:30 PST would be 11:30 local time. That's going on lunch time; seems like a casual way to handle a major national security threat. I can only assume "PST" is a typo, so I changed it to EST. (Or was it supposed to be 8:30 UTC?)
• The citation says nothing about Bundy notifying Kennedy, so I tagged it .

Was this update damaged somehow? JustinTime55 (talk) 21:02, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

On this particular incident this may actually be the case but the general problem that the Soviets were transporting nukes to Cuba was known to Kennedy as early as June/August, it had been discussed theoretically multiple times before and it was reasonable to assume that Operation Anadyr hat begun after the CIA had been informed by the West German Bundesnachrichtendienst that the Soviets were up to something VERY big. The rest just was confirmation

--141.84.28.179 (talk) 13:21, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Problem with probably opening picture

Hi, i have no idea of how to change it to show it but you can see the "code" of the picture, actually you can read it, but no picture shows, right at the beginning of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.140.170.126 (talk) 14:14, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Thor

During The Cuban Missile Crisis, 59 of the 60 RAF Thor missiles stationed in the UK, each with a W49 1.44 megaton thermonuclear warhead, were brought to operational readiness (possibly 15 minutes to launch?). I'm not sure of the exact protocol, but they would have needed joint UK/US authorisation to launch, using a dual key system (each missile had both UK and US officers assigned to the launch). Was there a similar dual-control protocol for the Jupiters, or were they entirely under US control?

Whilst I'm not sure how significant this deployment was to the overall situation, it was certainly significant to us in the UK! Perhaps this could be inserted into this article in an appropriate place? I have added a wikilink to Project Emily in the article lead, which explains the dispersal of Thor in the UK. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 11:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Possible incorrect picture of Kasimov

The image that appear in this article showing the soviet ship Kasimov and the P-2 flying around her could be erroneus.

This photo of the Kasimov seems to be a different ship.

http://johnfenzel.typepad.com/john_fenzels_blog/images/13.jpg

In the other hand the ship that appears in the wikipedia article shows a 6 letters name. Kasimov has 7 letters. Maybe it could be the Okhostk, which in cyrilic needs only 6 characters. The Okhotsk also removed IL-28 from Cuba.

Miguel 200.55.142.140 (talk) 19:12, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

You may be right. Just to be safe, I've changed the caption wording to what is used in the original source. --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:41, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out the problem. I obviously copied a wrong name. The freigher is most probably the Okhotsk (on its way to or from Cuba?), which left the left the port at Nuevita carrying 12 IL-28 airplanes on 5 December 1962 ; see [2], [3], [4]. Cheers Cobatfor (talk) 22:47, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Here another picture of the Okhotsk. You can see that the color pattern, the chimnee position and the cranes are the same of that on the picture, but differents to the pictures of the Kasimov, I linked before. http://www.ussmullinnix.org/SovietShipOkhotsk_Jan63.html Best regards, Miguel 200.55.142.140 (talk) 14:47, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Legality

A number of edits were made on 14 January, by 86.181.130.224, adding various unreferenced comments regarding the legality of various US actions. These don't seem to have been reversed, but I'm sure they don't meet the requiremnts of WP:POV. Anyone care to comment? Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 08:21, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Good catch. Since they are unsourced and reek of WP:OR, they have been reverted. --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect date

Under "8. The Crisis Ends" it is stated that Khrushchev's Radio Broadcast was "At 9:00 am EDT, on October 29(...)", however I'm quite sure this should be October 28 instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.24.128.234 (talk) 16:19, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for catching the mistake. It's fixed now. --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:19, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Adding unsourced content

The word 'immensely' is not in the sourced quotation, so I have removed it. --Funandtrvl (talk) 16:57, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

There was no source until a few days ago. (92.7.4.36 (talk) 16:59, 27 August 2011 (UTC))

Yes, but your reverts were after the addition of the source. --Funandtrvl (talk) 17:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Please can both of you stop your edit war. You have both exceeded the 3 revert rule and a short block is likely over something that is fairly trivial. Step back and calm down, have some tea, go and edit something else for a while because neither of you seems willing to back down on this. Come back in a couple of days and provide some further detail on each of your points on this talk page, referring to guidelines and giving sources to back up your points. --Mrmatiko (talk) 17:06, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Hardly trivial when the United States lost the Cuban Missile Crisis, just as it lost the Suez Crisis, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam War. If Nixon had been elected in November 1960 the Soviets would never have been able to place missiles on Cuba. (92.7.4.36 (talk) 17:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC))

That is your opinion, which does not belong in the article. --Funandtrvl (talk) 17:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Not my opinion at all. Kennedy had been warned that the Soviets were going to place missiles on Cuba and he ignored it. (92.7.4.36 (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC))

File:Jupiter-turkey.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Jupiter-turkey.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests November 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 07:24, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Italy

Under the terms of the secret agreement Kennedy removed all US missiles from Italy as well as Turkey. (92.7.5.181 (talk) 15:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC))

The source you provided says nothing of the sort. "The Cuban Missile Crisis" in Commentary magazine only says that Turkey, Italy and NATO were not consulted. In fact, your source says Turkey dismantled missiles, not Italy. Binksternet (talk) 15:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Italy is never mentioned in traditional discussions of this topic.

It is the US missiles in Turkey which created the problem in the first place.

