The San Cristóbal medium-range missile sites

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The deployment area in Pinar del Río province in western Cuba where a U-2 photographed the construction of launch positions for Soviet R-12 medium-range ballistic missiles — designated SS-4 in NATO usage — on 14 October 1962. What the photo interpreters recognised was not a missile but a pattern: the characteristic spacing and layout of erectors, transporters, tents and cable runs, matched against the arrangement of Soviet sites known from a training manual and from earlier imagery. The sites were field deployments rather than permanent installations, which is what made them both quick to establish and quick to detect. Longer-range R-14 missiles were also to be deployed under the same operation and did not become operational before the crisis ended. Later disclosures added the fact that mattered most: tactical nuclear weapons for use against an invading force were already on the island, and their release arrangements in the event of an American landing were not what Washington assumed at the time.