Four Misconceptions About The Bay of Pigs Invasion
Forgotten pieces of the puzzle
On April 17th, 1961, a force consisting of roughly 1,500 Cuban exiles landed on the marshy shores of southern Cuba at a place known as the Bay of Pigs. The force was supposed to attack the coastal defenses and slip into the interior, where they were to help foment an uprising against Castro from within. Instead, the invaders were met on the beaches by a large force of communist revolutionaries. The 1,500 Cuban exiles only managed to gain a toehold in their native and for three days before being rounded up or destroyed. The entire thing was a fiasco and an embarrassment for the United States.
Instead of weakening Castro, the presence of “foreign” invaders on his shores gave him a rallying cry in which to generate energy for his communist regime. The failure at the Bay of Pigs became a shiny black eye for the newly installed President Kennedy and has become a sore spot for Cuban exiles in the United States ever since. Even now, over 60 years after the event, misconceptions still swirl about what actually happened and where the blame should lie.
Here are four common misconceptions about the Bay of Pigs plus what the real plan was supposed to be before it all went to hell in a handbasket.
