Photo Gap
사진 공백기
The five-week gap in U-2 aerial reconnaissance over Cuba (September 10–October 14, 1962) ordered by Secretary of State Rusk and National Security Advisor Bundy after the Sakhalin overflight error and China's shootdown of a Taiwanese U-2. During this hiatus, Soviet R-12 medium-range missiles arrived in Cuba undetected. Historians consider this reconnaissance gap the reason the missiles were discovered so late, just before they became operational.
In depth
Background
On August 30, 1962, a U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command U-2 strayed over Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Far East due to a navigational error. The Soviets protested and the U.S. apologized. Nine days later, the People's Republic of China shot down a Taiwanese-operated U-2 with a Soviet-made S-75 (SA-2) surface-to-air missile. These two incidents made senior U.S. officials acutely wary of another U-2 being shot down over Cuba, potentially triggering an uncontrollable international crisis.
The Decision to Ground the Flights
On September 10, 1962, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, meeting with the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance (COMOR), restricted U-2 flights over Cuban airspace. For the next five weeks, no significant U-2 coverage was achieved over the interior of the island. Attempts to substitute Corona (KH-4) satellite reconnaissance yielded imagery of western Cuba on October 1 that was obscured by clouds and haze, providing no usable intelligence.
Consequences
This gap coincided precisely with the peak of Soviet Operation Anadyr. The first consignment of R-12 missiles arrived on September 8, the second on September 16, and both were deployed covertly beyond the eyes of U.S. reconnaissance. Only on October 9 were flights reauthorized, and poor weather pushed the first successful mission to October 14, when Major Richard Heyser's U-2 captured the first photographs of missile sites at San Cristóbal. By then, most of the 40 Soviet missiles were already in Cuba.
Historical Assessment
David Barrett and Max Holland's Blind Over Cuba: The Photo Gap and the Missile Crisis (2012) argues that the decision to curtail flights was made in a climate of deep distrust between the intelligence community and senior policy makers, and that the Kennedy administration subsequently sought to downplay this intelligence failure during congressional investigations. The Photo Gap remains a defining case study of political caution overriding intelligence collection at a critical moment in Cold War history.
Related historical events
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) defines the Photo Gap as "the resulting lack of coverage over the island for the next five weeks" after Rusk and Bundy restricted U-2 flights on September 10, 1962, following the Sakhalin and Taiwan incidents.
- nsarchive.gwu.edu Gilpatric handwritten notes, October 9 White House meeting that approved resumed U-2 flights; cites Barrett & Holland, Blind Over Cuba as the authoritative book on the Photo Gap.
- tamupress.com Barrett & Holland's Blind Over Cuba: "the 'photo gap': five weeks during which intelligence-gathering flights over Cuba had been attenuated."
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian Wikipedia confirms the U-2 flight pause from September 5 to October 14 and the Sakhalin/Taiwan incident context.