Indigirka (ship)

The most secret voyage of Operation Anadyr

In 1962 the Soviet General Staff prepared Operation Anadyr, the covert shipment of nuclear weapons to Cuba, dispersing troops and equipment across civilian vessels. The most closely guarded of those voyages carried the first warheads to reach the island. After the operation was approved in June 1962, the Indigirka left Severomorsk at 15:00 on September 16, 1962, and reached the port of Mariel on October 4; Khrushchev himself followed the sailing.

Very few people knew the ship's cargo. According to General Staff documents, two automatic 37mm anti-aircraft guns and 1,200 rounds per gun were mounted for self-defense, and fire was to be opened "only in case of an evident attempt to seize or sink the ship," on the captain's decision with immediate report to Moscow. Captain Alexei Pinezhaninov personally checked the fastening of the containers at Severomorsk but did not know, only guessed, what they held. The cargo was in the charge of Colonel Nikolai Beloborodov, head of the Central Nuclear Base, who sailed with ten officers and a KGB officer, while a naval subunit was also carried aboard.

The warheads carried

According to Soviet military documents published by the National Security Archive, the Indigirka arrived at Mariel on October 4 with 36 warheads for R-12 missiles, 36 for FKR cruise missiles, 12 for Luna missiles, and 6 nuclear bombs for Il-28 bombers. Russian accounts count the same shipment as more than 160 nuclear warheads, including 60 for R-14 missiles and 4 naval mines, which appears to total the nuclear weapons assigned to Operation Anadyr rather than the cargo of a single ship.

On either count the Indigirka was the first ship to bring nuclear warheads to Cuba. U.S. intelligence never located a single warhead on the island during the crisis, nor the storage bunkers for them. From their arrival on October 4 until the departure of the Arkhangelsk carrying the last warheads on December 1, Soviet nuclear warheads stayed on Cuban territory for 59 days.

Movement and return of the cargo

As the crisis moved into its blockade phase, the R-12 warheads had already been brought to readiness. On October 25 Moscow turned back some ships heading for Cuba, and during the nights of October 26-28 the FKR warheads were unloaded from the Aleksandrovsk and sent to their units. That ship was ordered to return to Severomorsk on October 30, having probably loaded the 36 R-12 warheads at Mariel and departed on November 3. Much of the R-12 cargo that the Indigirka had delivered therefore returned to the Soviet Union aboard the Aleksandrovsk, not the Arkhangelsk.

During the final negotiations the Soviet leadership sent Mikoyan to Cuba. Castro asked to keep the tactical nuclear weapons, offering to build a barracks at Guitado and place his own guard at the disposal of the Soviet command, but on November 22, 1962 Mikoyan informed the Cuban leadership that all nuclear weapons would be removed. On November 25 Soviet support troops moved the warheads to Mariel and loaded them onto the Arkhangelsk, which sailed at 9:00 on December 1 and reached Severomorsk on December 20.

Significance

The Indigirka's voyage illustrates both the Soviet decision to defend the Cuban Revolution against the threat of imperialist invasion and the way the dispute over deploying and withdrawing the weapons was settled through negotiation with the United States. The public face of the crisis was the R-12 missile sites, but the warheads that actually reached Cuba came aboard the Indigirka, placing the risk of nuclear war along the routes of that cargo.