The Bay of Pigs´ Invasion and General Data
The Bay of Pigs´ Invasion, also known as Giron´s Invasion and the Giron´s Battle, is a military operation was conducted on April 1961 by a small army of Cuban exiles who tried to invade Cuba.
This invasion was supported by the government of the United States and it was conducted with the purpose of creating confusion, forming a provisional government and then seek the support of the Organization of American States and the recognition of the international community.
More than a hundred invader soldiers were killed and the Cubans captured another 1,200 invaders, together with important military equipment.
The Military Operation during the Bay of Pigs´ Invasion
On Saturday April 15th, 1961 eight aircraft A-26 with Cuban flag on the fuselage, bombed simultaneously – minutes before six o’clock – the military airports of Ciudad Libertad, San Antonio de Los Baños and the airfield Antonio Maceo in Santiago de Cuba.
This action is then would turn into the preamble of the invasion. The plan was to have one of these devices land in Miami to give the public version of desertion and rebellion of the Cuban Air Force pilots.
Only five planes were able to return to Nicaragua.
The squad that attacked Ciudad Libertad found hostility so nurtured that some pilots fired their machine guns in areas near the base, killing seven people.
Among them it was the young militiaman Eduardo Garcia Delgado, who shortly before his death wrote with his blood the name of Fidel.
The next day, in the farewell mourning for the victims of the bombing and before an immense concentration of armed militiamen, Fidel Castro proclaimed the socialist character of the Revolution and declared a state of alert.
That is why it is understood that the action on the 15th was the prelude to the invasion.
At dawn on April 17th the mercenary invasion began. This military action was called by its organizers as “Operation Pluto”.
The invading contingent landed two points of the Bay of Pigs: Playa Giron and Playa Larga. Quickly the militia battalions of Cienfuegos, Matanzas and Havana, the National School of Militia Leaders and the one from Matanzas, a battalion of the National Revolutionary Police and the Rebel Army artillery batteries were mobilized.
All these military units were under the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro’s command.
The revolutionary forces fought heroically the mercenary brigade, its naval units, tanks and aircraft.
There the weapons that had just arrived from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia were used. On April 18th the counteroffensive starts.
The battered Brigade troops who control the two access roads to the Bay of Pigs are driven back to the San Blas.
In Playa Larga, the assaulting troops due to their lack of ammunition, decided to abandon their positions and head to Playa Giron to join other members of the brigade.
The Cuban army takes control of Playa Larga.
That same day in the afternoon, in Punta Perdiz,the Battalion 123 of the revolutionary militias moved in buses with the aim of taking Playa Giron that was attacked with rockets, machine guns and napalm bombs by a squadron of B-26 and caused them heavy losses.
However, on April 19th , 1961, within 72 hours, the enemy was defeated with a balance of 89 dead, 250 wounded and 1197 prisoners.
