Why did the US set up so that Soviet ships could not get to Cuba?

Answer 1

The Cuban state at the time was more than accepting of Soviet ships at the time, and they held a lot of anger towards the U.S. for good reason, in particular, the botched U.S. CIA operation that was later called the "Bay of Pigs". The Soviets had to ship their nuclear weapons and materials by ship at the time. At the time, nuclear missile technology was not exactly simple to pick up and take on a plane. As well, there were few Soviet aircraft which could reliably transport nuclear materials, and even the ones that could were generally restricted for actual nuclear operations, and you can bet the U.S. was looking for them. Also, the Soviets were doing it secretly; it was a "surprise" in case the Americans got a little...carried away, so to speak. Anyhow, air delivery was out of the question, so they blockaded the island from Soviet ships.

The story of why they blockaded the Soviet ships has a lot to do with why they did not want the missiles in Cuba in the first place; the advantage the U.S. was taking advantage of; a 3000 mile gap between Soviet ICBM's and reasonable American targets had shrunk to only 90 miles. This meant a nuclear warhead, instead of landing in maybe 18 to 20 hours, where a lot of people could be somewhere safe, reducing casualties substantially, shrunk to half an hour.

Think about the difference for you, if you were in that position: if you were told a nuclear warhead was going to hit your hometown in 18 hours, you would be terrified, but you can run, but 30 minutes...that was helluva scary for the Americans at the time, so the panic made the U.S. react very strongly, blockading the island, so the threat from the island would not go any larger; lest the potential bloodshed would get MUCH larger.