his family has been cattle breeders for decades lopez largo has a big farm by local standards in autumn nine hundred sixty two cuban military men knocked on his doorstep among them was a young officer william rocket almight hello or more hello friend. how are you my friend i haven't seen you for ages. you haven't dropped in for a long time it's been so long since we saw each other how's it going not too bad ok let's go and turn. back in one thousand nine hundred sixty two when i'm our first met the cuban military there wasn't time for idle chit chat. the conversation was

short and to the point his family was asked to give away their land for the deployment of military hardware brought in by companeros from the soviet union but abram of a came and said that we should leave the house in the next seventy two hours at that time a construction team was already at work here it took them seventy two hours to build a new home for us. camouflaging the missiles under the trees with tents turned out to be an almost impossible task the pantries grew too far away from each other on october fourteenth one thousand nine hundred sixty two a u.s. air force surveillance drone flew over the territory of cuba it took several aerial photos cia analysts identified the soviet ballistic nuclear missile launchers on a photograph taken over san cristobal. takes hours of processing and about six hours. of looking at it i was really surprised. this is country is not

conducive but it's good for secrecy. out of the group of officers who were sent to kibera nine hundred sixty two a small handful is still alive for many years they have been gathering to mark the anniversary of dispatching the first soviet missiles to what's now known as the island of freedom this time the veterans met the commander of the russian rocketry . kernel of us. in cuba i was division service chief and is a good surname in a division where i served we had a general is name was general of. in the end they all posed for pictures against the background of an r twelve missile the soviet union delivered a total of forty two of these missiles to cuba they were able to reach the us territory in six minutes after launch. worldlier there were four there is three pool in order to transport my regiment to the port but they are both we needed

eleven seventy carriage trains. with a lifting capacity of sixty tons each. a secret operation to transfer soviet troops a cubit was code named and there after a town in the north of the soviet union most of the forty thousand troops that took part in that operation was sure that they were going to the north. in september nine hundred sixty two field nurses and i needed on sky i found herself on board one of these ships a voyage lasted eighteen days. the idea we were where in passing dresses sticks old shoes and ordinary stockings our men the saw that soldiers and officers were dressed in flannel to quit shuras with small bathroom for soldiers and big one for officers who knew. all the ships that arrived from the soviet union in one nine hundred sixty two were more than this port the service men proudly got off the ships without hiding their faces alleging that they had arrived in cuba to

gather the harvest because no down some of the locals their weaponry was discharged in conditions of top secrecy even today the shooting of films here is forbidden. the former participants of those events who guarded the secret cargoes agreed to speak into cameras only inside their cars this was a real real secret movement sometimes people. turn off the lights of the street. barry quiet. the military tried to stop traffic everything but anyway they say this is secret. cuba see yankee no motherland or death. yes yankee no. local school children know these mottos of the cuban revolution by heart they are

still wearing pioneer scars after the cuban revolution they borrowed that symbol from menu on the soviet union the morning lineup in school looks more like a military ritual. cuban school children study the events of the past fifty years that history lessons prata telling them about the revolution itself a teacher shows a selection of black and white archive on a monitor the schoolchildren are shown how americans carelessly spent their time in a pre-revolutionary cuba as if they were the masters of their own destiny. to me fidel is the biggest hero of all heroes whom i know because fidel supported the ideas of our independence as he is a revolutionary hero the only person who had to put up resistance to the united states in the time of neo colonialism. the history of the kievan revolution and prevails rise to power i described in the memoirs of

witnesses and in photographs today one can find these publications at bookstores in the center of havana historian thomas d.s. is a frequent guest here some new books including foreign literature and human history have appeared here more recently. this book reminds me of my youth. it was printed in one thousand nine hundred fifty nine you could usually find these cards in gather an entire collection of these cards in the told the history of the cuban revolution. local historians claim to have been moving three hundred fifty attempts to assassinate fidel castro the leader of the cuban revolution according to them the cia was the main offender. bortle one of the three hundred fifty six assassination attempts on fidel's life was supposed to take place in mid september one thousand nine hundred sixty during his visit to the united nations headquarters

the thing is there was a poisoned cigar the policeman responsible for the operation refused to obey orders they just awarding that cia operation in one nine hundred sixty. in one thousand nine hundred sixty one a year before soviet missiles were deployed in cuba the cia had worked out a military operation to bring down fidel's government a group of american trained cuban emigrants landed in cuba's play of pigs so quiet here all the superior forces of fidel castro stopped their offensive by next day the attempt to seize power fails. the bay of pigs was a disaster. it was poorly done and. and kennedy had stopped the. have stopped. the navy from giving support i mean it was strictly. the the rich rebellious force that when and which was

a bad bad move on the part account the place. ever out of though was only twenty when the bay of pigs battle took place little has changed since then. he hasn't been here for forty years but he had no difficulty finding the place where the american send forces landed. the government forces forward for every millimeter of land after the battle was over one revolutionary soldier wrote cuba on the sand to mount the victory. back over to our eye and the most powerful u.s. warship the houston we were sitting over there. it carried a lot of weapons and foodstuffs. fidel arrived here on a tank with a hundred millimeter gun he fired four or five times at that ship sank and it

