Authors: Dan Lewis
The Navy, for its part, began to worry. With the public eye now focused on Ballard’s expedition, the Navy feared that his initial reason for being at sea would come to light. But apparently, no one thought to ask. Ballard’s secret mission did not become public until after the fall of the Soviet Union.
BONUS FACT
The
Titanic
had two sister ships—ships of virtually the same design—called the HMHS
Britannic
and the RMS
Olympic
. Both had disasters of their own. In 1911, while under the command of Captain Edward Smith (the captain of the
Titanic
when it sunk), the
Olympic
crashed into a British warship and nearly capsized. No one died, as the ship successfully returned to shore despite two chambers taking on water. In 1916, the
Britannic
met a fate similar to the
Titanic
’s four years prior, sinking in the Mediterranean Sea. But unlike in the
Titanic
’s accident, the vast majority—1,036 of the 1,066 people on board—survived. One of the survivors was a nurse named Violet Jessop, who also was on the
Titanic
when it sank. She is the only person to have survived both, and was also on the
Olympic
during its aforementioned collision.
In 1961, the United States undertook a series of unsuccessful campaigns in Cuba, attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro and his regime. These campaigns—including the Bay of Pigs invasion—ultimately failed. The Soviet Union, Cuba’s staunch ally at the time, reacted by working with Castro to build a secret nuclear weapons site on the island. Cuba is a stone’s throw away from the continental United States, and had the weapons base been completed, any nuclear missiles there would have been able to hit American soil.
On October 12, 1962, a U.S. recon plane captured images of the base being built, sending the White House (and the American people) into panic. The United States imposed a military quarantine on Cuba, denying the Soviets the ability to bring in any weapons, and insisted that the base be dismantled. The Soviets publicly balked, and anyone alive at the time (and old enough to remember) needs no refresher: The world was on the brink of nuclear war. Roughly two weeks later, on October 28, 1962, the two nations came to an agreement, staving off what could have been a tragic result.
However, if it weren’t for a Soviet naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov, there is a good chance none of us would be here today. The day before the Americans and Soviets found a middle ground, Arkhipov was aboard a submarine patrolling the waters near Cuba. American naval forces surrounded the submarine and began dropping depth charges—a tactic the U.S. Navy used to get submarines to surface, not one intended to destroy the (assumed to be) enemy submarine.
Unfortunately, the submarine’s captain either forgot about this tactic or was unaware of it, and—underwater, unable to contract Moscow—believed war had broken out. Soviet protocol at the time allowed for the use of nuclear torpedoes if the three highest-ranking sailors on the ship believed it proper. The captain and a third officer concluded it was. Arkhipov, the second in command, objected—and, thankfully, prevailed. The ship surfaced without starting World War III.
More than twenty years later, nuclear war was barely averted once again. By the early 1980s, the Soviets had developed an early warning system that aimed to detect an incoming nuclear missile attack. The system allowed the Soviets to, if need be, respond with a retaliatory missile attack. Without such a system, the incoming missiles would likely destroy or disable the Soviet arsenal before it could be deployed. The protocol was simple: If the monitoring station discovered missiles headed for the Soviet Union, the leadership there was to notify its superiors. The powers that be would then decide whether the U.S.S.R. should launch its own strike, and, given the tensions at the time, it is likely they would have.
On September 26, 1983, the monitoring station detected an incoming missile. Then, it detected four more. Stanislav Petrov, the lieutenant colonel and ranking officer on site, did something incredible: He unilaterally decided that the monitoring equipment had erred, and he declined to report the “attack” to the Kremlin. Petrov based this belief on a few key factors. First, the equipment was very new and believed to be a bit buggy (although not to this degree); and second, Petrov believed that a U.S. strike would involve hundreds of warheads, not five.
Petrov turned out to be correct. The satellites were not functioning properly and the “missiles” were phantoms. Ground-based systems, a few minutes after the satellites erred, saw nothing, corroborating Petrov’s belief. But Petrov did not view himself a hero. Later in life, he said that he was just doing his job and, in fact (quite literally), he did nothing at all.
BONUS FACT
During a sound check prior to giving a radio address in 1984, then-President Ronald Reagan jokingly said into the microphone, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Contrary to popular belief, that audio was not actually broadcast over the airways. It was, however, recorded and later leaked to the press.
In April 1961, roughly 1,500 American-trained Cuban exiles invaded their homeland in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government. That assault, now referred to as the Bay of Pigs invasion, ended in failure. The Cuban militia overwhelmed the attackers, capturing 80 percent of them and killing most of the other 20 percent. The political fallout in the United States was massive, and the desire of Americans to further engage Cuba in battle was understandably low. Further, other nations questioned America’s attack on a neighboring sovereign, especially one that had shown little in the way of aggression toward the United States and was already the subject of American economic sanctions.
But the Cold War was in full force. The United States saw Cuba as a surrogate for the Soviet Union and having a Soviet stronghold just ninety miles off Florida troubled the leadership of the American military. The Department of Defense (DOD) and the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) felt the need to revive civilian interest in overthrowing Castro and liberating Cuba. Absent a Cuban strike on Americans, though, this seemed unlikely, and no such Cuban strike appeared imminent.
