The Cuban Missile Crisis: How many hits does North America take?

[Deleted member 145219]

How many ICBMs do you believe the Soviets could hit America with? And as you seem quite knowledgeable do you know if they were focusing on counterforce or countervalue?

I wonder how these would be targeted. I'm British so naturally I'm quite interested in how much damage the UK would take. Germany would suffer pretty heavily though, especially from tactical weapons.

I agree that this is one of the times the US could decisively "win" WW3, however many casualties they take will pale compared to what would happen to the USSR.

While I'm asking questions allegedly there was the idea that the US could also target China despite it not being party to the crisis, it always seems to be discounted in these threads and I was wondering if there was any truth to it?

I think that Germany takes the most damage, after the USSR which is wiped from the face of the earth. The other Warsaw Pact nations, as well as the Ukraine might not get hit as hard as the USSR.

 

[Pax_Nihil]

I think that Germany takes the most damage, after the USSR which is wiped from the face of the earth. The other Warsaw Pact nations, as well as the Ukraine might not get hit as hard as the USSR.

Ukraine was pretty important to the overall strength of the USSR as a whole so I believe its sort wishful thinking to expect it to get away less damaged then, say, Poland or Belarus or someplace. After the RSFSR its getting hit the most (according to target maps I've seen before).

 

[Deleted member 145219]

Ukraine was pretty important to the overall strength of the USSR as a whole so I believe its sort wishful thinking to expect it to get away less damaged then, say, Poland or Belarus or someplace. After the RSFSR its getting hit the most (according to target maps I've seen before).

Makes sense to me.

 

[Sekhmet_D]

While I'm asking questions allegedly there was the idea that the US could also target China despite it not being party to the crisis, it always seems to be discounted in these threads and I was wondering if there was any truth to it?

Why on earth would America want to do that?

 

[Deleted member 145219]

I think had the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into open military conflict, as soon as the first Soviet Nuclear Weapon, even a tactical device, hits an American/NATO Target, that's it for the USSR. The United States, Britain, and France would launch against the USSR. A large portion of the Soviet's arsenal could be destroyed on the ground, sparing Europe a far worse fate than the Soviet Union. I would imagine the Soviet Missile and Bomber bases would be among the first targets to get him.

Here is one of JFK's quotes from his address,

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

 

[Captain Homicide]

Why on earth would America want to do that?

China was a socialist country and explicitly targeted in the SIOP at the time.

 

[Pax_Nihil]

China was a socialist country and explicitly targeted in the SIOP at the time.

Also given the possibility that the US wouldn't be unscathed its 'better' strategically to take out China in case they decide that a weakened US is the sign they should try to do something (try to take Taiwan, help conquer South Korea maybe?) and if they do something like that its kind of a giant fuck-you to the image America probably wants to instill in the collective conscience of the world that they're the biggest baddest mofo even if their hair got mussed.

 

[Wolf1965]

I do belive that largely depends on who starts the fracas, when and how. If the submarine B-59 had launched its nuclear torpedo, which it very nearly did, it would have given the US and its allies the motivation to go all out as large numbers of servicemen died. As the submarine had been out of contact with the Red Fleet, it would have hit the USSR as a surprise and a counterforce strike might take a lot of the USSR's missiles out. Many were not in hardened sites, and the airports quite vulnerable.

If the Soviets had started things on their own things would go quite apocalyptic.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

It's gonna be nukes, especially since they know that the Soviets have nuclear weapons there. That makes up for a lot of sins...

They actually didn't. They detected the missiles, but thought they were far less prepared than they actually were and never detected the warheads. US actually didn't learn that the Soviets had any warheads on the island until after the Cold War ended.

That said, what the US tries to hit them with is probably a bit PoD dependent. I could see them going after the missiles with nukes in a PoD where - for example - the B-59 uses her nuclear torepedo and things escalate from there. But if it's one where Kennedy decides to use air strikes on day 1? The air strike proposals there were all conventional.

How many ICBMs do you believe the Soviets could hit America with? And as you seem quite knowledgeable do you know if they were focusing on counterforce or countervalue?

