THE BAY OF PIGS

Deep within the Gulf of Cazones, on the southern coast of Cuba, is a place known as Bahia de Cochinos. In English, ‘cochinos’ is sometimes translated as ‘pigs’, although this may be erroneous and could refer instead to a species of triggerfish. In mid-April 1961, events at this small, nondescript place – the ‘Bay of Pigs’ – would lead to a major diplomatic incident between the United States, Russia and the newly – established pro-communist regime of Fidel Castro on the island. It would leave the Kennedy administration, still reeling from Yuri Gagarin’s flight, severely embar­rassed and, in the eyes of socialists, would significantly raise the profile of both the Soviet Union and Communism.

The roots of the debacle had actually been laid during the presidency of Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, in March I960. A year after Castro had come to power with his own brand of revolutionary rule, the CIA had begun secret efforts to train and equip a force of up to 1,500 Cuban exiles, with the intention of invading the island and overthrowing the dictator. Initial plans sought to land a brigade close to the old colonial city of Trinidad, some 400 km south-east of Havana, where the population was known to generally oppose Castro’s regime.

Already, the dictator was beginning to align himself with the Soviet Union, agreeing in February 1960 to buy Russian oil and expropriating the American – owned refineries in Cuba when they refused to process it. The Eisenhower administration promptly cut diplomatic ties with the fledgling nation, which only served to strengthen Castro’s links with the Soviets. When Eisenhower reduced Cuba’s sugar import quota in June 1960, Castro responded by nationalising $850 million-worth of American property and businesses. Although some of his policies proved popular among the Cuban poor, they alienated many former supporters of the revolution and precipitated over a million migrations to the United States.

In February 1961, less than a month after his inauguration, an opportunity presented itself for Kennedy to topple Castro: the Cuban armed forces possessed Soviet-made tanks and artillery, together with a formidable air force, including A-26 Intruder medium-range bombers, Harrier Sea Fury fighter-bombers and T-33 Shooting Star jets – surely a tangible threat to the United States’ security. As these plans were being thrashed out, the landing site for the anti-Castro brigade was changed to an area in Matanzas Province, 200 km south-east of Havana, at the Bay of Pigs. The exiles’ chance of success here was limited still further by warnings from senior KGB agents, by loose talk in Miami and by the interrogation of over 100,000 Cuban suspects, which gradually exposed the plans for the invasion.

Of critical importance to these plans was Operation Puma, which sought to undertake 48 hours of air strikes, eliminating Castro’s air force and ensuring that the exiles – known as ‘Brigade 2506’ – could land safely at the Bay of Pigs. This failed when additional waves of air support were cancelled; Kennedy wanted the invasion to appear as if engineered wholly by the Cuban exiles and not by his own government. For this reason, he had insisted the landing site be moved from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs – the former was a popular resort and would undoubtedly grab unwanted headlines if the invasion should fail. It was a fatal

mistake. Trinidad was actually an ideal spot: in addition to the broadly anti-Castro sentiment of its people, it offered excellent port facilities, armaments and was close to the Escambray Mountains, an anti-communist rebel stronghold. In order to maintain the ability of his administration to claim ‘plausible deniability’ and avoid admitting that it was actually an American-financed operation, Kennedy doomed the invasion to failure.

On 17 April 1961, two days after the first bombing run and still under the impression that they could rely upon several more waves of decisive air cover, over 1,500 Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in four chartered transport ships. They were joined by a pair of CIA-owned infantry craft, together with supplies, ordnance and equipment. The hope that they would find support in the local populace, however, proved fruitless. Cuban militia had already contained the Escambray rebels, Castro had executed several key suspects thought to be involved in the plot and troops were waiting at the Bay of Pigs. The hard-fighting exiles, by now aware that they would not receive effective air support and were likely to lose, were forced back to the beach. By the time the fighting ended on 21 April, 68 exiles were dead, together with four American pilots, and the remainder captured. Some would be executed and over 1,100 imprisoned. After lengthy negotiations, the latter were released 20 months later in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine from the United States.

The fiasco proved extremely embarrassing for the Kennedy administration and was quickly followed by the forced resignations of the CIA director, his deputy and the deputy director of operations. Although he admitted responsibility for the bungled invasion, as the fighting in Cuba drew to an end, on 20 April, Kennedy refined his plans to draw the Soviets into a space race and perhaps gain more credibility for his government. ‘‘Is there any space programme,’’ he asked Vice­President Lyndon Johnson in one of the 20th century’s most influential memos, ‘‘that promises dramatic results in which we could win? Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space or a trip around the Moon or by a rocket to land on the Moon or by a rocket to go to the Moon and back with a man?’’ His motives, of course, were chiefly political, but he was clearly pinning his colours to the space flag.

One of the main personalities approached by Johnson as he weighed up the options was the famed rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who, in a 29 April memo, felt that the ‘‘sporting chance’’ of sending a three-man crew around the Moon before the Soviets was somewhat higher than putting an orbital laboratory aloft. Others, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, would even push for a landing on Mars, although his motivations for such a proposal have been questioned. Von Braun, who had designed Nazi Germany’s infamous V-2 missile before coming to the United States in 1945 as a key player in its rocketry and space programmes, felt that a lunar landing was the best option, since ‘‘a performance jump by a factor of ten over their present rockets is necessary to accomplish this feat. While today we do not have such a rocket, it is unlikely that the Soviets have it’’. The rocket to which von Braun referred, known as Saturn, remained in the early planning stages, but a commitment to its development had been one of the conditions he had applied before agreeing to join NASA in October 1958. “With an all-out crash effort,” he told Johnson, “I think we could accomplish this objective in 1967-68.”

Von Braun’s judgement won the day for Johnson. Three weeks later, still smarting from Bay of Pigs humiliation, Kennedy delivered the speech which – perhaps more than any other – would truly define his presidency.