Bay of Pigs

14 Pages 3500 Words

at 8:20 a.m. Both planes were badly damaged and their fuel tanks were nearly empty. On the front page of The New York Times the next day, a picture of a B-26 was shown along with a picture of one of the pilots wearing a baseball hat and hiding behind dark sunglasses. His name was withheld. Even at this early stage, a sense of conspiracy had begun to unravel the events of that week. In the early hours of April seventeenth, the assault on the Bay of Pigs began in a cloak and dagger fashion. The assault began at 2 a.m. with a team of “frogmen” going ashore with orders to set up landing lights. Those lights indicated to the main assault force the precise location of their objectives, as well as to clear the area of anything that may impede the main landing teams when they arrived at 2:30 a.m. At 3:00 a.m., two battalions came ashore at Playa Gir¢n and one battalion at Playa Larga beaches. The troops at Playa Gir¢n had orders to move west, northwest, up the coast and meet with the troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small group of men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to secure it as well. When looking at a modern map of Cuba it is obvious that troops would have problems in the area that was chosen for them to land. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampy marshland area, which would be hard on the troops. The Cuban forces were quick to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, along with two Sea Furies, and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. Off the coast were the command and control ship and another vessel carrying supplies for the invading forces. The Cuban air force made quick work of the supply ships, sinking the command vessel, Marsopa, and the supply ship, Houston, blasting them to pieces with five-inch rockets. Lost with the Houston was the fifth battalion as well as the supplies for the landing teams and eight other smaller vessels. With some of the invading forces�...