What is the "Bay of Pigs Incident"?

The Bay of Pigs incident, or the Battle of Geelong Beach, was a failed invasion of Cuba's revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro on April 7, 2007 by Cubans who fled to the United States in the Bay of Pigs (Bay of Cochinos, Bahía de los Cochinos) on the southwest coast of Cuba with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Bay of Pigs incident marked the first peak of American anti-Cuba action. When the United Nations Security Council discussed the legality of this attack against the United States, Cuba's proposal to accuse the United States of illegal attacks 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 at home and abroad is very strong, and the government of John F. Kennedy, which has just been in office for 90 days, has 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 of 1962.

Event process

1959 1 10 In October, 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 100 km away from the U.S. coast, will become a beachhead for the Soviet Union to threaten the United States, and has been trying to overthrow the new Cuban regime led by Castro.

Since 1960, the CIA has been assembling Cuban exiles in Florida, Dominica, Guatemala and Honduras in the United States, preparing to land in Cuba and overthrow the plan of Castro's revolutionary regime code-named "Crusade Action". 196 1, and the trained American mercenaries are code-named 2506 assault brigade.

It has four infantry battalions, a motorized battalion, an airborne battalion, a heavy artillery battalion and several armored detachments. In order to support the invasion of Cuba by mercenaries, the United States dispatched eight C-54 transport planes, 14 B-26 bombers and 10 landing ships. The Pentagon also sent several submarines to the Cuban coast to scout the terrain and find the landing site.

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 distress telegram to the United States. The Bay of Pigs seems to be the 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, there were still anti-government forces until the mid-1960s. There were few people here, and the local resistance would not be strong. The intelligence used by the CIA comes from anti-government people who want to overthrow the Cuban government. They exaggerated Cuba's anti-government sentiment and the armed forces in Mount EsCambre.

The CIA itself tried to exaggerate their report to assure Kennedy that the operation would be successful. Kennedy hesitated at first. Perhaps the planning department of the CIA thought that Kennedy would agree to join the American army even if he lost after the operation began. Later, Kennedy was accused of interrupting the action plan.

It seems that the CIA did make such an assumption. 196 1 14 President Kennedy, who was elected shortly after April, approved the plan at a joint meeting with officials of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, but as the highest commander of the US military, he decided not to invest in the US military. 1961April 15, the United States prepared to bomb the Cuban airport. These planes are marked with Cuban symbols to create the illusion of an anti-government uprising.

Five American planes were shot down by Cuban planes. 196 1 07 April 17, this American mercenary, composed of about 1500 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 villars province in central Cuba, occupied Long Beach and Geelong Beach, and continued to advance northward.

Cuban army and militia fought against invading American mercenaries, and two ships loaded with ammunition were sunk by Cuban army. Castro, a 34-year-old Cuban revolutionary leader, took over the temporary headquarters of a sugar factory near Gyirong 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 open fire on them! We will use mortars to make them disappear from the earth! " Soon, he telephoned his younger brother Raul Castro, who stuck to the east coast, and praised the fighter plane of the Cuban Air Force: "That plane is so beautiful, so 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 wiped out, 1000 people were captured and about 90 people were killed. The arrested man was tried in public. Some people returned to the United States on 1963 by exchanging much-needed medicines, food and agricultural machinery with the United States. Because the Cuban army in exile could not hold the airport that the "government in exile" planned to fly to.

Therefore, it is impossible for the government in exile to issue their "help". For Kennedy, so he couldn't order the Marines to intervene. Therefore, regardless of the opposition of the CIA, the operation was suspended. For the captured exiles, the Cuban government revoked their citizenship, 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 US government to pay war reparations. The 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 its aggression.

The Kennedy administration was forced to declare that the United States did not support the overthrow of Castro. In fact, the CIA not only planned this subversive action. Heavy losses. 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 US government and became the object of ridicule by the world media. When the United Nations Security Council discussed the legality of the attack on the United States. Cuba's proposal to accuse the United States of illegal attacks 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 took part in the war were sent back to the invaders of the Cuban Brigade of the United States.

Cubans boasted in hotels in Miami that they would take part in the invasion of Cuba. The destruction before the invasion and the bombing of planes taking off from the United States also alarmed Cuba. The local residents belong to the poorest class in Cuba, and they are also the group that benefited the most from the Cuban revolution (building schools, hospitals and infrastructure), so they were the first to resist the invaders.

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

Extended data:

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 is also a powerful country thinking, so it began to brew an attack. But in 1960, the new Cuban government began to implement their reforms, which also involved the interests of American companies.

At this time, the United States still believes that Cuba can be prevented from implementing these reforms by warning, because Cuba is completely dependent 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 based on fuel, the United States hopes to bring down its revolutionary government. Cuba began to import oil from the Soviet Union.

The U.S. government therefore ordered American companies' refineries in Cuba not to refine oil imported from the Soviet Union. Since these refineries promised to refine any oil through the contract, this order actually forced these companies to violate this contract. Accordingly, the Cuban government put all refineries under the compulsory management of the state. The revolutionaries in the early days of the Cuban revolution all came from the middle class and the anti-bourgeoisie.

If the United States hadn't imposed economic sanctions, they wouldn't have contacted the capitalist government. The United States has taken all possible economic measures against Cuba, including prohibiting the import of Cuban sugar and the export of spare parts, and even reaching a complete economic blockade. However, Cuba skillfully used the East-West conflict during the Cold War to transfer its trade relations with the United States to other countries.

Baidu Encyclopedia-The Bay of Pigs Incident