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BAY OF PIGS INVASION.
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Exiles' unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba in 1961.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Exiles' unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba in 1961.
Paper Introduction:
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the "Bay of Pigs" Invasion, and the exiles' unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba in
1961.
From time to time in the later 1950s subscribers to the "New York Times" read, under the byline of Herbert L. Matthews, captivating accounts of bearded young Cuban revolutionaries hiding out in the tangled jungles of that island's Sierra Maestra range. Their leader was a hulking, verbose lawyer in his early thirties, Fidel Castro Ruz. Castro had landed in Cuba on Christmas of 1956 with just twelve men. Taking to the hills before dictator Fulgencio Batista's soldiers could seize them, they unfurled the red and black flag of their 26th July movement, so named for a desperate attack led by Castro on Santiago Batistianos on July 26, 1953, and called on Cuban lovers of
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Inaffection they called their leader "El Caballo," the horse. This was not true. "Political Science: Bay of Pigs." Library Journal (15 Mar. Help must arrive in next hour." The laststand began Tuesday night. Outof ammo. "And on Our Right, the Bay of Pigs." New York Times Book Review 18 Mar. The lumbering B-26s chosen for this assignment were slow, unwieldy andplagued by engine trouble. "The Perfect Failure." American Historical Review (Jun. A beachhead had been established and Castro wasdetermined to throw the invaders back into the sea. Moreover, Castro's men had been superbly equipped by his new friendsin Moscow and Peking; the State Department study estimated that they hadsent him 28, tons of military supplies. When whispering voices tried to spread reports that he was aCommunist, the general reaction was scorn. The CIA hadorganized a night amphibious landing, decreasing the chances of success forthe exiles. He had broken the invasion in less than 72 hours, turning itinto perhaps the most heavily publicized of the many bungled, poorlyplanned operations since the Light Brigade charged into oblivion atBalaklava. Am taking to the woods. To demonstrate that he was a good neighbor to the United States,Fidel flew to Washington with a hundred cases of goodwill rum. "International Relations." Foreign Affairs (Summer 1988): 1123.Smith, Robert Freeman. Pleas from Giron forreinforcements, tanks and ammunition became fainter. The reporters erred, but the errorwas common then, and it was shared by most members of the Cuban middleclass and a great many influential Cuban army officers who were fed up withBatista. Their leader was a hulking, verboselawyer in his early thirties, Fidel Castro Ruz. His crews, mostly Cubanswith no strong political loyalties, were on the verge of mutiny. Only the final agony was left now. One of them dominated thebrigade's first objective, the town of Giron. Havana University was padlocked to suppress mutinousstudents; dissenters were murdered; their corpses were dismembered and sentto their parents, or dumped in gutters like garbage. Gunfire was exchanged and early that morning, Castro wasawakened and told that the enemy was landing troops at Giron and nearbyPlaya (Beach) Larga. They were exhausted by their previous missions. They placed a light near aconcrete pier to guide the troops ashore. Nicaragua and Cuba are in different time zonesand the pilots forgot to reset their watches. "Power does not interest me, and I will not take it," Castro said."From now on, people are entirely free." He restored Cuba's lost pride,gave it a national identity, rooted out corruption, and launched vastprograms to educate Cuba's children and inspire their parents (Stuttaford41-42). I cannot wait foryou." The woods could provide only temporary shelter. In addition, they had neglected to note a final feature of theBay of Pigs: Every approach to it was guarded by sharp coral reefs justbeneath the surface. Castrothen began a seven-day, 6 -mile march of triumph down Cuba's CentralHighway. "The Bay of Pigs and the New York Times: Another View of What Happened." Journalism Quarterly Autumn 1986: 524-529.Lane, Mel D. Deserted by their ships, the invaders were in a hopeless position.Yet they were fighting magnificently. On New Year's Day he flew off into exile. 1987: 41-42.Szulc, Tad. The Orientelanding of the exiles was to have been part of a cunning design to throwCastro off balance. 199 : 5.