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Posted on 08/16/2005 9:31:11 PM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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As the Cuban T-33 jet strafed the insurgents on the beach, a U.S. carrier plane closed to shoot it down. "Don't fire! Don't fire!" cried the carrier's air controller. "Rules of engagement have been changed."  Fidel Castro "What are those planes?" he demanded of his staff. No one could tell him. He bolted to the window and watched in helpless rage as the American-made, WWII-type bombers began diving on Campo Libertad airport nearby. He heard the Grump of exploding bombs and the stutter of antiaircraft fire. He was sure the invasion had begun. There is an old saying in Latin countries, spoken only half in jest - if you get two Cubans together you have a party, but three and you have a revolution. Plots to invade Cuba began almost immediately after Castro swept cut of the Sierra Maestra to take over Havana. Miami, Fla., 90 miles from the Cuban coast, became a hotbed of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary activity. Cuban exile organizations vowing to topple the island nation's bearded jefe sprouted like mushrooms in Miami; at one point there were more than 100 of them. Castro retaliated, according to the FBI, by seeding Miami with some 200 agents of his own.  But the conspiracy to unseat Fidel Castro germinated not with the Cuban exiles but instead with Vice President Richard M. Nixon and the Central Intelligence Agency. Castro met with Nixon in April 1959, when he was invited to the United States as the headline speaker for The American Society of Newspaper Editors. Nixon's secret memo to President Dwight D. Eisenhower about the meeting concluded that "Castro is either incredibly naive about Communism or is under Communist discipline."' From that moment, Nixon has said, he became "the strongest and most persistent advocate for" a covert military operation to fell the Cuban dictator. A select number of CIA agents met in Quarters Eye, a onetime WAVE barrack in downtown Washington, on January 18, 1960. One of them stood up and announced that Richard Bissell, Chief of Clandestine Services, had appointed him to head the new "Cuban Project," funded, organized, controlled and commanded by Americans, although the CIA took great pains to hide U.S. involvement and give it the appearance of being a patriotic Cuban movement. The plot hatched by the CIA evolved out of the Eisenhower administration and passed into that of President-elect John F. Kennedy, who assumed office less than three months before the scheme flowered. It called for exile forces establishing an invasion beachhead on Cuban soil, behind which a Cuban government-in-exile would broadcast to the world as a government-in-arms. Under international law, the United States would then have an excuse to supply and reinforce the invaders.  President John F. Kennedy Secrecy was not easy to maintain. Rumors of an impending invasion spread even as CIA procurement teams scouted the United States and Europe for airplanes, tanks, ships and other weapons to arm an exile army. News broke in American and Mexican newspapers shortly after New Year's Day 1961, that a Cuban attack force known as Brigade 2506 was training on a coffee finca and a refurbished airstrip near Retalhulehu in the mountains of southern Guatemala. In Florida, Cuban refugees arrived daily by leaky boats, homemade rafts, even floating barrels. A CIA reception and debriefing center in the Keys directed many of them to Miami's Dinner Key, where the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD), the Cuban government-in-exile established by the CIA, had opened a recruiting office. Rumors and news of a possible invasion provided a bristling business. Weekly C-54 flights from Opa-Locka airfield north of Miami discharged a steady stream of trainees at Trax, the coffee plantation training camp in Guatemala. One of the early recruits was a Cubana Airlines captain named Eduardo Ferrer. Passengers on Flight 480 from Havana to Santiago de Cuba on the morning of July 27, 1960, included Pepe Vergara, Alberto Perez and Perez's "wife," who made herself appear pregnant with a pillow inside her dress. Cushioned behind the pillow was a .45 pistol. Captain Ferrer also managed to smuggle aboard in his flight bag a 9mm Browning pistol given to him in Havana by a CIA agent known only as "John."  