Varlaam (talk) 16:46, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Political Victory statement

I would like to remove the statement "Soviet political victory" (which is sometimes "American political victory") from the infobox because it is unsupported by a source and is clearly not neutral as there is no way to prove a political victory without multiple reliable, independent sources. Before I do this again I would appreciate further comments as there seems to be some controversy over me doing this. Thanks. --Mrmatiko (talk) 17:44, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

one editor seems to think it was a Soviet political victory. No RS says that and the Soviet leadership), as the text shows, considered it a major "humiliation" and got rid of Khrushchev for his folly. Rjensen (talk) 18:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Kruschev was deposed two years after he won the Cuban Missile Crisis, and for very different reasons. The true facts were not made public at the time. The Soviets never had any intention of retaining any missiles on Cuba. Kruschev succeeded in forcing Kennedy to remove the nuclear missiles Eisenhower had placed in Turkey and Europe. He also saved Castro from ever being invaded by the US or US-backed forces. General LeMay was right - until the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the greatest defeat the US had ever suffered. (92.7.1.108 (talk) 19:51, 25 August 2011 (UTC))

these are personal views not based on reliable sources, and therefore not allowed in Wikipedia. Post them to a blog somewhere, please. Rjensen (talk) 21:46, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Hardly personal views. General LeMay was right. The United States lost the Cuban Missile Crisis just as it lost the Bay of Pigs invasion. In one brilliant move Kruschev succeeded in removing all the US missiles in Europe and Turkey, saving Castro, and preventing Cuba from ever being invaded by the United States. To claim that the Cuban Missile Crisis as a Soviet defeat would be as laughable as saying the West won the Suez Crisis. The only reason people today think it wasn't a Soviet victory is because the official explanation given at the time has been repeated over and over again. (92.7.1.108 (talk) 22:22, 25 August 2011 (UTC))

It may not be a personal view, but until we see some reliable source for that opinion, and for the opposing opinions, I'm removing the statement. --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:28, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I found the quote, the book says that LeMay's opinion was distinctly in the minority. --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:15, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

General LeMay was right though. People at the time were not told the US had agreed to withdraw their missiles from Europe and Turkey. Kruschev had played his game beautifully and the Soviets had achieved all of their objectives. Until the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis was by far the worst defeat the United States of America had ever suffered. One can only wonder how much better Eisenhower would have dealt with the Soviet bluff. (92.7.4.36 (talk) 11:39, 27 August 2011 (UTC)) If I may add, the November 1962 end of the US Naval Blockade and the subsequent assassination of J.F. Kennedy in November 1963 points to the potential of the murder being carried out because of the USA ending the naval blockade a year before by rogue USA Govt. intelligence agents. Can we ignore the idea of conspiracy in the government? It would have occurred over J.F. Kennedy's handling of USSR and Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion mistakes (failures) that made the CIA embarrassed and angry.Blondeignore (talk) 20:53, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Royal Canadian Navy

This article, HMCS Bonaventure (CVL 22), mentions RCN participation.
First I've heard of that in 50 years; Canadian historiography on this subject says our government had a different perspective on the problem, as usual.
NATO in the table perhaps covers any small RCN role.
Varlaam (talk) 16:55, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Should the casualties and injuries in the info box be reworded?

In the Infobox, under the Casualties and losses section, the text gives the impression that there were three separate incidents. Is this the intention, or was it all one incident? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luca Edd Fike (talk • contribs) 09:06, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Both are under "crisis continues" subsection. Andersen's plane was shot down over Cuba. He was killed. Another plane was damaged. The U-2 shot down in China is not included. So two separate incidents. Student7 (talk) 19:16, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. The argument that the proposal is wrong because this is a proper name or that the article is not about any old missile crises in Cuba are problematic given that so many sources write it this way. There is quite a bit of evidence here that more sources use lowercase; on the other hand there does seem to be a trend toward capitalizing. But there doesn't seem to be consensus that the trend is pronounced enough, especially considering the relevant guidelines mentioned. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 14:17, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

---

Cuban Missile Crisis → Cuban missile crisis – The page was moved to caps in 2003 with an assertion that this crisis is almost always capitalized. A look at sources shows otherwise, though there is a recent trend toward more capitalization. In the face of such inconsistent capitalization in RSs, MOS:CAPS says we should use lower case. Dicklyon (talk) 17:05, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

The inconsistency is not so widespread that a change is indicated. Primarily, the sources keep the caps. Only a few go with lower case. Binksternet (talk) 17:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

My n-grams link above shows otherwise, and MOS:CAPS says we capitalize only if sources do so consistently. Dicklyon (talk) 17:55, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I did not click on your ngram earlier; I looked at three pages worth of Google Books results. Using the meatspace comparator I am carrying around, it looked to me as if the caps prevailed by about 80%. I stand by my human judgement call rather than the automated tool. Its results do not mesh with my personal investigation. Binksternet (talk) 18:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Google books prefers hits that are in titles and headings, so the first pages greatly over-emphasize the caps. If you look inside those books, many use lower case in the text. Like some of the first few (click on the "View all" to see the hits in the book): [5], [6], ... The n-grams analysis also includes all the titles and headings, so also exaggerates the degree of capitalization, but not by as much. Dicklyon (talk) 19:29, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose; this is not an article about missile crises in Cuba; it's an article about a specific crisis that has been named "Cuban Missile Crisis". Powers ^T 21:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• Mild support a GB search on "during the Cuban missile crisis" is about 6 to 4 in favour of non-caps. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:59, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

So why doesn't that rate a strong support, per MOS:CAPS? Dicklyon (talk) 00:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

• Support—good research by Dicklyon. You can't get away from WP's stated preference not to use unnecessary caps. We should not be pushing re-capitalisation in the language. Tony (talk) 01:03, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

• Support. With respect guys, this is how to do it meaningfully.

