Operation Anadyr

For other uses, see Anadyr (disambiguation).

Operation Anadyr
Date 1962 Location Cuba Result Cuban Missile Crisis
Belligerents
(no combat took place)
Commanders and leaders
	Issa Pliyev
Strength
	47,000 troops, three R-12 missile regiments, two R-14 missile regiments

Operation Anadyr (Russian: «Анадырь») was the code name used by the Soviet Union for their Cold War (1962) secret operation of deploying ballistic missiles, medium-range bombers, and a division of mechanized infantry in Cuba to create the army group that would be able to prevent an invasion of the island by U.S. forces.^[1] Anadyr included a military deception campaign intended to mislead Western intelligence forces: personnel were issued Arctic equipment and trained for cold weather, and the operation itself was named for the Anadyr river in the northern part of the Russian Far East. The ballistic missiles were shipped to Cuba on merchant ships, and were detected by American intelligence agencies both en route and in Cuba.

Plans were to deploy 60,000 troops, three R-12 missile regiments and two R-14 missile regiments. Troops were transferred by 86 ships, that conducted 180 voyages from ports Baltiysk, Liepāja, Sevastopol, Feodosia, Nikolaev, Poti, Murmansk. Between mid-June 17 and mid- October, 24 launching pads, 42 R-12 rockets, including six training ones, some 45 nuclear warheads, 42 Il-28 bombers, a fighter aircraft regiment (40 Mig-21 aircraft), two Anti-Air Defense divisions, four mechanized infantry regiments, and other military units (47,000 troops in total) were transferred. The fighter regiment deployed was the 32nd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (32 Gv IAP) flying MiG-21F-13s, deployed from Kubinka. The 32nd Regiment was renamed 213th Fighter Aviation Regiment during the deployment.^[2] The deployment was uncovered by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft on October 14. Two days later the fact of Soviet missile presence on Cuba became known to the U.S. President and military command and the Caribbean Crisis started.^[1] Cuban Missile Crisis threatened nuclear war until diplomatic pressure caused Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev to halt Anadyr and remove the missiles.

Operation Kama

A part of Operation Anadyr was Operation Kama, a plan to forward-base seven Soviet ballistic missile submarines in Mariel, Cuba, much like the United States bases ballistic missile submarines in Holy Loch, Scotland. The operation began on October 1, 1962 with the departure of four diesel-electric attack submarines to the Caribbean Sea to clear the way. All four submarines were Project 641 boats, known to NATO as the "Foxtrot" class. The boats were the B-36, the B-59, and the B-130.

Kama failed independently of Anadyr; none of the ballistic missile submarines ever departed for Cuba, and all four of the attack submarines were detected and followed closely by American destroyers and ASW aircraft. (Some of the destroyer crews harassed the Soviet submarines by dropping hand grenades overboard, which did no harm to the boats but made it clear that depth charges could follow at any time.) Equipment failures and the skill of the destroyer crews prevented three of the submarines from breaking contact long enough to surface and recharge their batteries; those three suffered the ignominy of surfacing in sight of their enemy, an action that in time of war would have caused their death or capture. Only Chelyabinski Komsomolets successfully broke contact and returned to the Soviet Union without being forced to surface.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Great Russian Encyclopedia (2005), Moscow: Bol'shaya Rossiyskaya Enciklopediya Publisher, vol. 1, p. 649
2. ^ http://www.airforce.ru/history/cold_war/cuba/index_en.htm