Word: castros
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Everyone was agreed upon one thing: the invasion would have no chance of success unless Castro's own little air force was knocked out beforehand. Kennedy gave permission for Cuban-piloted B-26s, flown out of Nicaragua nearly 600 miles from Cuba, to strike at Castro's airstrips on April 15, two days before the actual invasion. An elaborate "cover" story-to the effect that the planes were actually flown by defectors from Castro's own air force-was devised. As Sorensen says, the B-26s were "World War II vintage planes possessed by so many nations...
That first B-26 flight attacked on schedule, with indifferent results. Still according to the plan, a second B-26 bombing strike against Castro's airfields had been laid on for D-morning itself. But the "defector" cover for the first raid, as Sorensen puts it, "was quickly torn apart-which the President realized he should have known was inevitable in an open society." It was at about that point that the realization finally dawned on Kennedy: he had approved a plan on the supposition that it would be "both clandestine and successful" but which was, in fact...
...results of this cancellation are in dispute. Schlesinger says that the "second strike might have protracted the stand on the beachhead from three days to ten." Sorensen writes that "there is no reason to believe that Castro's air force, having survived the first air strike and been dispersed into hiding, would have been knocked out by the second one." But Richard M. Bissell Jr., at the time of the Bay of Pigs the CIA deputy who planned the operation, takes another view -as do most professional military men. Now a United Aircraft Corp. executive, Bissell argued last week...
Apart from the unsuccessful effort to knock off Castro's little air force before the battle began, it was well recognized that the invasion force would require its own air cover. For that, Kennedy at first stipulated that those same, Cuban-piloted B-26s do the job. On D-day plus one, it became clear that the invasion force was desperately pinned down on the beach by unexpectedly stiff fire and Castro air attacks. Then, in a post-midnight meeting, Kennedy, as Sorensen says, "agreed finally that unmarked Navy jets could protect the B-26s when they provided...
Meanwhile, exile-Cuban supply ships, which were supposed to carry ammunition to the men on the beach, had been either sunk or scattered by Castro's planes, and the crews threatened to mutiny rather than proceed to Cuba-unless the U.S. was willing to provide air and naval cover. Some of the Cuban exile leaders believed all along that the U.S. would have to come in fully on their side rather than let the operation fail. Schlesinger suggests that the CIA "unconsciously supposed" the same. Indeed Kennedy was under strong pressure to throw in U.S. air and naval forces...