The Bay of Pigs Invasion

The Bay of Pigs Invasion

HIST102 – American History since 1877

Today, April 17, 2013, marks the 52nd anniversary of the invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs invasion was an event that took place on the south shores of Cuba in April 1961. America’s involvement consisted of assisting Cuban exiles in trying to overtake Fidel Castro’s newly seized Communist Cuban government. This involvement has been viewed by many as an utter failure. Set in motion late in the Eisenhower administration, it was put in action under a newly elected President Kennedy who along with the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) would take the bulk of the blame for the failed insurrection. This essay will revolve around the events that led up to the Bay of Pigs invasion, what happened during the invasion, and the aftermath of one of the most frightening periods of time in American history.
In 1959 Fidel Castro led a revolution in Cuba to overthrow Dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista himself was a dictator, but he posed no immediate threat to America. In fact he was pro-America and an ally that allowed U.S. companies to own nearly half of Cuban sugar plantations, the majority of its cattle ranches, mines and utilities. Castro was largely everything opposite of Batista. Castro was a communist who, upon seizing control of Cuba, immediately did what he could to eliminate the American influence in Cuba. He had developed strong ties with the Soviet Union and at this time America was in the midst of a Cold War with the Soviet Union and China. Following World War II, the U.S. and Soviets were competing for which powerhouse would impose their global influence and mistrust between the two was at a high. When the Soviets took an interest in spreading the communist influence into Latin America, the U.S. took that as a direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine which prohibited European colonization of the Western Hemisphere. America became fearful of the ties being developed between Castro and the Soviet’s and would begin to put in place a plan to overthrow him.
Following Castro’s coming to power in Cuba and the awareness of the pending ties with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the U.S. government would begin to devise a plan that would remove Castro from power and establish a non-communist Cuban government that would be friendly to the U.S. Late in President Eisenhower’s final term in March 1960, he approved the C.I.A. training of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in an attempt to develop a small army that could be used to reclaim Cuba. Nearly 1,500 exiles would be trained in Guatemala and Florida and be trained in guerilla warfare in order to prepare them for the daunting battle they would soon face.
In November 1960, President Kennedy would be elected President and inherit this plan that had already been underway. Unsure about its effectiveness, he was assured the plan was a sure thing. CIA Director Allen Dulles convinced President Kennedy that this invasion would be even more successful than the 1954 U.S. involvement in overthrowing Communist Guatemala. Kennedy, reluctant to seem soft on Communism, had little choice but to heed the advice of his advisors and continue on with the plan. In order to go through with it, U.S. involvement had to seem non-existent. The last thing Kennedy wanted was for “direct, overt” intervention by the American military in Cuba. U.S involvement could be seen as an act of war from the Soviets and they could retaliate. Making this all but impossible was the fact that there was a leak of all the important details - the invasion in general, the date it was to take place, and the CIA’s role in the whole thing. By the time this information was revealed in the newspaper, it was rumored that Castro’s own intelligence already had known about it and was taking military precautions in preparation for an invasion.
The plan was for, following two airstrikes, an attack from the South and landing at the Bay of Pigs - to try to conceal U.S involvement - under cover of darkness and launch a surprise attack. Paratroopers would drop in before landfall to try to repel Cuban forces, and a smaller force would land on the East coast to create confusion. These forces would then advance towards Matanzas, a town 56 miles east of Havana on the North coast of Cuba, and would set up defensive positions. Additional support would arrive from South Florida and establish a provisional government, but the success of all this plan largely depended on the Cuban population joining the exiles. How this plan actually worked out was nothing of the sort. It was a complete disaster.
The two airstrikes that were to take place, only one carried out its mission. The goal was to destroy the Cuban air force in order to prevent them from launching a counterattack. The planes, which were old U.S. B-26 bombers that were painted to look like stolen Cuban planes. The first air strikes made several hits on Cuban airfields, but with Castro having advanced knowledge of the attack hid a majority of his air force and had dummy planes out in their place. Immediately Kennedy began having his doubts about the potential for success for this invasion. He was advised that following the first attack everyone would have regarded it as "an overt, unprovoked attack by the U.S. on a tiny neighbor." Before the second airstrike was to take off, Kennedy grounded it fearing that a second air strike would indicate American involvement which they were trying to avoid. Also, the American troops and warships that were waiting off the coast were ordered to not help the invasion in anyway. Kennedy would later change his mind about the second airstrike, but it was already too late. Bad weather had prevented it from taking place anyway. The exile forces that had landed at the Bay of Pigs, lacking the effectiveness of the airstrikes, were immediately inundated with Cuban forces. The unexpected coral reefs sank some of the exile’s ships and necessary supplies as they pulled into shore, the paratroopers landed in the wrong place, unmarked U.S. air support that was to escort the B-26’s would arrive an hour late due to the time difference, and by the time they showed up nearly all the bombers had been shot down. An absolute disaster - nothing went to plan. Some of the exiles who did make it to shore were threatening a mutiny unless the U.S. showed up with air and/or naval support which they were sure was to come. Surely the U.S. wouldn’t send 1,500 men to fight the 20,000 Cuban troops Castro had sent to meet them alone, right? Wrong. The fighting lasted less than a day; 114 exiles were killed and nearly 1,200 men surrendered or otherwise were taken prisoner.
Kennedy was under pressure to provide the support the exiles so desperately needed, but he said that a U.S. invasion of Cuba was a far worse consequence than a temporary loss of prestige by the failure at the Bay of Pigs. As much as he did not want to “abandon Cuba to the communists,” he said he would not start a fight that might end in World War III. With the failure of the invasion, the C.I.A. predicted that the Soviets would become “more adventurous”, and they were right. The Soviets Union began to secretly build missile sites within Cuba that were capable of firing nuclear warheads into the U.S. When President Kennedy became aware of this, there was little time to decide on how to react. This was an extremely uneasy time in America. Americans were waking up not knowing if nuclear war was about to break out. This became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, a 13 day standoff between the Soviets and the Americans in which worldwide mutually assured destruction was on the brink of exploding. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade around Cuba in order to prevent anymore Soviet munitions and/or supplies from entering into Cuba. Thankfully after days of tense negotiations between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev a deal was reached in which the Cuban missile sites would be dismantled and weapons would be returned to the Soviet Union.
In conclusion, the Bay of Pigs was not quite what the U.S. had hoped for. The lack of foresight on the planning, faulty intelligence, over-optimism, the ineffectiveness of the invasion itself, and the near avoidance of World War III were not a bright spot for America or its foreign relations. While Kennedy publicly shouldered the blame for the failure, he privately blamed the C.I.A. and after the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis he cleared out the majority of the figureheads of the C.I.A. Despite the failure of the Bay of Pigs and several more covert attempts to overthrow Castro and Communist Cuba, Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, still rule Cuba today. One important lesson, above all, it is deadly to start something one is not prepared to finish.

Bibliography

Bay of Pigs Invasion. 2010. http://www.history.com/topics/bay-of-pigs-invasion (accessed April 17, 2013).

DePalma, Anthony. "1961: The Bay of Pigs Invasion." New York Times Upfront Magazine, 2011: 16-19. Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 17, 2013).

Dunne, Michael. "Perfect Failure: the USA, Cuba, and the Bay of Pigs, 1961." Political Quarterly, July 2011: 448-458. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 17, 2013).

The Bay of Pigs. n.d. http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/The-Bay-of-Pigs.aspx (accessed April 17, 2013).

Time. "Bay of Pigs Revisited: Lessons from a Failure." July 30, 1965: 5. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 17, 2013).

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