Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1962

The story of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs is

one of mismanagement, overconfidence, and lack of security. The

blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of

the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his

advisors. The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension

between the two great superpowers and ironically 34 years after the

event, the person that the invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro,

is still in power. To understand the origins of the invasion and

its ramifications for the future it is first necessary to look at

Part I: The Invasion and its Origins.

The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days

before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to

be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of

that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26

bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Ba¤os

and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon.

Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven people were

killed at other sites on the island.

Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to

. . .