'Cuban missile crisis': 65 nuclear-armed B-52s were in the air at every single moment for a month

On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed the American public and revealed that the Soviet Union was placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from the US coast. Within hours, the United States military began preparing for the possibility of nuclear war. For the B-52 Stratofortress fleet of the Strategic Air Command, that preparation meant going to a state of readiness that had never been reached before and has never been reached since.

DEFCON 2 — One Step From Nuclear War

On October 26, 1962, the US raised the alert status of the Strategic Air Command to DEFCON 2, the highest state of readiness below the actual launch of nuclear weapons. SAC would remain at DEFCON 2 until November 21, nearly a full month. During this period, approximately one-eighth of the entire B-52 fleet was airborne at all times, with the remaining aircraft on 15-minute ground alert, engines ready, crews in cockpits, nuclear weapons loaded, prepared to take off and proceed to assigned Soviet targets within minutes of a presidential order.

65 Bombers In The Air At Every Moment

At the peak of the crisis, SAC maintained 65 nuclear-armed B-52 bombers in the air continuously, 24 hours a day. The command launched up to 75 B-52 sorties per day to sustain this airborne alert. Over the course of the crisis, B-52s flew 2,088 individual sorties and accumulated 41,168 flying hours, an extraordinary tempo of operations that pushed crews, aircraft, and ground support to their limits. Every single one of those bombers was carrying live thermonuclear weapons, ready to proceed to pre-assigned targets deep inside the Soviet Union if the order came.

133 Tankers A Day To Keep Them Flying

Keeping 65 B-52s airborne around the clock required a massive aerial refuelling operation. SAC launched 133 KC-135 Stratotanker sorties per day at the height of the crisis to refuel the bombers in the air. The tanker fleet operated on a continuous cycle, taking off, rendezvousing with B-52s at designated refuelling points over the Arctic and the Atlantic, transferring fuel, returning to base, refuelling themselves, and launching again. The logistical scale of the operation was staggering: thousands of crew members across hundreds of aircraft, all operating under the premise that nuclear war could begin at any moment.

The Only Time It Ever Happened

The Cuban Missile Crisis airborne alert remains the only confirmed time in United States history that the B-52 fleet was placed on continuous nuclear airborne alert at this scale and intensity. Operation Chrome Dome, the routine peacetime airborne alert programme, typically kept a much smaller number of bombers aloft. The October 1962 surge was something qualitatively different: a full-scale, sustained wartime footing maintained for nearly a month, with live nuclear weapons in the air over American, Arctic, and Atlantic airspace every minute of every day. When the crisis ended and the alert status was lowered on November 21, the B-52 crews who had flown those missions had participated in the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war, from the cockpits of the aircraft that would have started it.