Bay of Pigs Invasion

Categories: History of Cuba | United States wars | 1961

Image:Alerta.jpg
Cuban poster warning before invasion

The Bay of Pigs Invasion (also known in Cuba as La Playa Girón after a beach in the Bay of Pigs where the landing took place) was a United States-planned and funded landing by armed Cuban exiles in Central Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in 1961. US-Cuban tensions had grown since Castro had overthrown the US-backed regime of General Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959. The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations had made the judgment that Castro's shift toward the Soviet Union could not be tolerated, and moved to overthrow him. However, the invasion failed miserably and proved to be a major international embarrassment for the Kennedy administration. The resulting fiasco of the invasion attempt has been studied as an ideal case of 'groupthink' and poor decision making.

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Preparation

The CIA had begun recruiting and training Cuban exiles during the Eisenhower administration, months before diplomatic relations were severed with Cuba in January 1961, as tensions between Washington and Havana were increasing. However, it was Vice President Richard Nixon, and not Eisenhower who pushed the plan forward. Nixon afterwards always feared that his involvement and responsibility for the failure would surface. The CIA was initially confident that it was capable of overthrowing Castro, having experience in toppling Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.

The original plan had called for landing the exile brigade (Brigade 2506) in the vicinity of the old colonial city of Trinidad, located in the central province of Sancti Spiritus approximately 400 km southeast of Havana at the foothills of the Escambray mountains. The selection of the Trinidad site provided a number of options that the exile brigade could exploit to their advantage during the invasion. The population of Trinidad was generally opposed to Castro and the rugged mountains outside the city provided an area of operations where the invasion force could retreat to and establish a guerrilla campaign were the landing to falter. Throughout 1960, the growing ranks of Brigade 2506 trained at locations throughout southern Florida and in Guatemala for the beach landing and possible mountain retreat.

However, under Kennedy's orders, the mission was revised so as to land Brigade 2506 at two points in Matanzas Province, 202 km southeast of Havana on the eastern edge of the Zapata peninsula at the Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). The landings would take place on the Girón and Larga beaches. The US government was aware that a high casualty rate was possible.

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Invasion

On the morning of April 15, 1961, three flights of Douglas B-26B Invader light bomber aircraft displaying Cuban Fuerza Aerea Revolucionaria (FAR - Revolutionary Air Force) markings bombed and strafed the Cuban airfields of San Antonio de Los Baños, Antonio Maceo International Airport, and the airfield at Ciudad Libertad. Operation Puma, the code name given to the offensive counter air attacks against the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, called for 48 hours of air strikes across the island to effectively eliminate the Cuban air force, ensuring Brigade 2506 complete air superiority over the island prior to the actual landing at the Bay of Pigs. This, however, failed because the Cubans had previous knowledge of the invasion and had moved the airplanes out of harm's way.

Of the Brigade 2506 aircraft sortied on the morning of April 15th, one was tasked with establishing the CIA cover story for the invasion. The slightly modified two-seat B-26B used for this mission was piloted by Captain Mario Zuniga. Prior to departure, the engine cowling from one of the aircraft's two engines was removed by maintenance personnel, fired upon, then re-installed to give the appearance that the aircraft had taken ground fire at some point during its flight. Captain Zuniga departed from the exile base in Nicaragua on a solo, low-level mission that would take him over the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba, and then northeast toward Key West, Florida. Once across the island, Captain Zuniga climbed steeply away from the waves of the Florida Straits to an altitude where he would be detected by US radar installations to the north of Cuba. At altitude and a safe distance north of the island, Captain Zuniga feathered the engine with the pre-installed bullet holes in the engine cowling then radioed a mayday call and requested immediate permission to land at Boca Chica Naval Air Station a few kilometers northeast of Key West, Florida.

By the time of Captain Zuniga's announcement to the world mid-morning on the 15th, all but one of the Brigade's Douglas bombers were back over the Caribbean on the three and a half hour return leg to their base in Nicaragua to re-arm and refuel. Upon landing, however, the flight crews were met with a cable from Washington ordering the indefinite stand-down of all further combat operations over Cuba.

