The Cuban Missle Crisis The world will never be the same since October of 1962. It is now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The U.S. learned that the Soviets were building nuclear missile bases on Cuba because the Soviets wanted to close the missile gap. Even though the Soviet Union promised they would not attempt to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, they put them there anyway in hopes that the U.S. would not find out until it was too late to do anything about it. The ploy almost worked. The nuclear bases were very near completion when a U.S. U-2 spy plane discovered the bases. The wo