My best guess is that we can write off the R-7s completely: even if they were in a fueled-state, just calibrating the gyroscopes for a launch took far too many hours. For the R-16s, I'd reasonably guess they'd be able to get almost everything away. US ICBMs were mostly targeted against air defense sites to "clear the way" for the bombers, so even the three hours for the soft-sites could beat them. Failure rates were about a quarter, so that's around 27 hits from the ICBMs. For the number of bombers there is a potential complication that the nuclear OOB missed: the number of bombers that can reach the CONUS is not necessarily the same as the number of bombers that can reach North American targets. In 1956, the Soviets had around ~200 Tu-16s with air-air refueling capabilities that could let them strike targets in Canada or Alaska and make it back and that number probably was up a bit by 1962. The US/Canadian interceptor will have to tangle with both. That could up the number of leakers. Still, I would put a upper limit of no more than 25% of the bombers making it through, though that number could very well turn out to be zero. Same story for what SLBMs the Soviets have at the time.

So assuming a minimum of 25-30 warheads against the CONUS is probably the minimum lower limit.

As to targeting, the limited size of the potential deliverable weapons would suggest a counter-value bent, but Soviet doctrine at the time left a lot more room for counter-force. It's anyone's guess.

I wonder how these would be targeted. I'm British so naturally I'm quite interested in how much damage the UK would take. Germany would suffer pretty heavily though, especially from tactical weapons.

We don't have that much concrete information. A discussion between Nikita Khrushchev and the British ambassador around the time of the second Berlin crisis had the former ask the latter how many warheads it would take to knock out Britain. The ambassador remarked "About a half-dozen, I imagine." At which point Khrushchev commented that the Soviet General Staff had allocated "several score of thermonuclear missiles" and then made a quip about how odd it is that the STAVKA accorded the British with more staying power than the British themselves. It's naturally hard to tell how much of that was a serious revelation on the number of MRBM/IRBMs aimed at Britain and how much of it was Khrushchev being Khrushchev. Supposedly the historian Peter Hennessey discovered that Liverpool had five megatons worth of weapons aimed at it around this time - which would correspond to as few as 5 or as many as 16 missiles, depending on the yield setting per missile - but I've never seen where he got that from.

While I'm asking questions allegedly there was the idea that the US could also target China despite it not being party to the crisis, it always seems to be discounted in these threads and I was wondering if there was any truth to it?

Someone already posted the 1962 SIOP, which included China. Although I do recall that there was a variant of the plan in which a "hold" against China could be implemented. Anyone's guess which one SAC would default too.

 

[Sekhmet_D]

China was a socialist country and explicitly targeted in the SIOP at the time.

I find this section of the linked information to be particularly relevant:

"The Marine Corp commandant was concerned that the SIOP provides for the 'attack of a single list of Sino-Soviet countries' and makes no 'distinction' between Communist countries that were at war with the United States and those that were not."

Mr Commandant's concerns are exactly my own. Nuking a country that isn't at outright war with you just because they share your declared enemy's ideology and have certain alliances in place with your declared enemy is pretty damned nuts if you ask me. It would be akin to the North Vietnamese and/or Viet Cong launching an attack on British military installations in 1969 just because Britain was a U.S. ally.

 

[BlueTrousers]

Nike-Ajax was not capable of intercepting ICBMs. Nike-Zeus was, but it never reached operational status.

Nike-Hercules could do it under favourable circumstances. It certainly wasn't a reliable capability, but the odds were just enough that you can imagine missile crews firing at an incoming ICBM, on the principle that they might as well try, and a few might succeed.

As far as the number of hits go, a lot depends on alert state and who strikes first. I did do the maths a few years ago - A US first strike likely results in only about 40-60 weapons reaching North America . A USSR first strike likely results in about 150-200 weapons. There are a few versions of the calculation in that thread.

I haven't done similar calculations for the rest of the world, but given strategic warfare doctrine and the force imbalance, it's fair to assume that in either case the USSR gets obliterated, while non-Soviet Europe and China are severely damaged at a minimum. Outside those areas, it's fairly unlikely anyone else gets directly attacked, though fallout and climatic effects will impact everyone.

 

[Captain Homicide]

Based on British estimates of what it would take to bring down the USSR, that's probably enough to cause a breakdown of the United States.

I'm quoting this from the thread you linked. What were the British estimates and when were they made?

 

[BlueTrousers]

I'm quoting this from the thread you linked. What were the British estimates and when were they made?

That being eight years, a marriage, and a house move ago... I'm not sure what reference I used or where it is. My best guess off the top of my head is that it's somewhere in Hennessey's The Secret State, but I could be wrong.

I'm fairly sure that the estimate was that if a certain fraction of population (or possibly cities, or industrial capacity) was destroyed, then society would be unable to function, regardless of the material condition of the remainder.

