The European side of the crisis
Sixty Thor missiles in Britain. Thirty Jupiters in Italy and fifteen in Turkey. Compare their nominal ranges and see why European deployments belonged to the same strategic confrontation as the missiles in Cuba.
Sources for this passage: [1] [2] [3]Compare the three range outlines, or switch them off to see the deployments. B, I and T mark the range origins. Small blue dots mark the twenty approximate RAF station locations.
All three ranges shown · Thor origin: RAF Feltwell · each range is 1,500 nautical miles (2,778 km).
Original explanatory map using Natural Earth public-domain coastlines. Country frontiers are omitted; the land shapes are a modern geographical reference, not a 1962 political map. Read the range and location notes ↓
B / Britain · Thor
Project Emily distributed three missiles to each station in four groups: Feltwell, Hemswell, Driffield and North Luffenham. RAF crews operated the missiles with American participation in the nuclear-warhead arrangements.
The map shows all twenty approximate station positions. Its blue boundary initially uses RAF Feltwell; choose another station to see how the point of origin changes the geographical reach.
Sources for this passage: [1]I / Italy · Jupiter
Italy’s 36th Strategic Interdiction Air Brigade operated a force organised into ten groups of three Jupiter missiles. Its command was at Gioia del Colle, with the deployment spread across Puglia and Basilicata.
The purple dashed boundary uses a rounded Gioia del Colle area reference. The I marker represents that deployment area; it does not mean all thirty missiles stood at the command base.
Sources for this passage: [2]T / Turkey · Jupiter
The Turkish deployment comprised five sites with three launch positions each, associated with Çiğli near İzmir. It was this deployment that became central to the confidential assurance in the final negotiations.
The green dotted boundary uses a rounded İzmir–Çiğli area reference, rather than the separate coordinates of all five launch sites.
Sources for this passage: [3] [4]The comparison uses 1,500 nautical miles for both Thor and Jupiter: 2,778 kilometres, usually rounded to 2,780 km. The RAF historical specification gives this figure for Thor; a contemporary US National Security Council briefing gives it for Jupiter.
A nautical mile is longer than a statute mile. Treating “1,500 miles” as an unqualified figure would produce the wrong comparison.
Sources for this passage: [1] [5]Each outline joins points at that distance from its origin, calculated over a spherical Earth. It is an illustrative maximum-range boundary, not a list of assigned targets, a minimum-range limit, a flight path or a blast radius. Areas within an outline are not automatically evidence of feasible or planned attacks.
The Mercator display stretches northern latitudes, so equal ground distances can look unequal on the screen. The distances are calculated before projection, rather than drawn as flat circles on the map.
British points reuse the station-area coordinates in the Thor directory. The Italian reference is approximately 40.80°N, 16.93°E; the Turkish reference is approximately 38.50°N, 27.10°E. These are editorial area anchors for comparison, not surveyed launch pads.
Moving the origin changes the outline. One range from Gioia del Colle or İzmir does not represent the combined reach of every dispersed site. The map therefore presents the three origins and their limitations alongside the controls.
Sources for this passage: [1] [2] [3]The private assurance to the Soviet leadership concerned the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey. It should not be retold as one identical bargain covering all the missiles shown here. Thor withdrawal was already being planned before the crisis.
The map explains geography. The decisions about alert levels, authorisation, alliance politics and withdrawal need their own documentary context.
Sources for this passage: [4] [1]Numbers refer to the passages above. Open a title to read the source, or use a return link to go back to its citation.