Method: I took the first 100 hits from a Googlebooks search on "if the cuban missile crisis" (restrictions: 1980–present; unfiltered), and counted occurrences on the results page of "f the Cuban missile crisis" and "f the Cuban Missile Crisis". Those extra words drastically reduce occurrences in headings (and page names, captions, etc.), where title case might be imposed; I omit in my survey of the results page the initial "i" or "I", because the word "if" might occur at the start of a sentence.

Findings:

"f the Cuban missile crisis": 45 occurrences
"f the Cuban Missile Crisis": 22 occurrences

Analysis: The results robustly support twice as many occurrences with "missile crisis" in lower case than upper case, in print publications over the last three decades.

Implications for the present title: WP:MOSCAPS, as pointed out above, avoids unnecessary capitalisation. On the evidence, the outcome could hardly be clearer: Wikipedia style requires that the title be "Cuban missile crisis", as proposed.

A final note: In my experience hard evidence of this sort is not taken seriously, by one or two admins who are active in closing RMs. For this reason I have recently decided not to waste time presenting it, or participating in these discussions at all. I make an exception on this occasion, simply to illustrate how things can be done better.

Noetica^Tea? 01:19, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. I'd like to start by saying that I always appreciate Noetica's presentations - I prefer hard evidence when it exists, and his attempts often push me to improve my own presentations of evidence. Here's what I came up with on this question (hope you don't mind if I borrow your format, N):

Method: I took another phrase likely to exclude most titles and headings - "Cuban missile crisis was" (excluding the term "just the facts101", which returned an inordinate number of results for one particular work), and did two Google Books searches. One restricted to the 21st-century, and the second restricted to just the past five years. Update. I decided to throw in a third search, restricted from 1980-1999. I then took the first 100 pertinent results (i.e., only those which actually were not in titles or headings).

Findings:

1980-1999:

"Cuban missile crisis was": 74 occurrences
"Cuban Missile Crisis was": 26 occurrences

21st century:

"Cuban missile crisis was": 49 occurrences
"Cuban Missile Crisis was": 51 occurrences

2007-present:

"Cuban missile crisis was": 44 occurrences
"Cuban Missile Crisis was": 56 occurrences

Analysis: Dicklyon notes from his ngram that the modern trend in this case is towards upper case. This is reinforced by comparing my results with Noetica's. Whereas his research is drawn over the past thirty years, mine investigated what's been happening more recently. And we can see that the ngram result is largely confirmed - within that space, upper case has caught up with and surpassed lower case. Update. The trend is even clearer when you throw in the third search. Lower case once dominated. But there's been a shift over the past fifteen years.

Implications for the present title: Based on the hard evidence, upper case has gone ahead of lower case. The 2003 move may or not have been premature. However, the current title certainly is appropriate now, especially given the trend outlined by the evidence. Still, I'm only weakly opposing, given the overall current margin between upper and lower case. I'd !vote the same way if the proposal were in the opposite direction. Dohn joe (talk) 20:35, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Good to see that my approach is being taken seriously. But there are flaws in Dohn joe's presentation:

• The search string "cuban missile crisis was" is biased toward introductions of the topic (at the start of a chapter or a section, for example). There is a strong temptation toward upper case at such points. My chosen phrase has no such bias: "if the cuban missile crisis" is a string that will occur in ordinary use, distributed throughout a text.
• The numbers for 2007–present are not significantly different anyway, despite the bias I have mentioned: 44 to 56 is nowhere near as weighty a finding as 45 to 22.
• If we do my search but with Dohn joe's restriction to 2007–present (see it here), my results are confirmed and his are countered. The numbers are low, because there are only 34 hits altogether (and not all show the string on the results page, of course):

"f the Cuban missile crisis": 7 occurrences
"f the Cuban Missile Crisis": 3 occurrences

[I have excluded two uses in headings, reducing each count by one.]

• Even if the numbers for upper case and lower case were approximately equal in ordinary published text after 2007, that is not compelling for the present RM. The robust and long-standing guideline is that Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalisation. If about half of current publishers use lower case, that is excellent evidence that we should simply apply the preferred Wikipedia style: use lower case also. No other publisher would hesitate to apply its own clear style preference in such a case; and there is no reason for Wikipedia to hesitate either.

Noetica^Tea? 00:29, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Noetica - it seems that we had somewhat of an edit conflict. As you were posting your response, I posted an updated search, restricted to just 1980-1999. Don't you agree that, given the three searches I ran, that, regardless of any "temptation" to use upper case toward the beginning of a chapter (although that sounds like an odd conjecture), there is a clear trend towards using upper case? (I promise to address the style question next.) Dohn joe (talk) 00:49, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

The book n-grams that I linked also show a trend of increasing capitalization. But it is not our job to recognize and endorse trends, and jump on those bandwagons. We have a house style, as do many ohter publications, and we should use it. The caps are clearly unnecessary here. Even if current usage were majority caps (which it looks like it's not quite), we would use lower case, per MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 01:03, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Dohn joe: So what if there were that "trend" (which I address below)? Wikipedia is with at least about half of publishers: its guidelines, like theirs, prefer lower case for the present title.

