Operation Anadyr

Operation Anadyr was the code name used by the Soviet Union for their 1962 plan to deploy ballistic missiles, medium-range bombers, and a regiment of mechanized infantry in Cuba. Anadyr included a maskirovka campaign intended to mislead Western intelligence forces: personnel were issued arctic equipment and trained for cold weather, and the operation itself was named for the Anadyr river in northern Siberia. ("Anadyr" had also been the name of Joseph Stalin's plan in the 1950s to stage a million-man army in Chukotka to invade Alaska.) The ballistic missiles were shipped to Cuba on merchant ships, and were detected by American intelligence agencies both en route and in Cuba; diplomatic pressure caused Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev to halt Anadyr and remove the missiles.

Operation Kama

A part of Operation Anadyr was Operation Kama, a plan to forward-base seven Soviet ballistic missile submarines in Mariel, Cuba, much like the United States bases ballistic missile submarines in Holy Loch, Scotland. The operation began on 1 October 1962 with the departure of four diesel-electric attack submarines to the Caribbean Sea to clear the way. All four submarines were Project 641 boats, known to NATO as the "Foxtrot" class. The boats were the B-4, known as Chelyabinski Komsomolets, the B-36, the B-59, and the B-130.

Kama failed independently of Anadyr; none of the ballistic missile submarines ever departed for Cuba, and all four of the attack submarines were detected and followed closely by American destroyers and ASW aircraft. (Some of the destroyer crews harassed the Soviet submarines by dropping hand grenades overboard, which did no harm to the boats but made it clear that depth charges could follow at any time.) Equipment failures and the skill of the destroyer crews prevented three of the submarines from breaking contact long enough to surface and recharge their batteries; those three suffered the ignominy of surfacing in sight of their enemy, an action that in time of war would have caused their death or capture. Only Chelyabinski Komsomolets successfully broke contact and returned to the Soviet Union without being forced to surface.