AskEssays.com - Discover essay samples

The Bay of Pigs Invasion

4.9 of 5.0 (76 reviews)

Contains
559 words
Category
History

The Bay of Pigs Invasion Page 1
The Bay of Pigs Invasion Page 2
The above thumbnails are of reduced quality. To view the work in full quality, click download.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion


The story of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs is one of mismanagement, overconfidence, and lack of security. The blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his advisors. The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension between the two great superpowers and ironically 34 years after the event, the person that the invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro, is still in power. To understand the origins of the invasion and its ramifications for the future it is first necessary to look at the invasion and its origins.



Part I: The Invasion and its Origins.

The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26 bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Ba'os and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven people were killed at other sites on the island.



Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami, apparently to defect to the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Council, the government in exile, in New York City released a statement saying that the bombings in Cuba were "... carried out by 'Cubans inside Cuba' who were 'in contact with' the top command of the Revolutionary Council ... ." The New York Times reporter covering the story alluded to something being wrong with the whole situation when he wondered how the council knew the pilots were coming if the pilots had only decided to leave Cuba on Thursday after " ... a suspected betrayal by a fellow pilot had precipitated a plot to strike ... ." Whatever the case, the planes came down in Miami later that morning, one landed at Key West Naval Air Station at 7:00 a.m. and the other at Miami International Airport at 8:20 a.m. Both planes were badly damaged and their tanks were nearly empty. On the front page of The New York Times the next day, a picture of one of the B-26s was shown along with a picture of one of the pilots cloaked in a baseball hat and hiding behind dark sunglasses, his name was withheld. A sense of conspiracy was even at this early stage beginning to envelope the events of that week.



In the early hours of April 17th the assault on the Bay of Pigs began. In the true cloak and dagger spirit of a movie, the assault began at 2 a.m. with a team of frogmen going ashore with orders to set up landing lights to indicate 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. and 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 ...

You are currently seeing 50% of this paper.

You're seeing 559 words of 1117.

Keywords: the bay of pigs invasion was an attempt to overthrow, the bay of pigs invasion quizlet, the bay of pigs invasion failed when, the bay of pigs invasion was an attempt to overthrow the government of, the bay of pigs invasion was an attempt to, the bay of pigs invasion failed when quizlet, the bay of pigs invasion facts, the bay of pigs invasion groupthink

Similar essays


France

is a nation focused on culture. It is in many ways the "cultural capital of the world" (Lect.Notes #7 Sp.99). has always been an inspiration for many artists. Due to its strong culture and other moral factors, is a country afraid of change and its education system is subject to this fear (Whitney 4). In today, the education system is ver...

126 reviews
Download
How the great pyramid was real

How The Great Pyramid Was Really Built To this day, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt remains one of the seven wonders of the world. In fact, the Great Pyramid is the only surviving wonder of the world ("Wonders of the World"). The gigantic size of this pyramid can amaze almost all people who see this ancient monument. Many curious...

159 reviews
Download
Catacombs

The and Christian Persecutions The catacombs are the ancient underground cemeteries used by the Christians and the Jewish people in Rome. The Christian catacombs began in the second century and the hollowing out continued until the first half of the fifth century. In the beginning they were only burial places, but later they gathered to...

19 reviews
Download
American Colonies

When settlers from England came to America, they envisioned a Utopia, where they would have a say in what the government can and cannot do. Before they could live in such a society they would have to take many small steps to break the hold England had on them. The settlers of America had to end a monarchy and start their own, unique, form of govern...

35 reviews
Download
Edison

Thomas Alva , a very famous inventor who lived during the 19th and 20th centuries, invented the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and over a thousand other devices. He was always thinking of new ways to do things. Perhaps his only invention that wasn't an "improvement" of another device was the phonograph. Many of his devices paved th...

137 reviews
Download
Atsisiųsti šį darbą