The Bay Of Pigs Invasion

The Bay of Pigs Invasion took place on april 17th, 1961 and it was a failed military invasion/coup of Cuba and its government by a CIA-sponsored paramilitary group known as Brigade 2506. This paramilitary group was trained and funded by the United States Central Intelligence agency (CIA). The invasion was partially caused by the Cuban Revolution of 1952 to 1959 in which dictator Fulgencio Batista, an ally of the United States, was forced into exile. On july 26th, 1959 Fidel Castro was put into power. He then cut the country 's formerly strong links with the US after expropriating the assets of US corporations and mobsters, and developing links with the Soviet Union. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower was concerned with the way that

Brigade 2506 was made up of over 1,400 paramilitaries, divided into five infantry battalions and one paratrooper battalion, assembled in Guatemala before setting out for Cuba by boat on April 13. on April 15, eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers attacked Cuban airfields and then returned to the U.S. on the night of April 16, the main invasion landed on the cuban mainland. The Cuban Army 's counter-offensive was led initially by José Ramón Fernández, before Castro decided to take personal control of the operation. On April 20, the invaders finally surrendered, with many of the troops being publicly interrogated and put into Cuban prisons.The failed invasion strengthened the position of Castro 's and his government in cuba as well as his ties with the USSR. This led eventually to the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis of .1962. The invasion was a major embarrassment for United States. The Bay of Pigs Invasion started off as a idea in the CIA and the man responsible for the overseeing of the plans for the Bay of Pigs Invasion was Richard M. Bissell, Jr., the CIA 's Deputy Director for Plans (DDP). He assembled a number of other agents to aid him in the plot these included David Philips, Gerry Droller and E. Howard Hunt.Bissell placed Droller in charge of liaising with

On 28 January 1961, President Kennedy was briefed, together with all the major departments, on the latest plan (code-named Operation Pluto), which involved 1,000 men landed in a ship-borne invasion at Trinidad, Cuba, about 270 km (170 mi) south-east of Havana, at the foothills of the Escambray Mountains in Sancti Spiritus province.The reason they wanted to do it that way was because Trinidad had good port facilities, it was closer to many existing counter-revolutionary activities, it had an easily defensible beachhead, and it offered an escape route into the Escambray Mountains. When that scheme was rejected by the State Department, the CIA went to propose a new plan. On 4 April 1961, President Kennedy then approved the Bay of Pigs plan, because it had an airfield that did not need extending to handle bomber operations, it was farther away from large groups of civilians than the Trinidad plan, and it was less "noisy" militarily, which would make any future denial of direct US involvement more