Why was the crisis resolved without breaking out?.
Atomic bombs seemed to be all Russia and America cared about, but as soon as the stakes were raised to nuclear warfare, the times changed tremendously, they changed to the point of total destruction. Some blame Kennedy for over reacting, claiming he needlessly raised the stakes and took the world to the brink of nuclear war, by dramatising matters! But the key reason for both Khruschev and Kennedy was that, if the Cold War turned into a Hot war, the consequences would be devastating, enough to wipe one of the countries, either America or Russia, of the face of this earth. This was the crisis, which was becoming a reality to Kennedy; as he tried to political get his views across to Russia without being destroyed! The points leading up to the brink of nuclear war will be talked upon.
October 16th 1962, the world's fears were confirmed as a U2 spy plane took high-level photographic evidence, revealing a missile base. Later the missile base was described to have inter-mediate range missiles, which were capable of carrying a nuclear payload! Worse news was still to come, as on October 17th, the CIA reported that the sixteen to thirty two missiles could obliterate over eighty million Americans, as they had a range of two thousand miles with a flight time of just seventeen minutes. Whilst this was being said, US intelligence was picking up messages of twenty Russian ships, heading for Cuba with crates on board which obviously contained more missiles. The US intelligence was right as, the missiles were carried on deck, in full pledged view of US observer planes. Things seemed that they couldn't get any worse, but the in the back of their minds, they knew that they could be blown out of existence in a matter of days, and more U2 photographs indicated that the missile base would be fully operational in just a few days! .
The options were laid clear for Kennedy, should he firstly ignore the missiles.
