A U-2 pilot is killed over Cuba; it is the only combat death of the missile crisis

For eleven days, the U-2 missions over Cuba had been dangerous but bloodless. On the morning of October 27, 1962, Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. took off from McCoy Air Force Base in Florida on his sixth reconnaissance flight over the island. At 10:19 a.m., a Soviet-supplied S-75 missile, fired on orders from two Soviet generals in Havana, exploded near his plane; shrapnel tore through his helmet and pressure suit and killed him. He was the only U.S. fatality from enemy fire during the Cuban Missile Crisis, though other airmen died separately in related crashes…