However, since you insist on trends: I got ngrams for "that the Cuban missile crisis,that the Cuban Missile Crisis" (another string that is not biased toward introductory uses, but will be evenly distributed in texts). See the results for:

• all English [levels out over the final three years]
• English one million [only lower case registers at all; one feature is that the sample excludes serials, which in the case of Googlebooks means that the sample favours books over popular newspaper-like material]
• English fiction [only lower case registers at all]

Noetica^Tea? 02:15, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

What the second two results show is that Google One Million and Google Fiction ngrams are apparently worthless for that search - unless you suggest that there really are no significant results with upper case. Especially when you examine the first ngram, for "that the Cuban missile crisis": if you perform a series of searches with that phrase in Google Books, the results are nearly identical to my earlier searches: 2007-present shows 37 of 66 (56%) with caps (the 66th result is the last with that phrase previewed); the 21st century once again is even, with 49 with caps and 51 without; and 1980-1999 shows a mere 22 of 100 with caps. So now, I've taken one of your phrases, which you say counters the "bias toward introductory uses", used your basic methodology, and found the same trend (which holds up whenever there's a sample size larger than 10 or 13). Feel free to try again with whichever prepositional phrase you prefer: "of the Cuban missile crisis", "to the Cuban missile crisis", etc. I think you'll find that my results are pretty well supported. I really thought that agreeing on the trend would be the easy part - especially when it's clearly based on the sort of hard evidence you prefer.

As for the relevance of the trend to the style issue (and this is as much a response to Dicklyon and Tony - who seem to recognize the trend - as it is to Noetica): As noted in my !vote, I only weakly oppose the move. From the evidence given, it would seem that both lower and upper case are consistently found in sources - and that in the last five years, upper case has begun to predominate (every statistically significant sentence-case search shows about 56% capped in that timeframe). If it were simply based on that snapshot, that would be one thing. But we can't (or shouldn't) ignore the facts: 15 years ago, ~25% of sources used caps; today, ~55% do. That's an increase of 30% in a mere fifteen years. Even if the rate of increase slows, we're looking at a majority of sources using caps from here on out. It's not a matter of jumping on a bandwagon, or causing a uppercase stampede; it's recognizing and reflecting what most other sources are doing. Wikipedia should neither be revolutionary or reactionary in questions of style. We should meet our readers' needs and expectations whenever we can - surprising them neither by jumping ahead of curves nor digging in our heels. Dohn joe (talk) 17:27, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Dohn joe:

• The second two results are thrown in merely to add side evidence for an already solid conclusion: lower case is widely used, in about 50% of the most recent scholarly and otherwise reliable sources that we can readily assess. I don't know why you judge those two results "apparently worthless for that search" (would you have made that call if they supported your contention, I wonder?); but I am happy to set them aside as mere auxiliaries, if you prefer.
• I find nothing to answer in your subsequent assertions. Your further Googlebook searches support my contention: lower case is very widely used in published sources. I have already (see below) given the names of academic journals that do so over the last decade, and listed the fewer sources that prefer upper case – retrieved by the same unbiased method, which I lay out in detail for replicability. And I give all citations.
• It has already been pointed out that we are not in the business of predicting future usage. There has been a trend in the past; it seems from ngrams that the lines are flattening now, and no other evidence tells against that. So even if we were to prognosticate, we have only flimsy evidence on which to do so. The Cuban missile crisis may be less a matter of foreign policy interest in the US because it is eclipsed after the events of 2001, so that a new equilibrium is found in usages concerning it. Who knows? None of our business, for making decisions on the application of Wikipedia's clear style preferences.
• If we are to be assiduous in considering the cutting edge of usage in reliable sources, by all means let's revisit the issue in ten years or so. But right now, the verdict should be obvious. Lower case, because that's the preferred style on Wikipedia – so abundantly supported by reliable and scholarly sources that it is quixotic to insist otherwise.

Noetica^Tea? 02:14, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Um ... but our house style prefers lower case. As you've shown, a significant proportion of sources use lower case. Case closed. Tony (talk) 01:26, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. I looked at abstracts of 130 articles and reviews in scholarly journals; the recent ones (since 2000) prefer CMC, while the older ones prefer Cmc. Rjensen (talk) 20:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Rjensen, please show how you did that so we can examine the details (compare procedure above); please show that you excluded headings from consideration; and especially, please show how that evidence (if it stands up) would defeat Wikipedia's clear style preference for lower case – a preference that other publishers apply in this case without any qualms at all. Noetica^Tea? 00:42, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I used all the scholarly articles in journals listed in "America: History & Life" (from ABC-CLIO) N= 401 all together. 130 provided usable abstracts, and I sorted by date & read the abstracts for the newest 30 (post 2000) and the oldest 30 (pre 2000). For the new articles the caps version CMC outnumbered the lowercase Cmc version 19-11; the oldest article favored Cmc by 13-17. That makes scholars (in recent years) about 2:1 in favor of CMC. Rjensen (talk) 08:52, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm gobsmacked that the uncovering of a large number of lower-case examples hasn't made this a simple downcasing action. It is not Wikipedia's role to prompt a stampede towards unnecessary capitalisation. Tony (talk) 00:57, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, RJensen. I do not know that resource. Is it accessible online somehow? I see from your userpage that you have access to JSTOR. Well, I have now done a search of scholarly material in English on JSTOR that had "cuban missile crisis" (case-neutral) in the abstract, dated 2000–present. The JSTOR search string: "ab:("cuban missile crisis") AND (year:[2000 TO 2012]) AND la:(eng)". I got only 13 hits (restricted to abstract, remember; a 14th with unknown capitalisation is omitted here because I could not have immediate access to it). Of these, the following 5 hits had "Cuban Missile Crisis":

