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Intel - History
Bay of Pigs

"In God we trust.
All others we monitor."

• As early as October 30, 1960, the Castro government sent a reconnaissance flights over Swan Island and the Caribbean Coast of Guatemala.

• CIA trained forces at a CIA-run training base code-named JMTrax near Retalhuleu in Guatemala, which was the main training area for the beach landing and possible mountain retreat

• CIA trained forces throughout southern Florida

• At a meeting on 11th March, 1961, Kennedy rejected Bissell’s proposed scheme.
• He told him to go away and draft a new plan.
• He asked for it to be "less spectacular" and with a more remote landing site than Trinidad.
• It appears that Kennedy had completely misunderstood the report from the JCS.
• Bissell now resubmitted his plan. As requested, the landing was no longer at Trinidad.

• Instead he selected Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). This was 80 miles from the Escambray Mountains.
• What is more, this journey to the mountains was across an impenetrable swamp.
• As Bissell explained to Kennedy, this means that the guerrilla fallback option had been removed from the operation.

• On April 10, 1961, Bissell had a meeting with Robert F. Kennedy.
• He told Kennedy that the new plan had a two out of three chance of success.
• Bissell added that even if the project failed the invasion force could join the guerrillas in the Escambray Mountains.

• Kennedy was convinced by this scheme and applied pressure on those like Chester Bowles, Theodore Sorenson and Arthur Schlesinger who were urging John F. Kennedy to abandon the project.
• President Kennedy, despite the CIA's objections, moved the landing site to the Bay of Pigs area.
• CIA Operations Chief Richard Bissell, had chosen the Trinidad site but the President, upholding plausible deniability, insisted it be moved.

• Initially the CIA planned a surprise air attack using B-26Bs (of the self-styled Fuerza Aérea de Liberación) against the aircraft and bases of the FAR.
• This took place in the early morning of April 15, 1961 with three flights of B-26B Invader light bomber aircraft displaying false markings of the FAR bombed and strafed the Cuban airfields of San Antonio de Los Baños, Antonio Maceo International Airport at Santiago de Cuba, and the airfield at Ciudad Libertad (formerly named Campo Columbia).
• The attack left Cuban forces with "two B-26s, two Sea Furies, and two T-33As at San Antonio de los Baños Airbase, and only one Sea Fury at the Antonio Maceo Airport" while two of the attacking B-26 bombers were damaged.

• However, the surviving FAR aircraft, though few, were of good quality and, with a mix of fighter/bombers and ground attack aircraft, still a well-balanced force to use in defense against an amphibious invasion.
• By contrast, the CIA-provided aircraft of a single type lacked the flexibility necessary to achieve air superiority.

• Adlai Stevenson, the US ambassador to the United Nations, had been embarrassed by revelations that the first wave of air strikes had been carried out by US planes despite his repeated denials to the UN on April 15, 1961 that this was so.

• He contacted McGeorge Bundy, the President's Special Assistant for National Security who, unaware of the critical importance to the mission of the second wave, canceled the air strike despite Kennedy's earlier approval for it.

• Although the Cuban government had prior knowledge of the invasion, the Cuban air force (FAR) aircraft were vulnerable on the ground and probably could have been wiped out, if the second and third waves of attack had been launched as originally planned.

Kennedy Cancels US Air Support for Cuban Revolutionaries
April 17, 1961

• The group of B-26s was code-named Lobo Flight, led by an American CIA contract pilot, and included Mario Zuniga, the "defector" pilot.
• It is reported that one of the attacks by Lobo Flight caused at least nine hundred casualties to the Cuban government forces.

• In these attacks, Cuban ground forces suffered an estimated 1,800 casualties when a mixture of Cuban army troops, militia, and civilians were caught on an open causeway riding in civilian buses towards the battle scene in which several buses were hit by napalm.

• By the time fighting ended on April 21, 1961, 68 Brigade 2506 ground forces personnel were killed in action and the rest were captured.
• Cuba's losses during the Bay of Pigs Invasion are more difficult to determine, but they are consided to be higher.

• Most sources estimate them to be in the thousands, mostly resulting from a number of failed counter-attacks to drive Brigade 2506 into the sea. Triay mentions 4,000 casualties; Lynch states about 5,000. Other sources indicate over 2,200 casualties.