----------------------- 9 At that point, a Cuban militiapatrol appeared. Fidel's men fire their pistols and tommy guns at the sky. Air mastery would now belong to FidelCastro, not the exiled invaders (Smith 897). As early as March 1958 alldeliveries of U.S. From time to time in the later 195 s subscribers to the "New YorkTimes" read, under the byline of Herbert L. Donovan led asuccessful movement to ransom them (Smith 1123). The first insurgents to go in were frogmen, former officers in theCuban navy whose job was to place landing lights. The shore glittered with lights,since intelligence about the sight had been based on conditions two yearsearlier, before Castro seized power. Neither of these scenariosworked. In August the special group in Washington began to doubt the wisdomof establishing guerilla forces in the new Cuba. Enemy closing in. "'La Causa' Lives On--25 Years after Bay of Pigs." U.S. American correspondentslike Matthews wrote sympathetic stories depicting Castro and his"barbudos," or bearded rebels, as selfless Robin Hoods who wanted to givetheir countrymen liberty and justice. 1986: 36.Smith, Gaddis. Messages were terse:"Fighting on beach, send all available aircraft now." And, "In water. That was Batista's undoing (Robbins 36). To knock them out, the CIA scheduled astrike against Cuban airfields two days before the landing, April 15, 1961. Then the Rio Escondito went down, with the ten days of suppliesaboard. In the last weeks of 1958 Guevara routed 3, government troops inthe province of las Villas, 15 miles from the capital, and captured theprovincial capital, Santa Clara. 199 ): 1 4.Robbins, Carla Anne. There were stillpeople moving around on the beach; construction workers putting thefinishing touches on the new buildings were living in Giron with theirfamilies. Castro's troops were farmore formidable than Batista's had been. Castro had landed in Cubaon Christmas of 1956 with just twelve men. That was enough for the task commander. News & World Report 21 Apr. Encircled by Castro's artillery and tanks, theexiles' leader sent his last message at 4:32 p.m. Batista's Cuba was a police state run by terrorists and corruptbureaucrats who made fortunes in prostitution, gambling and raids on thepublic till. The rebelfliers' base was in Nicaragua, a three hour and twenty minute flight fromCuba. The landing went badly. It was as though Russian conspirators had planned a landing onConey Island or Long Beach, California (Szulc 5). More important, it was assumed it would be followed bya general uprising of the Cuban populace. Army jungle warfaretraining camp at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone. At first one of the Cubansused CIA money given to him by Frank Bender to lease the resort island ofUseppa in the Gulf of Mexico; the Cubans were comfortably billeted at theUseppa country club, and the golfers among them improved their strokes.Next a C-54 transport plane flew them to the U.S. Getting him to changehis grimy green field jacket was next to impossible. Except for fifty-cent Montecristo cigars, he never indulged himself. Four American advisers, believingthat jets would protect them, volunteered to pilot the other B-26s. Lacking the fallbackplan, the rebels stumbled into enemy hands one by one. The last act of the Bay of Pigs tragicomedy followed. arms to Batista were halted. Reactionaries always calledreformers Reds: men like Matthews of the Times could remember their doingit in Spain twenty years earlier and they said so (Kennedy 525-529). He sent pilots tochase away the rebel aircraft, which they did. Ihave nothing to fight with. CIA appraisals of the Cuban air force had been scornful. Then the exiles' ships werebombed. A trainload of troops sent by Batistarefused even to get out of the railroad cars. Since then the government had decidedto turn this strip of coast into a public park. The first to go was the "Houston," loaded with ammunition andgasoline. That may have been the worst of it, but it was not all. They were notsupposed to know where they were, but one of their CIA instructors left aPanama City newspaper around, and the canal itself was clearly visible froma hill in the camp (Lane 1 4). However, the CIA sent a message to theguerrillas saying the bombing had been a success. