Oct. 16, 1962, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received a call from his brother President John F. Kennedy summoning him to the Oval Office with a foreshadowing of "big trouble."
The president had just received grainy CIA photos taken over Cuba. The photos showed four missile launchers and eight canvas-covered trailers carrying medium-range ballistic missiles sneaked into Cuba by the Soviet Union.
Despite the president's warning months earlier, Khrushchev not only continued to send arms to Cuba but was apparently amassing offensive weapons from Cuba's border aimed at the United States only 90 miles away.
To deal with the mounting crisis, officials needed a closer and clearer look at those partially hidden armaments. The CIA began collaboration with the Air Force's Strategic Air Command (SAC) for aerial-reconnaissance missions over Cuba to gather more photographs.
The president convened the executive committee, tagged ExCom, made up of the attorney general, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), CIA Director John McCone and several other key advisers. They would meet daily and almost continuously for 13 days.
While the ExCom debated strategies and examined current information, the SAC U-2 pilots gathered more photographic evidence.
The first two such pilots recommended for the operation were Majors Richard Heyser and Rudolf Anderson, considered the Air Force's top U-2 pilots. Soon the ExCom would step up the aerial reconnaissance with several more pilots. All on a voluntary basis and all greatly honored.
Even though Anderson was suffering from shoulder pain according to medical records, perhaps from a previous injury, he flew numerous intense missions over Cuba retrieving crucial information for U.S. security.
Witnesses say his only objections came when he thought his last flight was about to be canceled. But he prevailed, or fate did, and he flew one more mission on the 12th day of the crisis.
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