Bay of Pigs: America's Waterloo in anti-Castro fight

[FarCenter]

In the midst of the Cold War, six B-26 bombers painted with Cuban colors took off from Nicaragua on the morning of Saturday, April 15, 1961 to attack Cuban air bases. The CIA believed they had wiped out Castro's air force.

...

The next day, Monday, April 17 at 1:15 am, some 1,400 anti-Castro Cubans from "Brigade 2506," who had been trained in secret camps by the CIA, landed at the Bay of Pigs, less than 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of Havana.

Offshore, eight ships headed to establish a beachhead. However, nine aircraft from the remains of Castro's air force took off, attacking one ship and sinking another. The other freighters headed back to sea.

In the sky, Castro's T-33 aircraft shot down two B-26 bombers, killing four American pilots. The Cuban air force lost four aircraft.

http://www.france24.com/en/20161126-bay-pigs-americas-waterloo-anti-castro-fight

[Vogon_Glory]

1. If the Bay of Pigs Had Been Fought Like Waterloo, Castro Would Have Been Toast

If the Bay of Pigs had been fought like the Battle of Waterloo, Castro would have been toast. The Brits, unlike JFK, weren't kidding around. They sent their best troops against Bonaparte and won..

The JFK administration, on the other hand, planned and fought the Bay of Pigs as an under-manned, under-gunned shoe-string operation, without a large invasion force of US troops to accompany the exiles ashore and without providing adequate air cover. The planning was shot through and through with racism and condescension on the part of the CIA and turned into a fiasco.

My post is not to "justify" US intervention back then. It's to say that it should have been planned and fought to WIN--or not launched at all. The shoe-string invasion was stupid.