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the "Bay of Pigs" Invasion,and the exiles' unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba in1961. "The July 26 movement is not acommunist movement," he told them. Always important in an amphibious operation, this was an importantdisaster for the exiles, because for some reason, never fully explained,all the supplies for the invasion force had been loaded onto one ship, ahulking old World War II transport called the "Rio Escondito." Not onlythat, but on the way to the Guld down the Mississippi, one of itspropellers had been bent, limiting its maneuverability. On top of all this, thevigilance and disposition of his coast watchers and aircraft spottersindicated that he had profited from Batista's mistakes in that regard, sothat supplying guerilla forces by airdrops now would be exceedinglydifficult. Castro had fewer than2, barbudos to put against 4 , superbly equipped Batistianos, butbusinessmen and landowners were financing him, and the middle class wereacclaiming the rebels, who were, for the most part, middle-class themselves--young professional men and intellectuals like Fidel, his brother Raul, andMajor Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine physician who had becomeCastro's Trotsky. They arrived over Giron anhour early, while the jets which were to shield them were still on theflight deck of the Essex. Whatthe exiles saw on the beach stunned them. Tanks are in sight. Modern roads now crossedthe swamps, which the CIA thought were still impassable. Castro's triumphwas complete. Ahead for the survivors in the brigade lay the humiliation of apublic trial in Havana's Sports Palace and an imprisonment which was not toend until Christmas 1962, when Robert F. The first setback to the invasion came in the air, and it wascrucial. The old regime was through,and Batista knew it. He lunchedon steak and champagne with Acting secretary of State Christian Herter--hewore his field jacket even there-and talked to eighteen congressmen in theSenate Foreign Relations Committee room. Itscombat efficiency was rated "almost nonexistent" and its leadership"entirely disorganized." Castro had fifteen B-26 bombers, ten Sea Furies,and four fast T-33 jet trainers. Selecting sites for thetraining seems to have been almost haphazard. In those early years Castro's movement was very popular in the UnitedStates. TheCuban air force had been left with six B-26s, two Sea Furies, four fightersand, most important, two T-33 jets. The only possible goodthing that came out of the affair was President Kennedy's subsequentdistrust of experts, making him better equipped to face the Cuban missilecrisis eighteen months later. Three touristcenters were in advanced stages of construction. The paratroopers, though they hadbeen dropped in the wrong place, were beating back Militia attacks.Outnumbered thirteen to one or more, facing an enemy with heavy artilleryand tactical air support, the brigade had lost fewer than a hundred menthat first day while holding every position. "The Perfect Failure." Publishers Weekly 23 Oct. 1989): 897.Stuttaford, Genevieve. Theythen made the last and least plausible of all the CIA mistakes in theblunder-studded operation. Matthews, captivating accountsof bearded young Cuban revolutionaries hiding out in the tangled jungles ofthat island's Sierra Maestra range. A longbushwacker campaign directed from the Sierra Maestra no longer seemedfeasible. "Its members are Roman Catholics,mostly." Asked about American investments in Cuba, he replied, "We have nointention of expropriating United States property, and any property we takewe'll pay for." Many of La Brigada's operational details might have been lifted fromone of Ian Fleming's bizarre spy novels, which were then coming into vogue. State Department figures put themat about 4 , troops and militiamen, ten times his strength. Castro's T-33s swarmed up and made short work ofthem; four Americans were killed. Washington was elatedat the prospect of a truly democratic Cuba. Works CitedKennedy, Daniel D. The five rusty cargo ships and two escorts of the exiles' task forcearrived in the Bay of Pigs and cast anchor. Hispersonal life was ascetic. Taking to the hills beforedictator Fulgencio Batista's soldiers could seize them, they unfurled thered and black flag of their 26th July movement, so named for a desperateattack led by Castro on Santiago Batistianos on July 26, 1953, and calledon Cuban lovers of freedom to join them (Robbins 36). Wednesday: "Amdestroying all my equipment and communications. (Despite PresidentKennedy's orders, Americans were leading them). Kennedy and James B. The American officers who supervised the training of the exiles wereborrowed from the Army and Marine Corps more or less on an old boy basis;frequently decorated in World War II and Korea, they tended to be high inpersonal courage and low in good judgement. Motels, snack bars, andbathhouses--nearly two hundred buildings altogether--were almost ready;they would accommodate a thousand Cubans at a time. There were no women in it. He wasGargantuan, a charismatic figure before the concept became popular. Only two of themhad the strength for another effort.
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