It was an unsuccessful US-funded and executed military action in 1961 to overthrow the government of Cuba. The plan began in 1960, a year after the Cuban Revolution put Fidel Castro in power in the Caribbean country. It was the Cold War era and, concerned about the rise of a communist leader like Castro in a nation so close, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to work on a secret strategy.
The idea was to use exiles from the new Cuban regime – who now resided in Florida – in a surprise attack, thus disguising US involvement. The problem is that Fidel found out and prepared the Cuban defense adequately, capturing or arresting almost all the invaders. The aggression also served as a justification for Fidel to get closer to the Soviet Union, which started to supply nuclear weapons to the Caribbean.
1. The plan was to create a troop of Cubans who fled to the US after the Revolution. In the role of counterrevolutionaries, they would attack Cuba. The US spent $13 million to train 1,400 men at the Useppa Island base near Florida, as well as in Guatemala. They formed the 2506 Assault Brigade
2. The target of the attack would be the city of Trinidad, which still had anti-Castro groups, but John F. Kennedy (who assumed the presidency in 1961) thought that this would betray US participation. He then opted for Baía dos Porcos. The idea was that, once a focus of resistance was installed, the people would join
3. What was decisive for the fight was that Fidel knew about the plan in advance. It is suspected that one of the dissidents trained by the US to attack the Bay of Pigs was, in fact, a spy who passed information to the Cuban government or else that there was an oversight and the information ended up leaking
4. In the first step of the mission, on April 15, 1961, a squadron was sent to destroy the air force of Castro’s army. Six B-26 planes piloted by exiles bombed two airfields, three military bases and the Antonio Macedo airport. It is believed that 24 fighter planes, or 80% of what the Cubans had, were disabled.
5. Alerted by what had happened, Fidel began to prepare his men for new attacks. At the same time, Cuba formally accused the US of the aggression at an emergency UN meeting. Exposed, Kennedy canceled the second part of the plan, which would be a new bombing, scheduled for April 16, to wipe out the rest of Cuba’s air force.
6. Kennedy, however, did not abort the mission altogether, and the third phase, the Bay of Pigs Invasion proper, was executed on the morning of April 17. As on the first day, the attack was carried out on two fronts: from the air, with bombers and fighters shooting at the infantry, and from the ground, with soldiers taken by ship and transported to the beach in speedboats.
7. The invaders were met with bullets by Castro’s forces, already prepared. It is estimated that there were 20 to 25 thousand people fighting for Fidel, between formal army and militiamen (common people trained by the government). Its air force had planes such as the B-26 Invader, Hawker Sea Fury fighters and Lockheed T-33 bombers. The Cubans tried to sink ships and shoot down planes. On that day alone, eight B-26s would have crashed. The Cuban government maintains that Fidel Castro was in Bahia, leading his forces. Historians, however, say that it is not possible to be sure.
8. Nature also got in the way: the invaders were surprised by a reef close to the coast, which made landing difficult and caused part of the men to lose their equipment. To top it off, the beach was surrounded by swamps, which made it impossible for the few Cubans who opposed the communist regime to join the invaders.
9. Thanks to the support of the US arsenal, the invaders were able to resist until April 19th. With the situation deteriorating, Kennedy authorized six unidentified planes to depart from an aircraft carrier to support the 2506 Brigade aircraft. It was then that the fatal blow came: due to a confusion caused by the time difference between Nicaragua and Cuba, the aid left late and did not reach the combat zone in time to assist the dissidents
10. Faced with this mess, the US government finally gave up on the invasion. The conflict ended with 1,189 members of the Brigade under Castro’s power, who executed some and exchanged the rest for US$53 million “for food and medicine” in December 1962. The main consequence was Castro’s explicit alignment with the Soviet Union . This eventually culminated in the 1962 Missile Crisis.
CONSULTANCY Felipe Mello, history professor at Colégio Oficina do Estudante, Reiner Godoy, history professor at Rede Educacional Alub, Tárik Abrahim, history professor at Colégio SEI