 

[Blue cat]

Thanks. I guess ICBM interception was not possible for over a decade afrerwards.

I tend to agree.. (But the plausibility of intercepting early ICBM’s with nuclear armed SAM’s seems to come up from time to time..)

Reportedly early ICBM re entry vehicles tended to slow down more during re entry than later ones did and early nuclear warheads may (probably were ?) were likely to have been more vulnerable to near by nuclear detonations (from nuclear armed SAM’s.) than newer warheads. I seem to recall reading one published work that speculated some warheads may have been subsonic before detonating or impacting. I can sort of see how comments like that might lead to speculation about intercepting early ICBM’s with nuclear armed SAM’s.

Even if early ICBM’s did slow down to subsonic speeds, what isn’t clear to me is how practical / possible it would have been for Sam sites in 1962 to track the in bound re entry vehicles early enough (before they slowed down) so they could launch sam’s in time to plausibly detonate nuclear warheads near enough to damage or destroy them.

The effort put into systems such as Nike Zeus and Safe Guard tends to indicate to me that the people in charge at the time were not very optimistic about using SAM’s to intercept early ICBM’s.

 

[Blue cat]

The Soviets would probably get 20 - 25 ICBMs and 5 IRBMs from Cuba to fly successfully and at most 80 - 100 bombers get through. Assuming two gravity bombs per bomber, the upper limit is around 200 detonations if the bombers are extremely successful. If ADC is successful, the number of detonations could be less than 50.

That estimate seems plausible to me..

 

[dwkelley]

that's it for the USSR.

... and the Powers That Be in the USSR realized that (or had it explained in equisite detail to them by the military "brains"), and that's why they backed off. They may have been dead set against "Western Imperialism", but they weren't completely stupid...

 

[Blue cat]

Nike-Hercules could do it under favourable circumstances. It certainly wasn't a reliable capability, but the odds were just enough that you can imagine missile crews firing at an incoming ICBM, on the principle that they might as well try, and a few might succeed.

As far as the number of hits go, a lot depends on alert state and who strikes first. I did do the maths a few years ago - A US first strike likely results in only about 40-60 weapons reaching North America . A USSR first strike likely results in about 150-200 weapons. There are a few versions of the calculation in that thread.

I haven't done similar calculations for the rest of the world, but given strategic warfare doctrine and the force imbalance, it's fair to assume that in either case the USSR gets obliterated, while non-Soviet Europe and China are severely damaged at a minimum. Outside those areas, it's fairly unlikely anyone else gets directly attacked, though fallout and climatic effects will impact everyone.

Yeah I can envision crews trying to intercept ICBM's (assuming they can detect them in time to generate firing solutions for their SAM's..) Maybe the early BMEWS sites and perhaps other radars might have given the sam sites some degree of warning ?

 

[njslim]

This seems to be a discussion that comes up a lot vis a vis Cuban war TLs, and I think its worth trying to pin down some sort of consensus that isn't just people talking past each other. According to "The Cuban Missile Crisis: A nuclear order of battle, October and November 1962," "The Soviet Union had approximately 42 ICBMs capable of reaching the United States, no SLBMs, a long-range bomber force of 150 Bear and Bison bombers that would have had to face a formidable US-Canadian air-defense system of fighter interceptors with nuclear air-to-air missiles, and BOMARC (Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center) and Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles."

In terms of bombers, I turn to Operation Sky Shield. According to "This is Only a Test," an article in the Smithsonian Magazine, "Had Americans known NORAD’s conclusions, they might have ducked and remained covered. Nearly one-half of enemy flights at low altitude had escaped detection. Of those initially detected, 40 percent then eluded tracking radar by changing their formation shape, size, or altitude. All told, if Sky Shield bombers had been Soviet bombers, no more than one-fourth would have been intercepted.
"During all three Sky Shields, friendly units had posed as the enemy. Yet the participants had acted too much like, well, the enemy: flying lower than preauthorized, and flying in patterns that deviated from their assignments, a practice that required scrambles of the reserve force to identify the "unknowns."
"The remote radar stations, though, considered the most vulnerable of the far-flung system, survived every simulated ground attack.
"The Distant Early Warning and the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System lines had been penetrated by enemy cells of up to four aircraft, despite flying inbound at the system’s best tracking altitude, 35,000 to 40,000 feet. Low-altitude flights had been defined as anything below 5,000 feet, but NORAD acknowledged that a real enemy would fly lower, where continental radar was weakest.
"The SAGE system tracked less than one-third the total mileage flown within radar coverage. NORAD had prepared for an assault with advanced electronic countermeasures, but it was the low-tech chaff that degraded SAGE—to the point where manual tracking was required, leaving the enemy obscured until well within bomb-release lines."
Now Sky Shield was combatting a mixed force of B-47s, B-52s, and RAF Vulcans which obviously wouldn't be what the Soviets were attacking with, but equally the knowledge that the Soviets would be flying lower than the aircraft in Sky Shield and that the most effective countermeasure was "low-tech chaff" makes for grim reading. It does not take much to get through for the US and Canada to have an unpleasant time.

