This is an extract:
During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 I spent a week in the operations room bunker at Bomber Command headquarters, High Wycombe. Macmillan played down the British involvement in the affair, but what people didn’t realise was that we had the entire force of 100 V-bombers standing at 15 minutes’ readiness, bombs loaded and with the crews kitted up and ready to go, to drop nuclear bombs on Russia.
The whole thing seemed unreal. I remember on the Saturday of the critical weekend, when the crisis was at its worst, I went above ground for about 10 minutes to get some air, and the whole nation only seemed interested in some bloody football match.
from this:
The men of bomber command: The pilot, Sir Michael Beetham - Telegraph