"Did the Bay of Pigs invasion have a chance?" Topic

From what I have read, no.
The Cuban government troops knew they were coming, and greatly outnumbered them.
I have also read that JFK thought it was a crackpot idea, but he didn't want yo be thought squishy on Communism so he allowed it to go through. He was only in office a few months and the operation was a holdover from the Eisenhower administration.
I wonder what Ike really thought about it?

I think your analysis hits it right on the head. Curious how US administrations would pour billions of dollars and 58,000 lives in a war 10,000 miles away to stop communism but allow it to fester and metastasize right off it's own shore.

Holdover from Eisenhower's administration ? Really ?

The same guy who oversaw Torch, Husky, Overlord, Dragoon
and other efforts of similar scale and impact thought a
group of poorly trained, armed and equipped expats could
conduct a successful invasion of a nation-state ?

I don't think so…

The planning was started by the CIA during Eisenhower's administration.
I think he kicked the cab down the road.

I wonder how well briefed Eisenhower or JFK were or any outside The CIA. It was doomed from the start.

x42

Never trust others to do a job you should have done yourself. The mistake is in having the ill-trained expats do the heavy lifting when we could have sent in the marines or army ourselves.

And did we learn from this mistake? Apparently not. The Reagan Administration did the same thing later by arming and training Contra rebels to fight the Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Though of course in this instance there was probably no other choice because the ghost of Vietnam still haunts our foreign policy establishment and there was no appetite for direct intervention

Actually, the Contras were instrumental in forcing the communist sandinistas out of power and freeing the Nicaraguan people.

Been a long time since read over accounts but certainly if their was air cover which if I remember correctly was promised but never happened.

The Nicaraguan people are so grateful to the Contrad for liberating them that they keep voting the Sandinistas back into power.

I think the one of the major problems with the BoPs. Was IIRC the CIA believed there would be a "popular" uprising among the Cuban masses Against Fidel & Company.

A "5th Column" if you will. But as we saw the US thought the same would happen somewhat like that in both Gulf Wars, AFAIK. So in all 3 cases … the Intel or the estimate derived from it was wrong.

Regardless lack of enough airpower on station/as CAS was only one of the "failures". The 2506 didn't have the numbers to do what had to be done. E.g. for Armor Support they had 5 US M41 Light Tanks. Verses Russian made/Cuban crewed T-34/85s, SU-100s, JS-2s etc. And both Russia and Italian made FA, etc.

Yes it was not exactly what some would call optimum Tank country. However the few M41s did inflict some heavy losses on the Cuban infantry and T34s, etc.

The 2506 did make @ two small parachute drops as well. Not really achieving their objectives. But did inflict some loses to the poorly trained Cuban militia.

But all the Cuban had to get in range of the 2506, with massive amounts of Cuban Infantry and of course armor and FA support. To shut down the beachhead. And cut off the 2506's retreat to the boats. That were also taking fire from Castro's assets.

The loss/lack of air support for the 2506 was also a big nail in their coffin. Supplies aboard ship were sunk and/or never made it to the beach. In large amounts to be sufficient for the 2506 to effectively carry on the fight against Castro's forces.

IMO the BoPs was destined to fail as it did … sadly … One of the problems with trying to fight a war on a shoestring … that shoestring will often break under the "pressure" …

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