On April 17, about 1,500 exiles armed with US weapons landed on the southern coast of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. They hoped to find support from the local population, intending to cross the island to Havana, but it quickly became evident in the first hours of fighting that the exiles were not going to receive such support and were likely to lose. Kennedy decided against giving the faltering invasion US air support (though four US pilots were allegedly killed or captured in Cuba during the invasion) because of his opposition to overt intervention and the fact that nothing short of US ground troops would save the operation. Kennedy also canceled several sorties of bombings (only two took place) on the grounded Cuban Airforce, which might have crippled the Cuban Airforce and given air superiority to the invaders. U.S. Marines were not sent in, even though there were support ships off the coast ready to land at a moment's notice. By the time fighting ended on April 19, one hundred and fourteen exiles were dead and the rest were captured.

The 1189 captured exiles were quickly tried and sentenced to thirty years in prison for treason. After 20 months of negotiation with the United States, Cuba released the exiles in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine.

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion severely embarrassed the Kennedy administration, and made Castro wary of future US intervention in Cuba. As a result of the failure, CIA director Allen Dulles, deputy CIA director Charles Cabell, and Deputy Director of Operations Richard Bissell were all forced to resign. All three were responsible for the planning of the operation at the CIA. However, the Kennedy administration continued covert operations in Cuba, later launching the Cuban Project to "help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime". Tensions would again peak in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

The CIA wrote a detailed internal report that laid blame for the failure squarely on internal incompetence. A number of grave errors by the CIA and other American analysts contributed to the debacle:

  • The administration believed that the troops could retreat to the mountains to lead a guerrilla war if they lost in open battle. The mountains were on the other side of the island, and the troops were deployed in swamp land, where they were easily surrounded.
  • They believed that the involvement of the US in the incident could be denied.
  • They believed that Cubans would be grateful to be liberated from Castro and would quickly join the battle, however Cubans greatly supported Castro and the Revolution. The CIA's near certainty that the Cuban people would rise up and join them was almost certainly based on the agency's extremely weak presence on the ground in Cuba. Because of this, almost all their information came from exiles and defectors, who turned out to be unreliable sources of information. CIA operative E. Howard Hunt had interviewed Cubans in Havana prior to the invasion; in a future interview with CNN, he said, "...all I could find was a lot of enthusiasm for Fidel Castro." [1]
  • They believed that the spirits of the invasion army were high, so invasion had to take place quickly. In fact, the Cuban refugee army was not very motivated.

Many military leaders almost certainly expected the invasion to fail but thought that Kennedy would send in Marines to save the exiles. Kennedy, however, did not want a full scale war and abandoned the exiles.

A Washington Post article, "Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack" (April 29, 2000), indicated that the CIA had information indicating that the Soviet Union knew the invasion was going to take place and did not inform Kennedy. Radio Moscow actually broadcasted an English-language newscast on April 13, 1961 predicting the invasion "in a plot hatched by the CIA" using paid "criminals" within a week. The invasion took place four days later.

The invasion is often criticized for making Castro even more popular, adding nationalistic sentiments to the support for his economic policies. Following the initial B-26 bombings, he had declared the revolution "Marxist-Leninist". After the invasion, he pursued closer relations with the Soviet Union, partly for protection, which helped pave the way for the Cuban Missile Crisis a year and a half later.

There are still yearly nation-wide drills in Cuba during the 'Dia de la Defensa' (defense day) to prepare the entire population for an invasion.

The term "Bay of Pigs" was also used by President Richard Nixon as a coded reference to the Kennedy assassination in White House conversations recorded on the Watergate tapes.

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External links

de:Invasion in der Schweinebucht es:Invasión de Bahía de Cochinos fr:Baie des Cochons he:הפלישה למפרץ החזירים fi:Sikojenlahden maihinnousu