The First Casualty

The U.S. President Kennedy somberly predicted, would suffer losses in carrying out his decision to force Soviet missiles out of Cuba. And last week came confirmation that the first such casualty was Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., 35, a U-2 pilot of Greenville, S.C. He was flying a photo mission some 70,000 ft. above Cuba when an antiaircraft missile --made and presumably manned by Russians--knocked his plane out of the sky. He was one of the pilots whose reconnaissance photos had convinced the President that U.S. security was endangered in the Caribbean.

Fidel Castro magnanimously told U.N. Secretary-General U Thant that he would see that Anderson's body is returned to the U.S. He would do so, Castro said, "on humanitarian grounds."

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