Cuban Missile Crisis in Florida, warned on the Senate floor that the Soviet Union may be constructing a missile base in Cuba. He charged the Kennedy administration of covering up a major threat to the US, thereby starting the crisis. Air Force General Curtis LeMay presented a pre-invasion bombing plan to Kennedy in September, and spy flights and minor military harassment from US forces at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were the subject of continual Cuban diplomatic complaints to the US government. The first consignment of R-12 missiles arrived on the night of September 8, followed by a second on September 16. The R-12
37th Tactical Missile Squadron alert using its complement of 24 IM-99B BOMARC surface to air antiaircraft missiles. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the full squadron stood alert for 27 days. The squadron was tied into a Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) direction center which could use analog computers to process information from ground radars, picket ships and airborne aircraft to accelerate the display of tracking data at the direction center to quickly direct the missile site to engage hostile aircraft. As the strategic bomber threat to the United States diminished, so did the need for the BOMARC missile and the squadron was inactivated on