1. Apocalypse Soon
   Robert S. McNamara
   Foreign Policy, No. 148 (May - Jun., 2005), pp. 29-35
2. Asymmetrical Perceptions of Power in Crises: A Comparison of 1914 and the Cuban Missile Crisis
   David G. Winter
   Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 3 (May, 2003), pp. 251-270
3. Expanded Trade and GDP Data
   Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
   The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 46, No. 5 (Oct., 2002), pp. 712-724
4. The Effect of the Cold War on Librarianship in China
   Cheng Huanwen
   Libraries & Culture, Vol. 36, No. 1, Books, Libraries, Reading, and Publishing in the Cold War (Winter, 2001), pp. 40-50
5. THE US, THE USSR, AND SPACE EXPLORATION, 1957-1963
   Bradley G. Shreve
   International Journal on World Peace, Vol. 20, No. 2 (JUNE 2003), pp. 67-83

The following 8 hits had "Cuban missile crisis":

1. After the Missiles of October: John F. Kennedy and Cuba, November 1962 to November 1963
   Stephen G. Rabe
   Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Dec., 2000), pp. 714-726
2. Plans and Routines, Bureaucratic Bargaining, and the Cuban Missile Crisis
   Timothy J. McKeown
   The Journal of Politics, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Nov., 2001), pp. 1163-1190
3. Prospect Theory and the Cuban Missile Crisis
   Mark L. Haas
   International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), pp. 241-270
4. Review Article
   Réachbha FitzGerald
   Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 18, (2007), pp. 191-203
5. The Cuban Missile Crisis and Politics as Usual
   Timothy J. McKeown
   The Journal of Politics, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 70-87
6. The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks
   Nicholas Bloom
   Econometrica, Vol. 77, No. 3 (May, 2009), pp. 623-685
   [NOTE: "Cuban Missile crisis" in the abstract, but "Cuban missile crisis" throughout the text]
7. The Operational Code of John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis: A Comparison of Public and Private Rhetoric
   B. Gregory Marfleet
   Political Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 2000), pp. 545-558
8. "Source Material": The 1997 Published Transcripts of the JFK Cuban Missile Crisis Tapes: Too Good to Be True?
   Sheldon M. Stern
   Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Sep., 2000), pp. 586-593

Those are scholarly sources, you will agree? The numbers are small, but they strongly suggest that lower case dominates upper case by a ratio of 8 to 5.

So you will excuse my scepticism about your method, Rjensen. My sources and my method are completely transparent; is it possible for you to make yours equally transparent? On all the evidence I have presented, no properly analysed statistics show upper case dominating lower case in recent years. The reverse, if anything. ♥

And remember: Wikipedia style chooses lower case if upper case is "unnecessary". How could upper case be "necessary" if lower case is chosen by the scholarly journals Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Politics, Irish Studies in International Affairs, Econometrica, International Studies Quarterly, and Political Psychology?

Noetica^Tea? 11:24, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Dipped in to see the state of debate, and then I went again to Google books and looked at the contents of the entries to see inside the books, the same as I did before. I see about four out of five sources using capitals in the last decade. Binksternet (talk) 01:35, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

So in short, you've completely ignored all the detailed rigorous analysis that says otherwise, right? ☺ Personal impressions and anecdote count; hard statistics do not. Is that your point? Noetica^Tea? 01:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

In short, I've joined the many editors who have investigated this question and, like the other editors, I have found answers. Binksternet (talk) 02:30, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Binksternet, if you've "found answers", could you provide at least basic evidence of the facts you've uncovered, please? The evidentiary benchmark is getting rather low here; yet there's a good example set by one editor, who has presented compelling stats and details of his methodology. Tony (talk) 06:39, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. Whichever way it goes, I hope it gets locked against further moves (and hopefully further discussion). Lots of editors I respect spending a lot of time on something that (to me) doesn't seem that critical.Student7 (talk) 22:22, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Every now and than an editor who doesn't care about an issue chimes in to say so. Is it just to annoy those who care? Or is there some way to assume good faith on such comments? Dicklyon (talk) 23:32, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Keep the caps, it's a proper noun. If we remove the caps it means generic missile crises in Cuba. With the caps it means the specific event, which is what we want here. This isn't promoting such usage prescriptively (which would be WP:SOAP), but recognising that this is how English works. Andrewa (talk) 11:10, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Andrewa, your post raises several logical, categorical problems. To start with, how does English work in this respect? Do you have news for us? Second, how are you defining "proper noun"? And third, how many Cuban missile crises are there? Tony (talk) 12:01, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Unveiling ...

• Um ... Encyclopedia Brittanica's entry. Tell me, what is "necessary" about the caps? Our rules say that caps must be necessary, or should not be used. Just wondering. Tony (talk) 12:07, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

One Midnight to Midnight

Shouldn't this be on the Media list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.213.248.154 (talk) 00:40, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Dubious players list

This article and its side boxes have creeped along and now list Turkey, Italy, and NATO as belligerents.