tilted and sank this is how we achieved what we wanted hello it was. later the military museum was opened in the bay of pigs devoted to the legendary battle a cuban military plane which took part in the events was installed near the entry there are monuments erected along the road to the bay of pigs dedicated to the soldiers who died in the american bombings. more than eighty cuban revolutionaries died in battles against the invaders the local residents still remember an incident when the invaders tried to burn a bus full of volunteers with napalm the volunteers had come to the bay of pigs to help fidel's government troops. hello hello so good to see you. by my father my brother my sister's husband and my wife's two brothers four together with me. you know.

good bye so long well so long it was great seeing you would love to see you. the soviet union started supplying these planes to cuba shortly after the bay of pigs invasion as a result the most advanced make twenty one fighter jets with trained crew and started patrolling the airspace over the island. through my old friend. have we flown together. how high we used to fly and how fast. yes this was a very good craft it has never failed me. at all in september nine hundred sixty two we were ordered to take these planes to

cuba. we didn't feel any danger of course we were so young. because we had been prepared and we were ready for anything in. the soviet u.s. standoff grew more tense every day these top secret shots were taken during nuclear tests and the soviet testing ground at that time very few people thought about the real consequences of a nuclear conflict never before had the world been closer to a third nuclear world war.

will there be war on iraq. friends or for this missile defense offensive where it stopped us in action at the close to twenty seconds on. the gold fever. trance thousands into slaves. my father but also among others involved in the monsoon and since i started working in amman i stayed here. till multinationals. made a cash cow to be milked dry and if i think that in this country is gold medal a-g. as an environmental cost which is unacceptable to local business was labeled illegal and controlled by criminals in order to protect our lives our families and to work in peace gillerman most blog post that we are forced to pay protection to

illegal groups what price is colombia going to pay. for the for. the modest effect on r.t. . you know fashionable side. radioactive fallout of government betrayal the government. lauded and lauded and claude how can the truth be revealed if there's no official evidence there was a very bright day to the service make a search who will given no problem. and to the people of this country generally because of radio like the fall. of the secrets of the nuclear tests

explains. wealthy british scientists on. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report. download the official. language stream quality and enjoy your favorites such t.v. is not required to watch on t.v. all you need is your mobile device to watch r.t.

any time any. kid sofa's been a submarine commander for twenty years in. one hundred sixty two he was in charge of one of four submarines the left soviet territorial waters for the first time ever they were carrying nuclear arms torpedoes good a canoe nothing about the submarines destination until it reached neutral waters. but here's a little we didn't know what was in this on the lobe when we opened it after leaving cola bay we saw the rouge inside even now i remember it the coordinates are two hundred twenty degrees from young mine to cuba now rick get over his eighty two years old he was one of the youngest commanders at the time like all the other commanders he had been told to use every weapon available in the event of

a confrontation with the enemy you know you have been authorized to use either nuclear torpedoes or conventional ones. one nuclear torpedo and twenty conventional joe paedos is nothing to sneeze at you know. to be done would amount to three torpedoes salvos. meanwhile the cuban missile crisis was rapidly sliding into his darkest moment when president john f. kennedy was told about soviet nuclear missiles in cuba he decided to declare a naval blockade of the island airships of any kind about to cuba from whatever nation. well if i only contain cargoes of offensive weapons we carry back. the so-called hawks among us top military commanders were trying to persuade kennedy to wipe out soviet missile sites in cuba by delivering a first strike the head of strategic air command curtis le may was the principal

advocate of such a solution to the crisis lamaze attitude was. if it's going to war it's going to come to this the best time because we had superior already over the soviets in terms of numbers. and let me let me when he was asked what he would do it cuba he you know what he said he said burn it and he minute he meant. by late october cuba was ready to face enemy airstrikes special shelters had been built in havana and locals had been alerted to the need to start evacuating the city as soon as the signal came through that will at any who were in this strange when we saw american aircraft breaking into our airspace so we also saw american naval vessels approaching our country from this trench a passage leads to what is in effect an underground town a tunnel stretch over hundreds of meters several thousand people could find shelter here in the event of a nuclear attack with the least on the underground troops that we can see the base

of a periscope installed inside. two by now cooler recently of by. then they were in duty twenty four seven. on october the twenty seventh one thousand nine hundred sixty two the world was closer to a nuclear catastrophe than ever before one of the soviet submarines was find out when it surfaced in the south of us a c. the sub responded by putting a nuclear top paedo on full alert and that moment a crew member became aware of u.s. seamen trying to establish contact with the best captain british forces captain civility brought the submarine to the surface again. when you're asked to look around and see what was going on what. was there was some confusion on board. as a result the order to fire a nuclear problem torpedo was not given. near. following

