photo provided

photo provided

There are still Tiger fans who can recall an autumn afternoon in Death Valley 48 years ago when Auburn brought its own Tigers over to battle Frank Howard's steel cleats. Clemson on October 27, 1962, belonged to another age and another place. It was an age of relative innocence, but all of that would change as the sun set on that new, man-made Lake Hartwell.

Auburn clung to a narrow 17-14 victory margin before a sellout partisan crowd. The day was special for Clemson's football program. It was the 66th anniversary of the first Clemson football game -- their 14-6 victory over Furman in Greenville in 1896.

Despite the heroics of the Tigers, the loss to Auburn stymied their chance of a repeat Sugar Bowl appearance. Two Charleston standouts on Clemson's 1962 team were former St. Andrew's Rocks players Hall Davis and Coleman Glaze. Davis was a hard-charging halfback who'd two weeks earlier set a Clemson record with a 98-yard kickoff return against Georgia. That record stood until 1987. Coleman Glaze was a standout as split end and alternated with the renown Gary Barnes. Barnes was drafted by Green Bay that year.

As fans tailgated until it was too dark to see, radios brought the news from around the world. Of course, the Cuban missile crisis dominated all news that week. A special bulletin crackled across the airwaves. An American U-2 pilot had been shot down by Soviet ground missiles on a reconnaissance flight over Cuba. That intentional act of hostility signaled war.

The pilot's identity was not released for 48 hours. Then word filtered down from the Pentagon of the U.S. naval quarantine of Cuba and the deployment of the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing at Myrtle Beach AFB to McCoy AFB in Orlando.

The downed pilot was Greenville native Rudolf (Rudy) Anderson, Jr., a popular young man known around the upstate as an Eagle Scout in Troop 19 as well as a Clemson Ag Science major in the Class of 1948. All of South Carolina was in shock and mourning as its citizens anxiously awaited instructions as to whether they should take cover in bomb shelters.

The halcyon days of fall football and tailgate parties lost their luster. Kennedy and Khruschev were nose to nose over Soviet escalation of the Cold War, and to all it appeared that this was the incident that'd bring nuclear annihilation.

Major Rudolf "Rudy" Anderson, U.S.A.F., had had a stellar career as an aviator since graduating from Clemson and achieving his Air Force pilot's wings. He was one of the fighter pilots to see aerial combat in Korea. Rudy flew the F-86 Saberjet.

Folks around Greenville boasted about how the hometown boy was among the country's top pilots--that some day he'd be another Chuck Yeager, or perhaps an astronaut. It came as no surprise that Rudy had been chosen to fly the ultra-secret U-2 spy plane. Those pilots flew so high and fast that they qualified for astronaut wings.

Anderson was carrying out President John F. Kennedy's orders to gather aerial photographic evidence that Soviet-made Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles were being secretly deployed to Fidel Castro's regime and that anti-air missile batteries manned by Soviet troops were positioned throughout Cuba.

U-2 photographic evidence from a flight piloted by Air Force Major Richard Heyser verified the worst fears of the White House on Sunday morning, October 14. Richard 'Dick" Heyser, a native of Apalachicola, Florida, was, coincidentally, a classmate of Rudy Anderson at Clemson, 1944-'48.

According to a story written for the Washington Post, October 12, 2008, by Michael Dobbs, the photos from Heyser's secret mission were taken by two generals serving as couriers to a secret CIA photo intelligence lab located in "a dilapidated seven-story building above a car dealership at Fifth and K streets NW." "By evening, the CIA had drawn its startling conclusion: the Soviets were in the final stages of deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba." Bobby Kennedy shouted the same expletive three times as he and John F. Kennedy were briefed on the missile verification. Still, President Kennedy wanted more U-2 flights.

As Major Anderson climbed the ladder to the cockpit of the sleek, black jet with the abnormally long wingspan, he winced a bit from the pain of a bruised shoulder injury he'd recently incurred from a fall on the ice at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska. The Cuban crisis had brought him back from temporary duty in Alaska to his home base, Laughlin, in Del Rio, Texas.

General Curtis Lemay, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, ordered the U-2 pilots and their aircraft to relocate to McCoy AFB in Orlando after Heyser's October 14 flight. Anderson, always a volunteer for more missions, kissed his wife, Jane, and his two young sons, Rudolf III and James, goodbye as the U-2 squadron pilots wearing the elite dragon patch on their flight suits departed for McCoy AFB.

Anderson had already made several flights over Cuba in the U-2 when White House aide Kenny O'Donnell telephoned straight through to speak to him personally prior to his fatal flight. This scene is memorable in the movie "Thirteen Days."

As Anderson's U-2 roared into the blue sky over Orlando, he pointed the nose almost straight up toward what U-2 pilots called "the coffin's corner" -- the ultra thin layer of the earth's atmosphere above 55,000 feet.

At 10:19 a.m., about the time Anderson's beloved Clemson Tiger team was having its pregame meal at Death Valley, the alarm in his cockpit went off alerting the pilot that an anti-aircraft missile had been launched. Soviet General Stepan Grechko ordered Sergeant Gerchenov to launch one, then two missiles at the American plane.

When the Cubans handed Rudy Anderson's body over to the United Nations, he was still in his flight suit. Inside his flight suit pocket was a picture of his wife and two sons. October 27, 1962, would be remembered forever as "Black Saturday."

World War III was narrowly averted in the 24 hours that followed the news of Rudolf Anderson's downing. The Clemson grad was the first aviator to be awarded the Air Force Cross, the highest combat medal that service bestows upon its heroes.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant). Visit his Web site at www.historyslostmoments.com)