Ada: Here's the thing Grechko and Garbuz don't say out loud. Khrushchev, back in Moscow, has strictly forbidden firing on American reconnaissance planes without explicit Kremlin authorization.1012
Theo: Wait, so this is flatly against orders? The top of the chain said do not shoot, and they're about to shoot anyway?
Ada: Out of fear and military impulse, yes. The order goes down the chain to the 507th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment, First Battalion, near Banes in Oriente Province.610
Theo: And down at the battery, these are just guys following the order coming down the wire.
Ada: The battalion commander, Major Ivan Gerchenkov, gives the command to fire. A young lieutenant, Aleksei Riapenko, presses the switch on an S-75 battery. The Americans called that missile the SA-2 Guideline.1012
Theo: And Anderson, thirteen miles up, has no idea anything's been launched. He can't maneuver much in coffin corner anyway, can he?
Ada: Almost not at all. The missiles climb, and their proximity warheads don't even need a direct hit. They detonate near the aircraft and throw out shrapnel.1012
Theo: Thirteen miles below him and the blast still reaches.
Ada: Fragments punch through the pressurized cockpit, through his pressure suit and his helmet. At seventy-two thousand feet, that's instant, violent decompression. Anderson is killed in his seat.1012
Theo: The unarmed man with the camera. The only one who dies in the whole crisis.
Ada: The sole combat fatality of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He'd later receive the very first Air Force Cross, awarded posthumously. The wreckage of U-2 serial five-six, six-six-seven-six falls into the cane fields near Banes.610
Theo: And now there's a dead American pilot and a downed plane. That's not a photograph on a desk anymore. That's an act of war.
Ada: The flaming wreckage had barely struck the cane fields outside Banes when the flash report arrived on Robert McNamara's desk.610