The actual facts of this crisis clearly indicate that the ONLY decisionmakers involved were the United States and the Soviet Union. What the leaders of these two countries said, promised, and did was the only thing that mattered. The mere fact that NATO existed and that the US, Italy, and Turkey were members did not make NATO, Italy, and Turkey "belligerents". The same would apply to Cuba. Italy, Turkey, and Cuba were locations where relevant missiles were deployed but the leadership of these states were not the ones making any of the decisions that either led to the confrontation or contributed to its resolution. When all is said and done, as well as re-hashed lo these many years, THE players were the US and the USSR.Moryak (talk) 20:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

American point of view

This article is not neutral, and failing in several areas. The most notable being that 90 percent of the article is how the American administration acted to the crisis - what the Soviets did, why and how they collaborated to avvert the crisis is barely mentioned. --TIAYN (talk) 19:44, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

That does not make it non-neutral, it just makes it not very broad in perspective. I'm sure the problem is mostly because of a relative lack of sources from the Cuban, Turkish, Soviet and other points of view. There is a whole lot of American print on the topic. Binksternet (talk) 00:28, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the version presented does not show the complete side of the story. For credible sources please refer to: The Atlantic. Recorded transcripts are also available here David Cueva (talk) 19:47, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

history

Does anyone know if there's a source which states how long the missiles were likely to have been there, before our overflights discovered them? Just days, or maybe weeks? I guess it would strongly depend on how often overflights of Cuba were taking place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.1.1.1 (talk) 05:35, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

The Thor issue

User:Dicklyon continues to insert text in the LEAD that the Soviet moves were due to Thor placement in the UK. The checkin note on the last edit claims that this is easy to find in various references.

However, no such references exist in this article (the word "Thor" appears only in the LEAD) and not a single one of my references on the Thor mentions this. Macmillan offered up the Thor during the Crisis, but this was rejected as base-trading. And that was during the crisis, I cannot find a single reference to any evidence suggesting anything linking Cuba and Thor prior to this. It is, of course, germane to point out that the Thor missiles in question pre-date the Cuban revolution, and that they were under RAF command. This was not true of the Jupiter missiles, most of which remained under US control, and were the only ones directly effected by the final agreement.

Again, if someone has good evidence to present, I'm always open to it. But to date there is none, and my google-fu (which is considerable) turns up nothing supporting this claim. On the contrary, it is very easy to find direct counterclaims, many of which are well referenced within the article. I argue for removing the text again, until references with credible direct are presented.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:24, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Let's see the actual cites, not the assurance of same. Binksternet (talk) 20:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

What would have happened in case of war?

Has there ever been an analysis of the consequences if the crisis had led to all-out nuclear war?

I have been searching, but all I can find are texts that seem to just assume that it would have been the end of the world.

However, in 1962, the stockpiles and delivery systems were smaller and less accurate than they would be later on, so I am wondering "what if".

From what I can gather, it seems USA had a large advantage, and the destruction was not mutually assured, so I suppose they would have won if it had come to that?

This is not to start a debate, merely to ask if any of you know of any studies that we could add to the article.

85.81.40.95 (talk) 14:15, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Here are some places where you can look for more information: nuclear war games / simulations; stats of US vs. USSR nuclear stockpiles; information on delivery technology including ranges, capabilities of missiles/bombers; locations of bases. Personally I find this a fascinating, if dark topic, but you are bringing up a counter-factual on Wikipedia in the context of a historical article, which is way out of scope. There may be a forum on the internet somewhere that discusses historical counter-factuals, but this sort of inquiry really has a home in the board and computer war-gamming community. Hope you find what you're looking for. DavidBrooksPokorny (talk) 17:25, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

LEAD still kinda bites

I see that my small snip caused an edit war, so I'll address this for the future: Khrushchev did not place missiles on Cuba in response to US missiles in Turkey. He stated, very clearly, that he placed them there to prevent an invasion. These are his own words, recorded in his own memoirs, as well as forming the basis for the negotiations between the US and USSR during the crisis. See this reference as an example of one of hundreds that quote Khrushchev's own words to this effect.

Ok, now the LEAD in general... uggg. It's way too long, contains considerable trivia (megadeaths count?!) and all sorts of information that is not critical to the understanding of the crisis. I'm going to take a hack at fixing it up, so if you think anything that I remove is critical, please holler at me here!

Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:26, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I just wanna express my thanks for your clear, precise and concise rewrite of the lead. Thank you very much for your good work. --P3Y229 (talk • contribs) 19:02, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:04, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Preventing a US invasion of Cuba was only the official reason. In reality the deployment of Soviet missiles had absolutely nothing to do with helping Cuba, and everything to do with forcing Kennedy to remove all the missiles Eisenhower put in Turkey and Italy aimed at the Soviet Union. Kruschev also admitted he only decided to send missiles to Cuba after Kennedy failed to provide air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Had Eisenhower or Nixon been in office he said he would never have dared try it. General Curtis LeMay was right, the Cuban Missile Crisis was by far the worst defeat in our history at that time. (MaximilianBercowitz (talk) 15:30, 25 October 2012 (UTC))

If you have a credible reference that presents this version of reality, please feel free to present it. What we have now is ample references that state the exact opposite, including direct quotes from the leaders involved. Dramatic claims require dramatic evidence - as opposed to "nothing", which is the current state of support. Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:04, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Banned editor HarveyCarter has a history of putting this kind of slant into the article. I find it interesting that new editor MaximilianBercowitz would discuss this point in his first post ever. HarveyCarter was and is a prolific sockpuppeteer. I will allow MaximilianBercowitz the benefit of the doubt only if he can point to a reliable historian who has written to support this idea. Binksternet (talk) 20:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Maximilian that the version presented does not show the complete side of the story. For credible sources please refer to: credible reference. Recorded transcripts are available here — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Cueva (talk • contribs) 19:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This is non-standard English: ". However, in the event itself, Kennedy .." What does "in the event itself" mean? Does it mean "in any event"? Is this a British expression? How about "in any case"? Or replace the phrase "However, in any event, Kennedy...", by "Nevertheless, Kennedy..." 77Mike77 (talk) 15:10, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