contact with the americans they stopped firing at the submarine if the situation had dragged on for another two minutes the nuclear talk radio in the first compartment would have been launched marking a point of no return. one of the. cars along with this is the torpedo compartment. not appear that there were twenty torpedoes including a nuclear one in this torpedo to work on mine deeply. these handles you have could have sent the air into the launcher. and this high pressure air injection could fire a salvo. of one nuclear or five conventional torpedoes all. october the twenty seventh one thousand nine hundred sixty two was dubbed black saturday that same day there was another incident in cuba a u.s. spy plane was flying over the island photographing soviet rockets it was shot down

by the soviet and missile defense system. they have the order and they. obeyed the order so they shut down. they used to and this is the engine of the one part of the main part of the engine. the only big thing on the net it's a crisis. alexander says of his one of the offices of the air defense unit there was ordered to destroy target thirty three the plane piloted by rudolf anderson after it was brought down is over and many other officers have been told to get ready for war. as we waited for them to strike back we sort of withdrew into ourselves there was a complete silence no no talking and no emotions. everybody was in anticipation of further events without knowing how it all would work out.

at the last moment when tensions and reached their peak the kremlin and the white house found a compromise had responded to a us offer a security guarantees for cuba by deciding to have the missiles dismantled when the news reached the cuban leader fidel castro he flew into a rage the decision had been taken to hide his back one of the most seasoned soviet cantinas anastos make a young went after talks with castro. when the talks got under way my father received a message from moscow saying that my mother had died my father was in no position to go back after the news had a visible effect on castro people who showed a good deal of compassion for my father he said he respected him for staying behind and i'm sure this helped the talks. the blockade of cuba was lifted and operation got underway to remove the soviet missiles from the island

they were being loaded on to upper decks without disguising them in any way the american saw that the russians weren't fooling them those were not mockups of missiles but real hardware. the key difference job meanwhile gave himself credit for resolving the critical situation and emerged in the wake of the cuban missile crisis. direct threat of a world thermal. clear war which has emerged in connection with the crisis in the area of the caribbean sea has been diffused. those who were involved in the operation were awarded no medals or other distinctions. the felt the americans had not been duly impressed by the soviet union's military might he focused his anger on the submarine as. he accused them of cowardice because they had failed to reach cuba but there was no point in arguing with him fully. in those years even top military leaders couldn't approach crucial

unless they have to. tell you was impulsive. when you realize the snap of somebody's fingers will have you traveled under force that was a dreadful experience. later cantona rurik kit of and the captains of three other submarines experienced many humiliating moments. they weren't given their june for the fact that they had been able to keep their heads in a very difficult situation. and haven't resorted to their right to use nuclear weapons because perceive there was no thanks at all but i'd rather not talk about it i don't want to frame my nerves the commanders had a very hard time yes we were dragged through the mud but what about our subordinates including my crew do you think anybody ever thank them for the eighty day mission was your. time seems to have come to

a standstill here revolutionary posters and linen suspended from ropes showing through the windows. plush american cabriolet is the best reminders of the so-called colonial era before the revolution. drivers make a special point of avoiding any discussions with foreigners about cuba's current policies don't talk to our politics get out it here no no no forget our politics. i live here q will you go back to russia either live here. at the nest or frogger find it quite difficult to run a private business and be a taxi driver for tourists in cuba these days. numerous bans within the country are only part of the story an economic embargo on cuba has been in effect for fifty years already. less than two hundred kilometers separates cuba from the united states that no u.s. made commodities can reach the island.

cubans are still crowning the benefits of the revolution despite the embargo and the difficult economic situation. there's developments fear is present in the streets of havana around. the daughter of the former officer of the cuban army william rockit is about to get married william shows old photos to his future son in law as it tells him about his family one of them features an old friend alexander markov a soviet pilot who took part in the events of the cuban missile crisis the two offices correspondent for years before the internet came to cuba then they switched to skype. t.v. yirrkala alex alex how you doing the. hello william how's your family how's life. mine is ok how's your family.

ok. visit us sometime. martin you know alex i might come to moscow soon. yeah looking forward to seeing you in my home village. nothing anywhere by. today the caribbean or cuban missile crisis computer game is popular among those who could be the sons of the real participants of the one nine hundred sixty two events now with the help of computer graphics it's possible to imagine how the events could have turned out if the soviet union and the us didn't find a compromise the worst outcome possible a new clear talk leaves. the good news actually all this looks less realistic in a game than in real life which tells you that anything like that ever occurs in real life there wouldn't have been us or a video games. bledisloe of chelas share is the winner of this tournament most of

the contestants couldn't make it to the finals when the game begins once again regardless in real life however there is no such thing as a reset after a nuclear disaster.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is all you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. i mean so to know your city in europe i'm the host of the twenty fourteen winter the pick a. seat. thank you. saatchi . thank you the. way a. dog days of. the pride days

a. sit com. seat it's so true. the to sleep.