In fact, it was impossible to do anything of the sort. The Kimovsk was nearly eight hundred miles away from the Essex at the time this order was issued. The Yuri Gagarin was more than five hundred miles away. The “high-interest ships” had both turned back the previous day, shortly after receiving an urgent message from Moscow. The mistaken notion that the Soviet ships turned around at the last moment in a tense battle of wills between Khrushchev and Kennedy has lingered for decades.