So the DOD and JCS proposed to create such an attack themselves. A fake one, aimed at turning public opinion against Castro and in favor of continued military action against Cuba.
The plan, devised in 1962 and code named Operation Northwoods, had a simple yet striking goal: “to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.” The details, outlined in an appendix to an originally classified document titled “Pretexts to Justify U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba,” included:
In almost all cases, the plan was designed to avoid killing American civilians, although the same could not be said for “boatload[s] of Cubans” destined for Miami. Regardless, the total death toll from Operation Northwoods was zero. Then-President John F. Kennedy rejected the idea and removed its lead proponent, General Lyman Lemnitzer, from his position as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
BONUS FACT
The U.S. embargo of Cuba dates back to 1960 and its reach has been adjusted a few times since. (In general, the restrictions have been tightened, but on July 16, 2012, a U.S.-sanctioned ship carrying humanitarian goods from Cubans in Miami to their families sailed into Havana, showing a recent loosening of the rules.) The ban on importing Cuban cigars was not among the original restrictions—that was added in an executive order signed by President Kennedy in 1962. But JFK was, apparently, fond of the cigars. According to Pierre Salinger, then the President’s press secretary, one evening that year JFK asked him to pick up about 1,000 cigars by “tomorrow morning.” Salinger over-delivered, obtaining 1,200, and presented them to the President the next morning. As Salinger recounts: “Kennedy smiled, and opened up his desk. He took out a long paper, which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States. Cuban cigars were now illegal in our country.”
The United States and Canada, by and large, have been peaceful neighbors—especially since Canada became a
de facto
independent nation under the British North America Act in 1867. But although the two nations are friendly and, typically, allies, things can change. And in 1927, the United States planned for just a scenario.
At the time, Canada was still mostly under British control, and even though the United States and the United Kingdom were friendly—they fought on the same side in the Great War—things could change quickly. The United States was concerned that the UK’s imperial desires, albeit unlikely, could extend back to the United States and America was not going to be caught unprepared. The U.S. Army, therefore, developed “War Plan Red,” a comprehensive strategy to foil any British expansion into its former colony.
War Plan Red assumed that in the case of war, Britain had two significant advantages. First, the British navy was a formidable force, able to control the seaways and therefore the U.S. export economy. Second, the UK controlled Canada and could use it as a staging ground for an invasion of the United States. The American plan was to strike Canada first.
Specifically, U.S. forces would invade Nova Scotia, hoping to take Halifax, which (American strategists assumed) would be the focal point for the British navy in North America. If this failed, the U.S. would try to take New Brunswick, isolating Nova Scotia from the mainland. After securing that region, American forces would target Quebec City, further separating east from west; Ontario, taking control of much of Canada’s manufacturing (at the time); Winnipeg, a railway transit hub; and Vancouver, as a way of controlling the Pacific ports. War Plan Red only laid plans for military action in the Western Hemisphere—America never intended to attack the British Isles. Rather, the plan was to hold Canada hostage, so to speak, in hopes that Britain would agree to a peace treaty to free its largest New World territory. Although the plan never came into play, it probably would have worked. The UK never had a plan to attack the United States, and was willing to let the U.S. overtake Canada if push came to shove—so long as the United States did not blockade the British Isles.
In 1974, the United States declassified War Plan Red, which created a temporary ripple in U.S./Canadian relations—but it quickly passed.
BONUS FACT
The United States was not the only North American country with intracontinental war plans. In 1921—six years before War Plan Red was drafted—Canada developed its own plan, named Defence Scheme No. 1. The scheme outlined plans for a counterattack on the United States in case of an invasion from its neighbor to the south. Like War Plan Red, the plan was never put into action. Unlike War Plan Red, Scheme No. 1 was short lived—it was terminated in 1928 in an effort to foster a stronger relationship between the United States and Britain.
The United States and Britain have been adversaries at war, officially, twice: the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In more modern times, the two nations have been allies. But for a few months in 1859, the two sides were again hostile, meeting each other in the field of battle, with over 400 American soldiers (and roughly a dozen cannons) facing off against more than 2,000 British troops—and five British warships.
The good news: the total casualty count from the war was one—one pig, that is.
After the War of 1812, most of the Pacific Northwest was jointly occupied by both the United States and the United Kingdom. Over time, the two nations came to an agreement—the Oregon Treaty—that divided the territory at the 49th Parallel, forming the modern border between the state of Washington (U.S.) and the province of British Columbia (Canada). An exception was made for Vancouver Island, which was placed entirely under British control even though it dipped below the 49th Parallel. The Oregon Treaty specifically drew the line of demarcation separating the two at “the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island.”
The problem?
The San Juan Islands.
The San Juan Islands form an archipelago, now part of the state of Washington. They sit in the middle of that unnamed “channel” and create three separate “middle” channels. For a dozen years after signing the Oregon Treaty, neither side particularly liked the other’s interpretation of which channel was the true divider. The United States preferred the Haro Strait, a channel running west of the archipelago, whereas the UK preferred the Rosario Strait, the channel running to the archipelago’s east. This question of ownership caused practical problems. The British Hudson Bay Company set up a sheep ranch on San Juan Island (the largest island in the archipelago of the same name), located between the Haro and Rosario Straits; a few dozen Americans settled there as well.