Operation Anadyr (jun 1, 1938 – apr 1, 1976)

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Operation Anadyr is one of the leading causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it began in the fall of 1962 and ended with the beginning of the Missile Crisis in fall of the following year. Operation Anadyr is regarded as one of the most secretive operations in Soviet history, only 5 high ranking officers were aware of the actual details of the entire operation, all of their planning and instruction was handwritten. The nature of the plan was to hide and deploy an assortment of medium and immediate range missiles in Cuba. Cuba, which was still shaken by the Bay of Pigs Invasion and fearful of another US invasion, agreed to harbor the Soviet missiles. Within Cuba only Fidel Castro and a small delegation were aware of the missiles, eventually members of relevant service branches in the Soviet Union were included but even they only knew necessary details. Soldiers and sailors included in the transportation were also kept uninformed of their operation, they were told to pack “parkas and ski boots” in order to make it seem as though the operation would take place around the Russian river called Anadyr. During the missiles' travel overseas captains were kept partially in the dark, they were only made aware of their final destination once they made it to a particular set of geographical coordinates in the sea, at which point they could open an envelope with the Cuban port they would be docking in, but only in the company of a KGB special department officer to ensure secrecy.

American intelligence agencies first noticed the missiles during their transportation, but chose not to engage with the Soviets over their discovery. Once the missiles landed in Cuban ports a month-long process of transporting the missiles over land and into the stations where they were intended to be deployed began. Throughout that month over 17,000 letters from the Cubans detailing the deployment of missiles or soviet troops were intercepted by Cuban intelligence, those that made it to the United States were simply ignored due to the bizarreness of some of the accounts. However, within the next three weeks of the first missile's deployment an American U-2 aircraft was able to photograph the San Cristobal missile 928 times and send them directly to the White House, marking the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis.


-Danique Weisbeek

MacFarlane, Jamie. “Operation Anadyr.” Large.stanford.edu, 22 Mar. 2018, large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/macfarlane2/.

‌Hansen, James. “Soviet Deception in the Cuban Missile Crisis Learning from the Past.” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 46, no. 1, 2002, www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Soviet-Deception-Cuban-Missile.pdf.

‌The War Was Averted (Soviet Nuclear Weapons in Cuba, 1962) Report of Lieutenant General Nikolai Beloborodov, Head of the Soviet Nuclear Arsenal in Cuba.

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