Operation Chequered Shirt and Early Arrivals

A covert convoy of ships carries Soviet missiles across the Atlantic, while American U-2 planes spy over Cuba and the sea routes. And as the ships arrive, Khrushchev writes to Kennedy about the divided city of Berlin. It’s a distraction tactic. But the American spy planes photograph an alarming development. Hosts Nina Khrushcheva and Max Kennedy, relatives of the superpower leaders, tell the personal and political history of the Cuban Missile Crisis.