USS Newport News (CA-148)-- Part 2: Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam

From 1950 to 1961, the ship had annual deployments to the Mediterranean as well as training cruises in the Caribbean and western Atlantic.  She served as the flagship of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962  with the USS Leary as destroyer escort.

The two ships stopped the Soviet ship Labinsk and ordered her away from Cuban waters and assisted in counting Soviet missiles as they were being dismantled and removed from Cuba.  

When the Dominican Republic Crisis of 1965 developed, she was the flagship of the task force and in 1967 the Newport News shifted to a six-month deployment to Southeast Asia arriving off Vietnam 9 October where she fired her 8-inch guns in anger for the first time at positions in North Vietnam as part of Operation Sea Dragon.

--Cooter

U.S. Presidents Who Served Less Than Four Years-- Part 5: Kennedy and Arthur

JOHN F. KENNEDY  (January 1961-November 22, 1963)

Arguably, the best-known president on this list, John F. Kennedy served as the 35th president.  At age 43, he was the youngest person ever elected.  His biggest challenge was the Cold War with the Soviet Union and faced crisis after crisis, including the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In addition to the international crises, he was in poor health, despite  maintaining an image of youthful vigor.  He served for two years and ten months and was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR  (September 1881-March 1885)

When President James A. Garfield was assassinated on his way to New England in 1881, Vice President  Chester A. Arthur became president.  Initially unpopular, he gained points with the American public by introducing the Pendleton  Civil Service Act, that held  federal employment would be based on merit instead of  political party affiliations.

Suffering fro  a kidney-related disease, the 21st president  managed to finish his partial term of three years and five months before moving to New York City and dying the following year.

--CootPres

10 Years That Made the Modern World-- Part 1: 2001, 1848, 1918, 1962, 1953

From the February 3, 2020, ListVerse by Himanshu Sharma.

I am doing the very short version.  Go to site for more info and pictures.

10.  2001

Understanding the human genome, 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S.

*****************

9.  1848 

Wave of revolutions that hit Europe and elsewhere.  Idea of nation-state.

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8.  1918

The end of World War I, end of Ottaman, German,  Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.  Spanish flu pandemic.

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7.  1962

Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis,   Things heating up in Vietnam.  Vatican Council

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6.  1953

Coup in Iran,  Rise of Iran as a power  DNA a double helix, designer babies and clones.

--Cooter

10 Bizarre Cold War Tales-- Part 2: Tricking Castro

7.  The Zambian schoolteacher's strange space program.  Zambia sort of had our space program.

6.  The U.S. built an underground nuclear ice fortress in Greenland called Project Iceworm in 1960.

5.  The British annexed a single rock islet called Rockall as a security measure.   It was 70 feet tall near the Falkland Islands.

4.  The Soviet Union tricked Castro into giving up his nuclear missiles during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It did not end when the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in October 1962.  The true ending was November 22, 1962, when the Soviet Union tricked Castro.

--DaCootIce

Deaths: Cuba's Leader For a Real Long Time, Fidel Castro

Age 90.  "No other Third World leader prompted so much U.S. hostility for so long.  Castro brought the planet to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 and endured a crippling U.S. embargo and outlasted ten U.S. presidents."

Died Friday, November 25, 2016.

You almost had to admire the man to do that.  But, was I ever scared when at age 11, I thought my life was about to end.  I'll never forget that Cuban Missile Crisis.  I am glad we have finally reopened trade and relations with Cuba.  I've always believed that he wouldn't have turned to Communism had the U.S. not so opposed him back when he came to power.  And, that was primarily because of his nationalizing U.S. interests in the country.

Like Him or Not, he Was a Force to Be Reckoned With.

Sure Scared Me Fifty Years Ago: The Cuban Missile Crisis

From the Oct. 22, 2012, Northwest Herald (Il)

"Kennedy averts Cuban Missile Crisis Disaster" by Joseph C. Morton.

On this day (Oct. 22) 1962, President John F. Kennedy appeared on TV to inform the country that the Soviets were constructing nuclear missile sites in Cuba, just 90 miles from the U.S..

That was the first the citizens had heard of it, although it had been going on since Oct. 13th.  They just hadn't told us.  The whole thing lasted 13 days before the Soviet Union finally backed down.

I figured that I was a goner.  Here I was in 6th grade, and already doomed.  Sure, we had always had nuclear holocaust drills where we had to get on out knees, put our heads on the floor and cover our heads with our arms.  Kind of an embarrassing position to say the least.  And we had to do it under our desks.  That position and those desks were really going to protect us if a big one went off nearby.  Just a lot of real burned heinies sticking up in the air at best.

I remember seeing all the photgraphs in the next day's newspapers.

Way Too Young To Die.  --DaCoot

That's How Close We Came to Armageddon During the Cuban Missile Crisis

From Oct. 16, 2012 Yahoo! News.

Newly released papers of Robert F. Kennedy on the Cuban Missile Crisis had the words to a draft that President Kennedy was ready to read if the Soviets had not backed down.

"My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, and in necessary fulfillment of my oath of office, I have ordered--and the United States Air Force has now carried out-- military operations with conventional weapons only, to remove a major nuclear weapons build-up from the soil of Cuba."

Had we done so, the Cuban commander probably would have replied with the 100 nuclear tactical weapons at his disposal which would have led to US retaliation and then the Soviet Union.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wanted 500 bombing sorties followed by an invasion of Cuba by 90,000 soldiers.

Those were some mighty scary times to live through.  I was 11 at the time and was pretty sure I wouldn't live to see my 12th birthday.

USS Till (DE-748)

The naval ship named after Robert Tills was a Cannon-class destroyer escort of 1,240 tons capable of 21 knots with a crew of 15 officers and 200 men. It was launched 3 October 1943, sponsored by Till's sister Miss Helen Irene Tills. It was commissioned 8 Aug 1944.

Much of its active duty was on convoy duty in the Pacific where it escorted small aircraft carriers and went on hunt-kill missions.

You have to wonder if it ever put into Malalog Bay, where its namesake was killed.

After the war, it was sent to St. John's River in Florida for decommissioning, but reactivated in 1947, with the later-famous Lt. Cmdr Elmo Zumwalt, Jr, as its commander.

After decommissioning, it was recommissioned in 1961 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A year later, decommissioned, then stricken from the registry in 1968 and used as a target ship and sunk off Virginia 3 April 1969.

The Story of a Man and a Ship. --Cooter