In terms of missiles I know a lot less, interested to see the consensus on that.

So what does the board think, how many hits will the Soviets be able to land on North America?

On Cuba were 42 SS-4 (R12), 24 Launchers with 18 reloads, 18 SS-5 (R14) in 12 fixed pad launchers with 6 reloads In days before GPS took 24 hours to survey launch area to establish position to program the guidance system They were in exposed sites, vulnerable to air attacks By the end of October only 6 SS -4 had reached operational status , none of the SS-5 were ready it expected that would take until December to become operational On Cuba were some 80 FKR-1 short range cruise missile max range about 100 miles (NATO designation SSC-2 Salish) with 14 kt warheads These were for coastal defense to repel ana amphibious landing Several of these were targeted on Guantanamo The IL 28 (Beagle) were still in crates unassembled The strike capability from Cuba against US mainland was limited

 

[jsb]

I do belive that largely depends on who starts the fracas, when and how.

This... do you not get very different results depending on who shots first and how far in advance of each other? We are not talking about later hardened systems that will easily allow for a second strike especially on the soviet side so if USA (or SAC commanders as soon as the fighting starts) decided to go hard early with no warning then it might lead to a very one-sided outcome far more so than if USSR fires first in response to action on Cuba after preparing its forces.

 

[RanulfC]

Reportedly early ICBM re entry vehicles tended to slow down more during re entry than later ones did and early nuclear warheads may (probably were ?) were likely to have been more vulnerable to near by nuclear detonations (from nuclear armed SAM’s.) than newer warheads. I seem to recall reading one published work that speculated some warheads may have been subsonic before detonating or impacting. I can sort of see how comments like that might lead to speculation about intercepting early ICBM’s with nuclear armed SAM’s.

Early warheads used a more "blunt body" reentry shape than modern warheads, (think Mercury or Vostok capsule shapes instead of the more 'pointy' modern versions ) so slowed down much more than modern warheads do.

Even if early ICBM’s did slow down to subsonic speeds, what isn’t clear to me is how practical / possible it would have been for Sam sites in 1962 to track the in bound re entry vehicles early enough (before they slowed down) so they could launch sam’s in time to plausibly detonate nuclear warheads near enough to damage or destroy them.

Those SAM's were designed to engage supersonic, maneuvering targets at high altitude, meanwhile your warhead is coming fast but in a clear ballistic path and NOT maneuvering so once it's in radar range of the site, however upgrades that would actually allow such engagements (higher angle radar and better tracking systems) was not deployed until mid-1963 so were not availably during the crisis. Nike Hercules could engage shorter range "battlefield" missiles but the results were mixed.

The effort put into systems such as Nike Zeus and Safe Guard tends to indicate to me that the people in charge at the time were not very optimistic about using SAM’s to intercept early ICBM’s.

Actually the fact that they COULD modify the standard Nike Hercules SAM to intercept warheads was a driver to try and build a dedicated interceptor missile. As to the reason "Missile Defense" has been lacking for decades it's due to an early concept called the "Exchange Ratio" formula. This formula was used to figure out (economically) which was more efficient, more ICBM's or trying to build interceptors to stop them and for the most part the economics always favored offensive missiles over defensive. Especially as both side moved to develop counter-measures and the ability to put multiple warheads on a single missile.

More in context of the original postings though, I'd point out that the SAM crews would NOT try and intercept any warheads even if they had a capability to do so. Their 'job' was to protect against the expected enemy bomber formations, not to try and knock down enemy warheads. Doing the former was how they trained and operated so that's the job they'd have done. Now one thing to keep in mind this duty DID include trying to bag any cruise missiles that might pop up so there's that

Randy