Eventually, they decided on a blockade.
The blockade was a middle route, a blockade was setting up the Navy
some miles off of Cuba to prevent additional materials to come into Cuba.
It wasn't clear yet that they had everything they needed, and so
they didn't want anymore Soviet ships reaching Cuba and
they were going to do that with a naval blockade.
This was considered a middle option between mear diplomacy and
something more aggressive like surgical strikes.
So Kennedy makes a televised speech.
It was one of the bigger moments in Kennedy's administration to announce that
these missiles existed and that the U.S. was going to take action.
They sent the ambassador to the UN to challenge the Soviet Union over this, and
Kennedy also ordered low-level flights, instead of the high-level U-2 flights,
low-level flights to get closer pictures so
they could better understand what was going on there.
On October 24th the real height to this crisis was reached when
the Soviet ships got to the quarantine line, the blockade line.
No one knew what they would do, no one knew if they were going to run
the blockade or if they would stop and honor the blockade.
So this was when the, on the next day the U.S.
reached DEFCON 2 which is the military preparedness and awareness.
It's the highest it's ever been.
It's the closest we've ever been to actually being in nuclear war.
This was also When we got back, the US military got back,
the low level reconnaissance pictures and figured out for
sure that there were missiles already there.
They didn't have to wait to come in on the ships, they're already there an they were
very close to being prepared for use if they wanted to use them.
On the 26th, Kruschev, who was the premier of the Soviet Union,
sent a letter proposing an exchange.
That if the U.S. would promise not to invade Cuba,
that the Soviet Union would pull out the missiles.
This was preserving a victory of sorts for Chris Jeff and
it was a bit of an opening for the US Administration.
About this time some other things go a little bit wrong so for
example completely unrelated to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A U-2 plane, spy plane flew over Russia was shot down over Russia because it flew
off course which was, to say the least, a horrible timing for US-Soviet relations.
And about this time, a second letter came across,
supposedly from Khrushchev that was much more bellicose.
Did not provide an opening for an exchange and those on the U.S.
side were left wondering what's the difference?
Why the friendly exchange the first time and
the more bellicose exchange the second time?
There clearly was discord among the Soviets on what was going on,
what how should they respond.