Brigade airstrip built by the U.S. at Retalhuleu, Guatemala. Base Trax was high in the mountains in the background. Fifteen minutes after takeoff, Ferrer turned the airplane controls over to his co-pilot, saying he was going for coffee. With Pepe Vergara, he walked to the rear of the plane where an armed guard rode with each flight to keep an eye on the passengers. Ferrer thrust his pistol against the guard's neck while Perez kept everyone else neutral with his "wife's" gun. "One move and I'll kill you," Ferrer warned the guard. Half the passengers asked for political asylum in Miami when they arrived. Perez and Vergara joined Brigade 2506 and shipped out to Guatemala. Ferrer and 45 other Cuban pilots formed the foundation for what soon became, with 16 B-26 bombers and 12 C-46 and C-54 transports, one of the largest air forces in Latin America. The transports immediately began flying re-supply missions to guerrillas in Cuba's Escambray Mountains and Sierra Maestra while U.S. pilots trained Cuban bomber jockeys to knock out Castro's air force in support of a pending invasion.  Another recruit was Pablo Organvides Parada, who had once supported Castro and was captured with him during the 1953 attack on the Moncada army post. Parada said he was coerced by the FBI and the CIA to either join the brigade or be deported. He became an intelligence specialist. "I was told, first of all, I did not have to take part in the landing at all, and, secondly, the undertaking in Cuba couldn't fail in any case," Parada later stated. "I asked [an assistant to CIA Director Allen Dulles] 'How do you know the undertaking can't fail?' Upon that, he answered me with the following: 'If the landing operation in Cuba should happen to fail, we will at all events intervene directly, and immediately, too, no matter what the OAS [Organization of American States] says about it.'" Cuban recruits all received the same assurance-that the project could not fail because the U.S. government was behind it and would not let it fail.  By March 1961, the brigade in Guatemala was equipped and training with four-deuce mortars, 75mm recoilless rifles, bazookas, surplus M1 Garands from World War 11, machine guns, pistols and five M-4 Sherman tanks. The CIA wanted to charter a Navy fleet to sail this vast weapons stockpile and accompanying assault troops to Cuban soil. Two CIA agents summoned Eduardo Garcia to a New York City apartment. The Garcia Line Corporation with offices in Havana and New York was the only Cuban freighter line still running rice and sugar off Castro's island. It had also been exfiltrating anti-Castro leaders. The line owned six small (2,400 ton) freighters, all old, slow and run-down; no one would suspect them of being a military armada. Garcia wanted to know how his ships would be protected if he chartered them to the CIA.
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www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk www.usni.org
www.crwflags.com
www.latinamericanstudies.org
www.jfklancer.com
karws.gso.uri.edu
Grayston Lynch returned to the Blager after Pepe San Roman and the other brigade commanders waded onto Cuban soil. An urgent message from Washington awaited him: "Castro still has operational aircraft. Expect you to be hit at dawn. Unload all troops and supplies and take ships to sea as soon as possible." Grayston Lynch In spite of the reef, the brigade's 1,453 soldiers began pouring onto "Blue Beach" at Playa Giron in the pre-dawn hours of April 17. The other half of the landing under the command of Hugo Sueiro disembarked at "Red Beach" at Playa Largo deep in the mouth of the bay, 20 miles away. It took light machinegun fire, but landed without casualties to find a microwave radio station still warm from use. So much for the CIA's intelligence that the Bay of Pigs was without communications! In New York, E. Howard Hunt dictated a press release in the name of the FRD: "Before dawn, Cuban patriots in the cities and in the hills began the battle to liberate our homeland from the despotic rule of Fidel Castro. . . ." And in Havana, Fidel Castro was awakened at 1:15 a.m. and was told that the invasion had begun. He took immediate personal command.  By 6 a.m., even while the invasion fleet was still offloading infantry and equipment, Castros troops and his nine surviving aircraft were in full counterattack against Brigade 2506. Garcia's freighters in the bay were being pounded by Cuban Sea Furies and B-26s. Grayston Lynch on the Blager fired his .50-caliber machine gun so steadily at the attacking planes that the barrel turned white hot. The Houston started to sink, still laden with ammunition. The Rio Escondido exploded in a massive eruption of fire, struck by rockets from a Sea Fury. The ship had contained the bulk of the invasion's ammunition, fuel and medical supplies. The planes also knocked out the Marsopa, from which the invasion was being coordinated, and several smaller vessels used to ferry troops ashore. Lynch, in command on-site, was assaulted by messages from headquarters: "Go to sea!" The ships could return after dark to offload supplies. The agent radioed to San Roman ashore, "Pepe, we're going to have to go."  