Analysis Of The 1961 Bay Of Pigs Invasion

It seems that the United States has been one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, countries in the world, since the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on Monday, April 17, 1961, our government experienced incredible criticism and extreme embarrassment when Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, instantly stopped an invasion on the Cuban beach known as the Bay of Pigs. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his advisors, and many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, made the largest error of their political careers. Once the decision was made to invade Cuba, to end Castro and his Communist government, Kennedy and his administration were never looked at in the same light nor trusted again. Russian leader Nikita

The Bay of Pigs was a failed invasion by the United States to overthrow the communist government in Cuba run by the infamous Fidel Castro. The CIA-operated campaign attempted to use Cuban exiles as a Guerilla army in hopes of conducting a secret invasion. The objective was to remove the Cuban leader and establish a non-communist government that would benefit the United States. President John F. Kennedy, Commander in Chief during this time, wanted to prove to China, Russia, and even pessimistic Americans that he was determined to win the Cold War. Unfortunately, the campaign was extremely underprepared, which led to a disastrous outcome with Castro’s troops having the aggressors pinned on the beach under heavy fire. Soon after, the exiles surrendered in less than a single day of fighting, making the assault widely known as the CIA’s “perfect failure”. This topic was selected because the Cold War era intrigues me greatly; there is an abundance of covert operations, heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as technological competitions such as the space race. The Bay of Pigs ties into all of this, which led to the Cuban missile crisis, causing one of the closest calls in history in regards to nuclear war. The information found for this paper is from sources including the History Chanel website, the JFK Library, the CIA website, and the United States History website.

     The CIA was furious but went ahead with the invasion. It failed due to poor intelligence. It had landed on a the worst beach killing 15 of the CIA’s best men with another 1100 in Cuban prisons.

One theory behind the Bay of Pigs Invasion failure was that the original plan from the Eisenhower administration was altered. Another of these mistakes was the belief that Cuban nationals shared the same animosity of Fidel Castro that Cuban exiles did. If the Central Intelligence Agency chose to look at all sides of the Cuban argument instead of only seeing the opinions of the Miami Cuban exiles then the design of the invasion strike would have been changed. Consequently, the Cuban exiles were angry with Fidel Castro for the downfall of President Bastia and wanted democracy. Furthermore, the Cuban population living within Cuba was agreeable with Fidel Castro’s plan of isolation. The Central Intelligence Agency did not consider that the Cuban citizens would want to keep Fidel Castro in power as President. “Castro had a sixty to seventy percent approval rating in Cuba,” stated Central Intelligence Agency hemisphere division chief Joseph C.

Before the invasion happened, the CIA had to train Cuban exiles to hate and destroy the Cuban government and economy. The reason they started training these Cuban exiles is because Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista with an armed revolt. This made the CIA really mad because Batista was good allies with the US and Castro wasn’t. The CIA set up training camps in Guatemala in 1960, and in November the operation had trained a small army for an assault landing and guerilla warfare (jfklibrary.org). After a while, Kennedy confirmed the invasion plan, and was determined to disguise US support. The plan called for two airstrikes against Cuban air bases, a 1,400-man invasion, paratroopers would drop in before the invasion happened, and time after time, small forces would land on the

about Cuba: the Castro brothers, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The

During the same time as Cuba and the Soviet Union's relationship, the significant events of the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought in the United States, Cuba, and Soviet Union into conflict. John F. Kennedy believed that Castro was becoming a threat and that he would become to powerful. So on April 16, 1961, the CIA launched the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Over 2,000 "Anti- Castrolies" stormed up the Bay of Pigs in Southern Cuba. In fact, most of the Anti- Castrolies were Cuban exiles who disagreed with Castro's ideas for Cuba. For some months prior, the CIA had gathered these people to train for an assassination attempt on Castro. This group was given the codename "Brigade 2506," and in less then 24-72 hours 100 were dead and 1,189

This secret operation was viewed as far less dangerous than a direct invasion by American troops.As the election of 1960 approached, the CIA had already made plans to overthrow Castro with the Cuban exiles. However, to the surprise of just about everyone, a young John F. Kennedy defeated favorite Richard Nixon by the slimmest of margins.Nonetheless, the invasion had to go on. The plan was to bomb Cuba's airfields to prevent the Cuban military from killing the invading exiles. However, two things went wrong in the invasion. First, the CIA underestimated the Cuban army, and second, the airstrips were not all taken out, allowing the Cuban airforce to retaliate.