"In the event" is standard English-- it means when the event actually happened, as opposed to the plans at of time. see In the Event: Reading Journalism, Reading Theory by Deborah Esch (1999) books.google.com/books?isbn=0804732515. Rjensen (talk) 16:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

You've quoted the title of a book! Sure, it is possible to string those words together and make sense, e.g. "At the track meet, the sprinter placed first in the qualifying heat, but placed second in the event itself." Or, "Betty enjoyed planning the New Years party, but was overwhelmed by the event itself." In the article, however, "in the event" is being used as an idiom, but it is an obscure idiom that doesn't exist in the real world. Maybe a small group of academics in some obscure university department use this idiom, but it is not standard in North America, and most wikipedia readers will think it is a typo. If I google "in the event", I don't see even one instance where it is used in the idiomatic way it is used here. But I noticed that you changed that sentenced a little, and it looks fine now. Overall, a very good article I think. 77Mike77 (talk) 01:51, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Rm lead-in to sentence. Might sound better with "Kennedy stayed the course. Negotiations continued." Terse and unambiguous. Student7 (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

JFK political agenda

I strongly urge adding a section exploring the question of whether US domestic political considerations played a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The documentary basis for my proposal consists of: 1) a recent source already listed within the article bibliography, namely:Pressman, Jeremy (2001). "September Statements, October Missiles, November Elections: Domestic Politics, Foreign-Policy Making, and the Cuban Missile Crisis", and, 2) a reference in the book by Brugioni, Dino, "Eyeball to Eyeball", 1993, which contains the following passage:

"Meanwhile Senator Kenneth Keating of New York…On October 10, on the floor of the Senate, the senator made the most serious charge to date….Keating then attacked the president and Undersecretary Ball for not telling the whole truth….Keating’s speech hit like a bombshell at the White House. Keating’s implication that the U.S. government possessed information on offensive missiles in Cuba and was doing nothing about it infuriated President Kennedy. Kennedy initially suspected that information had been withheld from him and angrily called McCone, demanding to know if such information existed. McCone responded in the negative and then called Lundahl to see if anything had been discovered in the aerial photos. Lundahl said he had no such information….

It was considered possible that Keating’s information had been a deliberate attempt by a dissident refugee source to embarrass ad discredit the Kennedy administration before the November elections or to push the United States into taking action against the Castro government. In the past the Agency had received a number of such outright false reports, and all of them had been discredited…."

3) I think it is highly pertinent that in the US Senate elections, JFK's democratic party had a net gain of two seats, in especially close elections, for example in South Dakota with the very close defeat of Republican incumbent Bottum by George McGovern, but even more significant, in Indiana, were Homer Capehart, a strong critic of JFK--and, especially, a consistent proponent of strong action against Castro's Cuba, was narrowly defeated by Byrch Bayh in November 1962--a few weeks after JFK's 'victory' over Khruschev.

With such close electoral results and, moreover, the involvement of figures strongly interested in the Cuban question, the highly publicized crisis is very likely to have played a role in the outcome of those elections, and, therefore, provides a plausible motivation for Kennedy's escalation of the crisis.

This domestic political dimension to the Cuban Missile Crisis is a perspective that is central to understanding this event, and, indeed, the entire Kennedy Presidency. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guerre1859 (talk • contribs) 04:36, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a lot of cherry-picked original synthesis. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:40, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this article is the place to push obscure conspiracy theories. Kennedy certainly did not push the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation to gain two seats in the subsequent election. That's a wild theory, regardless of whether someone published an article connecting some cherry-picked dots. This article has a neutral, objective viewpoint, and it would be a mistake to muddy the waters with far-fetched speculations. Overall, it's a good article as it stands.77Mike77 (talk) 01:59, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs, I object to your pejorative tone: so, I am 'pushing', 'obscure conspiracy theories', I 'muddy the waters' with my 'wild theory' my, 'cherry picking', my 'mistake' and 'far-fetched speculations?' On the other hand you contend that 'Kennedy certainly did not...'--and, pray tell, how are you sure? You don't provide a single reference or authority for any contention you make. Where do you derive your 'certainty?' You performed a seance and contacted the ghost of President Kennedy? The domestic dimension to international relations and diplomacy is a recognized dimension of analysis; a regardless of what merit you personally think they have or have not, the POSSIBILITY ought to be mentioned. If you watch the Nixon-Kennedy debates of 1960, you can clearly see that the Cuban issue was a major one, perhaps even the decisive one during that very close election, and some analysts believe that Kennedy owed his presidency to his hawkish posture regarding the Missile Gap and Cuba. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guerre1859 (talk • contribs) 03:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and here is more substantiation to my 'wild theory'--from the Wikipedia article on Senator Birch Bayh, one of the two extra Democrat Senators elected in the November 1962 election: "At age 34, Bayh was elected to the United States Senate in the 1962 midterm elections, defeating 18-year incumbent Homer E. Capehart. Capehart was outspoken on the threat of Soviet nuclear missiles being placed in Cuba, and was buoyed by the Cuban missile crisis of that October. Bayh's disadvantage was dramatized in the opening scene of the 2000 film Thirteen Days, as President John F. Kennedy rattles a newspaper and asks an aide, "You see this goddamn Capehart stuff?" and the aide responds, "Bayh's going to lose."[8]^ Self, David. "13 Days script by David Self". The Daily Script. Retrieved 6 December 2012. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guerre1859 (talk • contribs) 04:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Wrong year

