Bay Of Pigs Invasion: A Personal Analysis

The planning for the Bay of Pigs began under President Eisenhower’s administration. President Eisenhower approved the CIA’s Bay of Pigs plan to oust Fidel Castro and overthrow Cuba’s communist government on March 17, 1960. The planning and preparation continued throughout the rest of the year. On January 20, 1961, John F Kennedy became the President of the United States. He had learned of the Bay of Pigs plan months earlier, and now as President, after consulting with his advisors, also approved the CIA planned Bay of Pigs

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

On April 17, 1961, 1400 CIA-backed Cuban exiles launched a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. This invasion was called The Bay of Pigs Invasion. This invasion "Was intended to provoke popularity for an uprising against Fidel Castro, who had overthrown American-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista" (Web).The goal of the unfortunately failed invasion was the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States. Before John F. Kennedy took office, he was informed of this plan by the CIA. Developed during the Eisenhower administration, the plan was to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their

CIA director Allen Dulles ensured to Kennedy that this was going to be the perfect invasion. On April 17, 1961, the invasion of Bay of Pigs had begun. The invasion was a total failure, since nobody in the island showed any interest of joining the coup against Castro. Castro's men captured 1189 prisoners and ransomed them for ten million dollars. It was the first major step for Kennedy during his administration, which gave him total humiliation. Later in his term, Kennedy refers to Bay of Pigs "Cuba was a hell of a time." This convinced Kennedy never to trust anyone ever again. Moreover, maybe perhaps, this was why he was successful during the Cuban missile crisis.

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.

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

The CIA initiated the training process by setting up training camps in Guatemala and trained "counter-revolutionary Cubans serving as the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, known as Brigade 2506" (The Bay of Pigs Invasion and its Aftermath). Soon, by November the United States had prepared a small army to perform assault landing and guerilla warfare. If the invasion turned out to be a success a former member of Castro's government, José Miró Cardona, was going to take the presidential position of Cuba. However, the plan was already in trouble by October of 1960 when Castro found out about the guerilla training camps that were based in Guatemala. Once John F. Kennedy became president, one of his first decisions in office was authorizing the plan in February of 1961. Although Castro was aware of the United States' intentions, President Kennedy still put in effort to keep the U.S. support disguised. One of the ways he attempted to do this was by assigning The Bay of Pigs as the landing point. "The site was a remote swampy area on the southern coast of Cuba, where a night landing might bring a force ashore against little resistance and help to hide any United States involvement" (The Bay of Pigs). The down side to this was that the Bay of Pigs was 80 miles from refuge in Cuba's Escambray Mountains, giving us an excessive distance which would be a problem if we were faced with an

Bay of Pigs started in 1961 after operation mongoose. Operation mongoose was a mission to assiante fedal Castro and to contain communism the Americans feared it was going to make United States fall. Which fedal knew what was coming to him and was prepared. Bay of pigs was the sequel to the previous mission but the outcome was the same as the first one fedal knew what was coming to him so he got his troop ready to go to war while john f Kennedy was in office he had 20 Guatemala training camps that had Cuban exiles that was against fedal castro so in that favor the Americans taught teach them how to fight like solider so they can take out Castro the only bad thing about it was that Castro knew everything they knew he had people in the us that

First, the Bay of Pigs location was far from any assistance should it be required. Secondly, the air strikes that planned to hit Cuban air bases missed many of their targets, and the Cuban’s Air Force was still mission capable (JFKlibrary.org, 2017). Although President Kennedy assumed the Bay of Pigs would be a desolate landing point, it was not. The Cuban Exile Brigade immediately came under heavy fire. Additionally, because the Cuban Air Force was still mission capable they were able to stop the movement of exile troops and sink reinforcement ships. Not only did the plan fail because the Cuban Air Force was still complete, the weather played a vital role in stopping the success of the United States. “Bad weather hampered the ground force, which had to work with soggy equipment and insufficient ammunition” (JFKlibrary.org, 2017). Though President Kennedy had some foreign obstacles to overcome, his greatest legacy became what he did for the United

John F. Kennedy's fail on "The Bay of Pigs" could have been prevented many ways. One way to have prevented that disaster was to order more airplanes for the airstrike, than just six. The air strike didn’t do that much damage. A way to have stopped all those Cuban Exiles from dying is having them backed up by air forces. Kennedy ordered only a small airstrike and no air force to back the exiles up. Cuba was on high alert, so when they saw ships arriving, they didn’t know how big the invasion was. Castro ended up deploying his whole military. Kennedy could have done more to stop this, but the CIA told him that it was an easy win.

Civil Rights activist believed Kennedy was not focusing enough on domestic issues happening in the United States. Many people fail to understand the United States was dealing with a great deal of turmoil domestically and internationally, during the Kennedy Administration, and as the Chief Diplomat, the Kennedy main focus would have been foreign relations and not domestic. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was one of the first international the Kennedy Administration was forced to deal with. The Bay of Pigs originated in President Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration but was carried out a few months after Kennedy was sworn into the Presidency. The Bay of Pigs was supposed to unseat Communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, however, it was a great failure.

I would have made the Bay of Pigs successful by sending military troops with the exiles. Also, I would have sent more aircrafts to destroy their military. I would have keep the promise that we told them. The Bay of Pigs invasion would have been successful if the US would have help the exiles out and not have retreated. The Bay of Pigs invasion would have been successful if we had went with the original plan and not the one we used. We should have sent the whole air force instead of just 6 planes. If we had the invasion would have been successful. So, that is how I would have changed the Bay of Pigs invasion.

“First, I want to say that there will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by the United States Armed Forces. This government will do everything it possibly can, I think it can meet its responsibilities, to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba… The basic issue in Cuba is not one between the United States and Cuba. It is between the Cubans themselves.” These words were spoken by President John F. Kennedy at a press conference on April 12, 1961, just five days before the Bay of Pigs invasion took place. Little did the American public know that in five short days, the United States would support an attempted invasion on the Cuban shore—unsuccessfully. The $46

Fidel Castro had contrive to outlast not only the Bay of Pigs but also multiple later assassination attempts. Diem and Trujillo were not so fortunate. And President Kennedy, who made a lot of Cuban enemies after the botched Bay of Pigs operations, had also submit to an assassin’s bullet. This was a legacy that might well seize the heed of one of Kennedy’s successors.

D-Day, April 17, 1960; Brigade 2506 lands in the Bay of Pigs, a small beach in southern Cuba. Backed by former president Dwight Eisenhower, endorsed by current president John F. Kennedy, and masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency, the plan to overthrow Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of Cuba, had been months in the making (Dunne 1). By the summer of 1959, as former Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista was overtaken by Castro, charges of communist takeover in Cuba were rampant in Washington, especially in Congress (Dunne 5). With the United States embroiled in the Cold War, a largely ideological battle between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States, the United