The aftermaths of the CIA’s failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, an operation, set in motion by the previous Dwight Eisenhower Administration, were now laid down on Kennedy. The failed operation was a major backslide for the CIA. "The Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the dike," said one report at the time and now senior military leaders wanted to take matters in their own hands. President Kennedy’s administration was accused of being soft on Fidel Castro, a then-new communist leader, who took powers during the 1959 Cuban revolution. With the Cold War

In attempt to push Cuban nationalist Fidel Castro out of power, in April of 1961 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched full-scale invasion of the Bahía de Cochinos in Cuba that was unfortunately not a success and failed miserably within 24 hours. After two years of trying to remove Castro from his political position America was very optimistic about this final strike. However, between being outnumbered by Castro's troops and almost immediately surrendering the invasion was not effective.

John F. Kennedy, an increasingly popular past American president, can also be associated with allowing one the greatest military failures ever committed by the United States. The toppling of a Cuban government, which facilitated American interests, by revolutionary Fidel Castro and his regime led many political figures to press for action prior to the election of 1960. The 34th president of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower and his administration were the first to deliberate upon military intervention and, ‘On March 17, President Eisenhower gave formal approval to a ‘program of covert action against the Castro regime’.’ Kennedy, who took a hard stance on communism during his presidential campaign, adopted the same policy as his predecessor

In March 1960, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to conquer Castro. The plan was to train a paramilitary force outside Cuba so they are able to perform guerrilla action, and needed 13 million dollars. Richard Bissel and Richard Helms organized the operation. Operation Mongoose had approximately 400 CIA officers who were employed full-time to carry out the mission. The project leader was Edward Lansdale and Task Force W was led by William Harvey. The Operation Mongoose headquarters was to the JM WAVE station. Castro once said, “If surviving assassination attempts were an olympic event, I would win the gold medal.” Castro’s body guards said that they counted that there was a total of 638 assassination attempts by CIA to kill Castro. In a survey they found that 90 percent of the Cuban population supported Castro and his policies. Castro started to tighten his grip over Cuba and enjoy all the powers that he had in the government. Then Castro put a ban on existing political parties, ruled all of Cuba, and said he would ruin the national unity and integrity. Castro wasn’t a really malicious person, but he was

As tensions increased between Cuba and the U.S., President John F Kennedy ordered the invasion on the evening of April 17th, 2017. The plan was to fly in around 1400 train cuban exiles undetected, launch attacks on Castro's forces, and overthrow the government with the hopes that the Cuban population would rise upa nd join in on the revolution. However, what some describe as a “Perfect failure”, was a flawed plan from the start. Due to the size of the invasion, the CIA eventually admitted that the operation in fact might be “too large to be clandestine and too small to be successful.” (http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/bay-of-pigs-invasion) The bay of Pigs invasion was, and still is, one of the biggest mistakes in American foreign policy history and can be attributed to the shear poor planing of the operation. Because Castro received word of the invasion, U.S. strategic moves were compromised, like the bombing of Cuban airfields, that of which had no aircrafts because Castro had relocated them. Other examples of poor planning played into the failure of the operation, such as the sinking of supply ships due to coral reefs and backup paratroopers missing their drop locations. Due to the disastrous nature of the operation, Castro's army soon had the fighters pinned down, where around 100 were killed and over 1,000 were taken prisoner. The kennedy administration would face

During his regime, Fidel Castro memorized many Cubans to believe that he was the solution to all their ills. However, in reality, he was nothing more than a Communist dictator. Deliberately, Castro set out to destroy the family, forcing women to work and indoctrinating children in Communism. Under the supervision of U.S. officials in Central America, groups of Cuban exiles were trained with the goal of invading the Island and overthrowing Castro’s government. However, leading up to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the invading force lost contact with the anti-Communist underground in Cuba. Furthermore, the invasion, planned under the administration of President Eisenhower, was not carried out until John F. Kennedy, who did not give the invasion

Castro intended on helping Cuba’s high poverty, but Castro did not turn Cuba into a democracy like he said he would (“Cuban missile Crisis”2). In 1960 the soviet premier attempted to convince Castro to become communist, soon after this castro became communist, probably influenced by the soviet premier (“Cuban missile Crisis”3). A new american president, that could probably change the war, was coming into office around this time, President Kennedy. The new president would take on the problem of this new cuban leader (International Encyclopedia of the… 1). Before him, Eisenhower trained about 1,500 Cuban Exiles in secret to try to take over Cuba, Kennedy allowed this to go on. On april 17, the exils attempted to invade Cuba(“Cuban missile Crisis”3). Since Castro had found out about the invasion, he was ready and defeated the the incoming force easily(“Cuban missile Crisis”3-4). The failed invasion seemed to help the Cuban opinion of Castro. He was now an obvious threat and so the U.S. decided to start operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose was a secret operation to get rid of Castro, it was an operation where the U.S. would try to sabotage Cuba, but Operation Mongoose never ended up happening. The U.S.S.R. did not want to lose Cuba so they decided to secretly send weapons into Cuba, including nuclear weapons (“Cuban missile Crisis”4). These arm shipments would lead to one of the