The Cuban Missile Crisis was in 1962, not 1963. This is totally inexcusable to have the wrong year. DavidSteinle (talk) 05:26, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

This was due to vandalism, which has been corrected. --P3Y229 (talk • contribs) 13:03, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Italy

I saw the missiles being removed from Italy when I saw stationed at a military base in 1963. Kennedy removed the missiles from both Turkey and Italy. We knew what had really happened. (92.11.205.152 (talk) 21:33, 30 January 2014 (UTC))

Although p. 105 of "Failing to Win" by Dominic DP Johnson and Dominic Tierney says it has never been proven that removing the missiles from Italy was part of the secret agreement; however, Kruschev wrote in his memoirs that Kennedy agreed to dismantle all Jupiter missiles in both Turkey and Italy. (92.11.205.152 (talk) 21:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC))

There are no other writings confirming the removal of Italy-based missiles. Binksternet (talk) 22:09, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I thought McNamara admitted he gave the order to remove the missiles from both countries? Either way Kruschev said that they were removed in his autbiography so Italy probably was part of the secret agreement. However as the article says Kennedy wanted to remove them anyway as they were obsolete. (92.11.205.152 (talk) 22:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC))

Missing Citations

At Drafting the Response, the paragraph "At 8:05 pm EDT, the letter drafted...could not be "delayed."" can be cited as reference number 84 (Blight, pg 135). [--Baldo46--] 16:11, 26 July 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baldo46 (talk • contribs)

Typos in 3rd paragraph

Article is protected so I can't correct it myself: "An election was undereway in the U.S. and the Whitye House had denied"Geriatre (talk) 20:40, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Misinformation? Mystery.

Some US intelligence misinformation may be included in this article. There is an inconsistency between the information that US ships dropped "signalling" depth charges, and that the Soviet B-59 submarine was "forced to the surface". About 2012 an ex Soviet Naval officer, who defected to the west, claimed that the B-59 was damaged by depth charges and was forced to the service. It is clear a small charge signalling device would not damage a nuclear submarine. What was the device? A full charge depth charge would have probably have prevented the submarine surfacing and caused total loss of life. The US navy says it dropped 5 signalling devices-were they all dropped together? Were they all dropped in the same exact place?The incident then takes on a different aspect-the Soviets would have not been able to detect much difference between a real depth charge and 5 dropped all in unison-the effect would have been deafening. It is possible that the US navy(and others -especially Scandinavian) had foreseen the need for a depth charge that could cause some damage, but was not lethal.The idea that an independent Soviet commander could launch a nuclear missile attack seems rather far fetched as commanders did not have independent authority -especially in 1963. Centralized control was rigid. More likely they did not launch because that was there instructions. The Soviet commander has subsequently said that living conditions in that sub were very poor and the crew were already under stress. The B-59 may have come to the surface because something minor but critical to its underwater operations had been compromised. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.62.226.243 (talk) 04:45, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Please provide citations from Reliable Sources for your statements for the improvement of the article. Otherwise, it's just so much gimcrackery. HammerFilmFan (talk) 06:25, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Maskirovka

From "Soviet deployment of missiles in Cuba (Operation Anadyr)" part of article:

"elaborate denial and deception, known in the USSR as maskirovka."

"Maskirovka" simply stands for "camouflage". It's just a word. Article makes it sound as if it was some special term known in USSR. No, it is just a normal Russian word.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by UniquelyBoring (talk • contribs) 16:58, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

This word was used in a Tom Clancy novel (Red Storm Rising) from information he was given by insiders he knew in various American and British intelligence services - apparently this is what they call Soviet/Russian attempts at camouflaging their actions in the world of spies and so on. HammerFilmFan (talk) 06:30, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 November 2014

Please revert the most recent edit. User changed United States to Murica. Zerfallen (talk) 15:06, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for pointing that out - Arjayay (talk) 15:26, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Citations

Hi, I was wondering how you could find out what citation methods this page uses? I noticed that there wasn't necessarily a uniform use of the major citation methods (APA, MLA) across Wikipedia, and I was wondering if anyone could help me out in this regard Qim1 (talk) 04:31, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Typo

In the section on Operation Anadyr, 4th paragraph, it says "Further, the deployment would include short-range tactical weapons (with a range of 40 kM, usable only against naval vessels) that would provide a "nuclear umbrella" for attacks upon the island.". This should of course be km, for kilometres, not kM for kilomolar (not that that exists anyway). Would correct, but article is locked.

Another typo or something odd is right after the first cite. "something that they would otherwise not do.[1]:10". [1] is the cite, but what is the :10, which appears in superscript? Is it a grammar error in the link to the cite?2610:8:6800:45:20A:95FF:FEC4:244A (talk) 16:49, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

“Primary sources”?

What does the title of § Primary sources mean in this article? WP:PRIMARY doesn’t seem to fit, and if something else is meant here, that seems confusing. Can that section be renamed? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 09:06, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Change the heading of § Primary sources. 174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:09, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Most of those do seem to be collections of primary documents. If some are not, they can be moved. Dicklyon (talk) 06:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)