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   Vol.65/No.19            May 14, 2001 
 
 
Cuban pilots at Bay of Pigs 'fought for socialism'
(feature)
 
By MARTÍN KOPPEL

In a recent opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, commentator Peggy Noonan gives her version of the lessons of the Bay of Pigs--the April 1961 U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba, which workers and farmers and their revolutionary leadership succeeded in crushing in less than 72 hours.

Forty years later, the U.S. rulers continue to be haunted by Cuba's victory, which today working people in that Caribbean nation are celebrating as they continue to stand up to Washington's hostility. In Cuba that victorious battle is known by the name of Playa Girón, the beach where the main group of invaders surrendered.

The main purpose of Noonan's April 12 piece, titled "Both Sides Blink," is to offer friendly criticism of President George Bush for not being tough enough with China in the conflict last month over a U.S. spy plane.

Noonan compares Bush's handling of the China conflict with President John F. Kennedy's involvement in the 1961 mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs, which was organized and financed by Washington. She criticizes Kennedy for supposedly having sought "a minimum of political risk" and suggests he should have provided more air cover to the invading force, or even sent in U.S. troops, "when there was still a chance."

"It was, of course, a disaster, and was over in five hours," she writes. "The invasion troops were outnumbered and outgunned, hit hard by Soviet MiGs flown by Czech pilots."

Noonan repeats themes commonly presented by defenders of Washington's four-decade-long policy of aggression against the Cuban Revolution. There's just one problem with her facts.

They're not true.

The counterrevolutionaries were not outgunned. Cuba had no Soviet MiGs at that time. Nor were Cuba's planes flown by Czech pilots. The mercenaries had six times as many pilots as the Cubans. And the battle took not five hours but almost 72 hours of hard combat.

Cuba, in fact, had a tiny air force, with dilapidated planes and a shortage of spare parts. The invasion force, known as Brigade 2506, used 16 B-26 bombers and 14 troop transport planes that were well-maintained, with a plentiful supply of ammunition and spare parts, and backed up by the world's number one military power.

Yet the Cuban pilots, supported by the mechanics and technicians on the ground, quickly established air superiority. By the end of the three-day battle they had downed the majority of the enemy's planes.

How did this happen?

The extraordinary performance of the Cuban air force was characteristic of the overall response by Cuba's combat forces, which were made up of volunteer militias, Rebel Army troops, the air force, a battalion of the National Revolutionary Police, and a small patrol of the Revolutionary Navy.

"We knew what we were fighting for--our sovereignty and the conquests of our revolution. They were fighting to recover their lost properties," said Alberto Fernández in an interview during a March 22-24 Cuba-U.S. conference in Havana on "Playa Girón: 40 Years Later." A former crop duster who was 22 at the time, he was one of Cuba's ace pilots in the battle, flying nine combat missions between April 17 and 19, 1961.

Fernández was referring to the revolutionary gains that working people in Cuba began to make after overthrowing the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in January 1959: a sweeping land reform, a mass campaign that wiped out illiteracy in city and countryside, the outlawing of racist discrimination, the slashing of rents and utility rates, the formation of popular militias, the nationalization of major industries, and other deep-going measures.

Obsolete planes, no parts

Washington, increasingly hostile to these revolutionary measures, organized a steady escalation of acts of sabotage and counterrevolutionary terror on the island. From the spring of 1960 on, it became clear that Washington was preparing a military assault on Cuba.

As part of Cuba's stepped-up preparations to confront a U.S. invasion, commander-in-chief Castro assigned Enrique Carreras to train a new corps of pilots. Carreras, an experienced pilot in the Cuban air force before the revolution, had been imprisoned by the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship for refusing an order to bomb rebellious military units in Cienfuegos in September 1957. In January 1959, when Batista fled in face of the advancing Rebel Army, Carreras was freed along with other political prisoners.

In his book Por el dominio del aire: Memorias de un piloto de combate, 1943-1988 (Controlling the air: memoirs of a combat pilot, 1943-1988), Carreras explains, "A group of youth from the Rebel Army who aspired to be pilots, technicians, and mechanics was selected" for training. At the newly established aviator school at the San Antonio de los Baños air base, courses also included basic education taught by volunteer teachers, Carreras recounts, "since most of the trainees had not yet achieved a sixth-grade level and others were semiliterate."

Washington had drawn up detailed intelligence reports on Cuba's military capacity. The Cuban air force "has very little operational capacity," a CIA report stated. It "has been left without trained pilots and maintenance and communications specialists. The Air Force doesn't have organized squadrons or conventional units or flights. Rather, it depends on individual flights, which are controlled and dispatched from the general headquarters in Havana. Most of the planes are obsolete and inoperative, due to inadequate maintenance and a lack of spare parts. The few planes that are operational are considered capable of taking off, but are not entirely combat ready."

In fact, Cuba's air force consisted mostly of planes inherited from the Batista regime. At the time of the battle of the Bay of Pigs, Cuba had 10 pilots--only 3 of them experienced--and 10 fighter planes: 4 U.S.-made B-26 bombers, 3 British-made Sea Furies, and 3 T-33 jet fighter-trainers, as well as some transport planes.

