Bay of Pigs invasion

Bay of Pigs is the name of the failed liberation landing on Cuba in 1961. A group of Cuban patriots landed in Bay of Pigs in the island of Cuba to liberate the nation from Fidel Castro and his communists. The idea was to repeat the same landing that Castro did in the past. The Russians were shipping weapons of mass destruction to Cuba.

The planning for this liberation landing started under the Dwight Eisenhower presidency. Unfortunately his term ended before it was put into action. John F. Kennedy inherited the project, and kept it going.

The Americans kept saying that they were not going to participate in the invasion, but they did help with training, weapons, and intelligence. Even though Americans kept repeating that they were not going to help directly, most of the Cuban freedom fighters assumed that Americans would change their mind and fight against Communism.

In Miami, the CIA was organizing the new government. The training for the freedom fighters took place in a plantation in Guatemala.

People in charge of the liberation kept asking Kennedy for direct involvement and more resources. Unfortunately, Kennedy lost his nerve and took resources away and demanded no direct American intervention.

The landing was hurried. The idea was that the people in Cuba will rise to arms once they learned about the liberation forces landing. Yet tragedy happened. The insurgency didn't happen. And the people near the beach, instead of receiving the liberators, began to attack them as enemies.

Castro quickly moved his Soviet tanks and planes to the landing site. Although the Cubans patriots fought heroically and better than the communist Cubans, the bigger numbers and lack of supply line brought an end to the invasion. Many died and many were captured.

This incident triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis