The Bay of Pigs incident, or the Battle of Geelong Beach, was a failed invasion of Cuba's revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro by Cubans who fled to the United States with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Bay of Pigs (Bay of Pigs, Bay of Cochinos) on the southwest coast of Cuba.

The Bay of Pigs incident marked the first peak of the US anti-Cuba action. In the discussion of the legality of this attack against the United States in the United Nations Security Council, Cuba's proposal to accuse the United States of illegal attack was rejected by the United States. For the United States, this unsuccessful attack was not only a military failure, but also a political mistake.

The criticism of this attack is very strong at home and abroad, and the government of John F. Kennedy, who just took office for 91 days, lost its credibility. On the contrary, the Castro regime and the Cuban revolution were consolidated. Because Cuba was worried that the United States would attack again, Cuba began to approach the Soviet Union, which eventually led to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Event course

In October p>1959, the Cuban people led by Castro overthrew the Batista government supported by the United States for a long time and established a new revolutionary regime. Since then, Castro has become America's number one enemy. The U.S. government is worried that Cuba, which is only over 1,111 kilometers away from the U.S. coast, will become a beachhead for the Soviets to threaten the United States, and has been trying to overthrow the new Cuban regime led by Castro.

since 1961, the CIA has been gathering Cuban exiles in Florida, Dominica, Guatemala and Honduras in the United States, ready to land in Cuba and overthrow the plan of Castro's revolutionary regime code-named "Crusade Action". At the beginning of 1961, the trained American mercenaries were organized into a code-named 2516 assault brigade.

It has four infantry battalions, a motorized battalion, an airborne battalion, a heavy artillery battalion and several armored units. In order to support the invasion of Cuba by mercenaries, the United States sent eight C-54 transport planes, 14 B-26 bombers and 11 landing ships. The Pentagon also sent several submarines to Cuba's coast to scout the terrain and find landing sites.

The only task of Cuban exiles is to defend a temporary airport in Cuba by force until the Cuban government in exile in Miami can fly to Cuba and send a telegram to the United States for help. The Bay of Pigs seems to be an ideal location for this project: it is located on the edge of a swamp (Zapata Peninsula), and it is difficult for the Cuban government to launch a military attack on it.

In the nearby Mount EsCambre, anti-government armed forces still acted until the mid-1961s. There are few people here, and the local resistance will not be strong. The intelligence used by the CIA comes from anti-government people who want to overthrow the Cuban government. They exaggerate the anti-government sentiment in Cuba and the strength of the armed forces in Mount EsCambre.

The CIA itself tried to exaggerate their reports to assure Kennedy, who had just taken office at that time, that the operation would be successful. Kennedy hesitated at first. Perhaps at that time, the CIA's planning department thought that Kennedy would agree to join the American army even if he lost after the operation began. Later, Kennedy was blamed for interrupting the action plan.

It seems that the CIA did make such an assumption. On April 4, 1961, the newly elected President Kennedy approved the plan at a joint meeting with officials of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, but as the supreme commander of the US military, he decided not to join the US military. On April 5, 1961, the United States prepared to bomb the Cuban airport. These planes were marked with Cuban symbols to create the illusion of an anti-government uprising.

five American planes were shot down by Cuban planes. On April 7th, 1961, this American mercenary, composed of more than 1,511 people, raided Cuba under the command of two CIA officials. Under the direct cover of American planes and American naval warships, they landed in the south of Las Villas province in central Cuba, occupied Long Beach and Geelong Beach, and continued to advance northward.