There were no Soviet MiG fighter jets in Cuba at the time of the U.S.-organized invasion. Those planes began arriving only after the April 1961 battle. Even former Brigade 2506 pilot Edward Ferrer, in his book Operation Puma: The Air Battle of the Bay of Pigs, makes no claim of MiGs being flown at the Bay of Pigs.

Response to the invasion

On April 15, 1961, in a prelude to the invasion, eight B-26 bombers flown by counterrevolutionaries, leaving from their U.S.-run base in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, attacked airfields in San Antonio de los Baños, Santiago de Cuba, and Ciudad Libertad in Havana, seeking to wipe out Cuba's planes on the ground. The bombers, painted with the false insignia of the Revolutionary Air Force, destroyed two Cuban fighter planes.

What prevented further damage was the lightning response of the young antiaircraft gunners, who immediately launched an intense barrage of gunfire that drove away the enemy planes, one of which exploded in a ball of fire.

What's more, in March the revolutionary command had ordered the few Cuban fighter planes to be dispersed to avoid being wiped out by precisely such an attack.

Knowing the invasion was imminent, Fidel Castro instructed the pilots and mechanics to sleep on the runway under the wings of their aircraft.

At 4:45 a.m. on April 17, Castro called Carreras to the phone. "Carreras, there's a landing taking place at Playa Girón. Take off right away and get there before dawn. Sink the ships transporting the troops and don't let them get away," he instructed. Before daybreak, much of the Revolutionary Air Force was in the air, headed to the Bay of Pigs.

On his first sortie, Carreras sank an enemy transport ship, the Houston. Later that morning, his Sea Fury fighter was machine-gunned by two B-26s. Carreras deftly eluded the attack and shot down one bomber. He then attacked a second transport ship, the Río Escondido, sinking it.

As he raced away from the exploding ship, smoke poured out of his engine and his plane began to shake. Normally, a pilot in that situation should have bailed out rather than risk his life, but Carreras decided to try to save the plane. He headed to the base as his plane lost altitude, barely making it onto the runway.

As the mechanics rushed over and inspected the plane they asked, astounded, "Captain, how did you manage to get back?" The enemy machine guns had damaged a cylinder in his engine.

Over the next two and a half days, the 10 Cuban pilots played a decisive role in the battle, flying a total of 70 combat missions. By sinking the transport ships and landing craft they helped cut off the mercenaries' supply lines and escape route. Then they hounded the counterrevolutionaries' land forces, which finally surrendered at Playa Girón.

The enemy forces lost nine planes and 14 pilots, including four U.S. citizens, members of the Alabama Air National Guard. The Cubans lost two pilots.

Ground personnel played key role

In addition to the pilots, who flew repeated missions without relief, an outstanding role was played by the ground personnel. In an interview published in the April 18, 2001, issue of the Cuban daily Granma, Raúl Curbelo gives an account of their performance.

Curbelo, a Rebel Army captain, was designated head of the Revolutionary Air Force on the morning of April 17, 1961, as the mercenary invasion began.

"It's true we had few pilots," Curbelo said. "But they acted in combat like veritable tigers in the air. We scarcely had any spare parts. But we had ground personnel--mechanics, weapons technicians, suppliers--who, although they were few and had little experience, rose to the occasion."

The mechanics "carried out so many initiatives--such was their revolutionary and patriotic fervor--that, if on April 17 we barely had six planes ready, by the 18th the figure rose to nine and the following days we had 12 aircraft ready for combat, despite having lost two planes and their men in battle," he noted.

"The planes would land and the ground personnel would swarm around them. The 500-pound bombs, which are traditionally loaded mechanically, were installed on the planes by hand, through sheer physical effort. The fueling, loading the missiles, checks, everything needed to get back into the air to fight was completed in 15 to 20 minutes. Those operations would normally take an hour. The pilots would go into combat practically without resting."

Curbelo recalled "young René Suárez, an auto mechanic with barely three years of schooling, who together with many other compañeros performed real miracles through their initiatives. They even adapted truck brake systems to the planes."

The old aircraft that could barely make it off the ground were dubbed the "Patria o muerte" (homeland or death) planes. The ground personnel would ready them to the best of their ability and then send off the pilots to shouts of "Patria o muerte!"

The blows dealt by the Cuban air force had a stunning effect on the mercenary pilots, who lost their will to fight. They could not believe or understand how pilots flying rickety planes could be shooting them out of the sky.

In a speech on April 23, 1961, just days after the victory at Playa Girón, Castro pointed out, "Imperialism examines geography; it analyzes the number of cannons, planes, tanks." But, he noted, it underestimates the decisive political element in a war: the capacities of ordinary workers and farmers determined to defend the freedom and rights they have won.

The Cuban combatants, Curbelo said, "fought tirelessly, like lions, for their country and for socialism. They broke the enemy's spirit and contributed, to a large degree, in inflicting on imperialism its first military defeat in the Americas."

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