Cordon Of Steel

Contents: U.S.-Soviet Conflict in the Cold War; Cuba & the U.S.; Rising tensions in the Caribbean; U.S. military preparations; the "Milk Run" U-2 mission of 14 October; U.S. forces converge as the crisis unfolds; the crisis approaches a climax; & enforcing the settlement. Spotlights: U-2s, Crusaders, & Voodoos; the ASW (CVS 9) Essex; a gallant old lady; Willard Keith: destroyer on the quarantine line; & the Navy photoreconnaissance mission. Black & white photos.

This study is a dramatic example of how the U.S. Navy's multipurpose ships and aircraft, flexible task organization, and great mobility enabled President Kennedy to protect national interests in one of the most serious confrontations of the Cold War. Curtis A. Utz is currently a historian in the Naval Historical Center's Contemporary History Branch.

In the fall of 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came as close as they ever would to global nuclear war. Hoping to correct what he saw as a strategic imbalance with the United States, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev began secretly deploying medium range ballistic missiles (MRBM) and intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) to Fidel Castro's Cuba. Once operational, these nuclear-armed weapons could have been fired against cities and military targets in most of the continental United States. Before this happened, however, U.S. intelligence discovered Khrushchev's brash maneuver. In what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy and an alerted and aroused American government, armed forces, and public compelled the Soviets to remove from Cuba not only their missiles but all of their offensive weapons. The U.S. Navy played a pivotal role in this crisis, demonstrating the critical importance of naval forces to national defense.

They began as courtiers in a hierarchy of privilege, but history remembers them as patriot-citizens in a commonwealth of equals. On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon; that same night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse he could find. So began what have been called the "sister revolutions" of France and America. In a single narrative, this book tells the story of those revolutions and shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were. Their leaders, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, were often seen as father and son, but their relationship, while close, was every bit as complex as the long, fraught history of the French-American alliance. Vain, tough, ambitious, they strove to shape their characters and records into the form they wanted history to remember.--From publisher description.