The Cuban army and militia fought against the invading American mercenaries, and two ships carrying ammunition were sunk by the Cuban army. Castro, the 34-year-old Cuban revolutionary leader, took command of the temporary headquarters of a sugar factory near Geelong Beach. He ordered: "Sink all ships!" He said to his comrade-in-arms ernesto guevara, "Now we are really fighting. Victory belongs to us!"

five minutes later, he ordered another military leader: "You must sink all the ships and fire at them! We will use mortars to make them disappear from the earth! " Soon, he spoke on the phone with his younger brother Raul Castro, who was sticking to the east coast, and praised the fighter plane of the Cuban Air Force: "The plane was so beautiful and wonderful! They are laying eggs! "

it took Castro only 72 hours to win: "catch up, don't stop fighting!" " Three days later, the invading army was destroyed, more than 1,111 people were captured and about 91 people were killed. The captured man was tried in public. Some people returned to the United States in 1963 by exchanging urgently needed medicines, food and agricultural machinery. Because the Cuban army in exile could not hold the airport that the "government in exile" planned to fly to.

So this government in exile can't send out their "help". For Kennedy, so he can't order the Marine Corps to intervene. Therefore, regardless of the opposition of the CIA, the operation was ordered to be suspended. For the captured exiles, the Cuban government revoked their citizenship and took them hostage and demanded 62 million pesos of medicine and baby food from the US government.

This is also the first time in the history of the United States government to pay war reparations. On the second day after the Battle of Geelong Beach, Soviet leader Khrushchev wrote to American President Kennedy. It is believed that this "small-scale war" in Cuba will trigger a chain reaction around the world. He urgently called on Kennedy to stop his aggression against Cuba, and claimed that the Soviet Union was ready to provide Cuba with all the help it needed to counter the aggression.

the Kennedy administration was forced to claim that the United States did not support the actions to overthrow Castro. In fact, the CIA not only planned this subversive action. And the losses are heavy. President Kennedy had to publicly admit to the American public that the Bay of Pigs incident was a mistake that must never happen again, and then claimed full responsibility for it.

This incident greatly embarrassed the American government and became the object of ridicule by the world media. In the discussion of the legality of this attack against the United States in the United Nations Security Council. Cuba's proposal to accuse the United States of illegal attack was rejected by the United States by one vote. The reasons for the failure of this operation are as follows: the invasion plan was not kept secret. Many exiles who fought in the war were sent back to the invaders of the Cuban Brigade in the United States.

Cubans bragged in hotels in Miami that they would take part in the invasion of Cuba. The sabotage before the invasion and the bombing of planes taking off from the United States also alerted Cuba. The local residents belong to the poorest class in Cuba, and they also benefited the most from the Cuban revolution (building schools, hospitals and infrastructure), so they were the ones who resisted the invaders at the beginning.

They provided valuable time for Cuban regular army to organize counterattacks. The Cuban army has just won three years of guerrilla warfare. Their morale is high and they have a lot of combat experience. Kennedy reduced the air support of the United States, so only half of the Cuban air force was destroyed on the ground, and the rest was launched, destroying five American planes and two ammunition ships.

Extended information:

Event background

Until the Cuban Revolution, Cuba's politics and economy were greatly influenced by the United States. After Fulgencio Batista was overthrown, the United States had to ensure the interests of its backyard. In fact, it was also a powerful country thinking, so it began to brew an attack. But in 1961, the new Cuban government began to implement their reforms, which also involved the interests of American companies.

At this time, the United States still thinks that Cuba can be prevented from implementing these reforms by warning, because Cuba relies entirely on the United States, and the first measure of the United States is not to send oil to Cuba. Since Cuba's power generation is entirely solved by fuel, the United States hopes to bring down its revolutionary government. Cuba began to import oil from the Soviet Union.

Therefore, the U.S. government ordered American companies' refineries in Cuba not to refine oil imported from the Soviet Union. Since these refineries promised to refine any oil through contracts, this order actually forced these companies to violate this contract. On this ground, the Cuban government brought all refineries under the compulsory management of the state. Revolutionaries at the beginning of the Cuban Revolution all came from the middle class and the anti-capitalist class.

if the United States hadn't imposed economic sanctions, they wouldn't have contacted the * * * capitalist government. The United States took all possible economic measures against Cuba, including banning the import of Cuban sugar and the export of spare parts, and even reached a complete economic blockade. However, Cuba skillfully took advantage of the East-West conflict during the Cold War and transferred its trade relations with the United States to other countries.

Baidu Encyclopedia-The Bay of Pigs Incident