U.S. Pilot Helps Ease Stress of Cuban Missle Crisis

Fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis pushed the Soviet Union and United States to the brink of nuclear war, many of key players are well known: the cool-headed President John F. Kennedy who faced down his hawkish generals; the seemingly diplomatic and then recalcitrant Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev; the dealmaking US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy whose back-channel negotiations ultimately led to a peaceful resolution of the 13-day crisis. But the unsung hero in the view of many was 35-year-old Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., who was killed on October 27, 1962, when his U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, making him the only military casualty of the crisis and shaking Washington and Moscow into cutting a deal.