Defending the revolution: Castro sits in a tank during the Bay of Pigs invasion "Okay. But don't desert us," Pepe responded. "We're not going to desert you." Lynch promised. JFK's ill-advised decision not to provide U.S. air cover, coupled with his unwillingness to permit the knockout blow against Castro s air force, also took a toll in the air operations that day. Shortly before sunup, Captain Eddie Ferrer, pilot of the first of six lumbering C-46s en route to drop 177 paratroopers northeast of Blue Beach to cut off and defend the invasion site, passed over the aircraft carrier Essex and two destroyers steaming toward the beaches. He was certain they were joining the battle. "Hell, we can't lose!" he exclaimed to his co-pilot.  The C-46s were slow and unarmed and without a fighter escort. The rebels were still under the impression that the United States was providing an "umbrella." Ferrer was thus all the more surprised, after he had dropped his paratroopers on the San Blas road, to find Castro's B-26s attacking the brigade flight. Machine-gun bursts puffed smoke from the attackers' wings. Ferrer saw one of the C-46s plummet to earth streaking smoke. He managed to escape to sea by skimming the waves and slow flying with full flaps. As the battle progressed, T33 jets picked five of the brigade's 12 remaining aircraft out of the air, including the B-26 flown by Americans Pete Ray and Leo Francis Baker, who were killed on the ground when they tried to escape their crashed bomber amidst the fighting. Their bodies were kept frozen in a Havana morgue for the next 18 years. American A-4D pilots from the carrier Essex watched helplessly as Castro's bombers and fighters made sorties against the beaches, the freighters in the bay and the hapless C-46 transports. A Cuban T33 made a run at pilot Tim Lanahan, who was cruising his jet at 25,000 feet. Within seconds, both jets were diving, with the A-4D closely on the Cuban's tail.  "Don't fire! Don't fire!" came the air controller's frantic voice from the Essex. "Rules of engagement have been changed." Pilot Jim Forgy came upon a Cuban Sea Fury riding the tail of a brigade B-26. The bomber's starboard engine was in flames. The Sea Fury closed in for the kill. "I have a Sea Fury shooting this B-26 down;' Forgy radioed. "Request permission to take positive action." "Negative;' came back the reply. On the ground, Erneido Oliva's Second Battalion ordered two brigade B-26s to attack an enemy column of 900 approaching the battle zone in 60 vehicles, including buses. The bombers routed the battalion, but a Castro T-33 and a Sea Fury shot down the brigade bombers.  Brigade 2506 prisoners By midnight, Fidel and 20,000 soldiers had arrived to trap the invaders against the beaches, squeezing them into tighter and tighter perimeters. Castro's tanks and infantry battered the brigade with artillery fire for 48 straight hours. At the traffic circle on the northern outskirts of Playa Larga, Oliva and his men endured more than 2,000 shells falling on them in less than four hours. Stalin tanks rumbled against Oliva's dug-in defenders until midnight. The rebels reported examples of extraordinary courage. A little former barber called "Barberito" ran around and around one of the advancing tanks, peppering it with fire from his recoilless rifle until the frightened crew surrendered. Barberito was killed later by a machine-gun burst. A brigade tank driver named Jorge Alvarez knocked out an enemy tank with his last shell, then deliberately crashed another. The two monsters rammed each other in a remarkable nose-to-nose battle until the Stalin's gun barrel split. Of Oliva's 370 men, 20 had been killed and another 50 wounded by the time they beat back the enemy's first attack. Weakened and bleeding, knowing another attack at dawn was inevitable, the "Red Beach" invaders retreated to Giron. They arrived at 8:45 a.m on Tuesday, April 18.  Brigade 2506 prisoners Castro closed in on Blue Beach. It was also Oliva who organized the last battle of the Bay of Pigs, which came to be known as "the last stand of Giron." Armed with seven bazookas and three tanks, Oliva's battalion destroyed three Castro tanks and an armored truck during the first fighting. The brigade's 81mm mortars fired so fast the tubes started to melt. When Castro s troops pulled back to regroup, Oliva found he could no longer raise Pepe San Roman on the radio. San Roman had pulled back to within 20 feet of the water. Crouching on the sand with artillery fire bursting around him, the brigade commander issued his last radio message, shouting across the air to Grayston Lynch aboard the Blager: "Am destroying all equipment and communications. I have nothing left to fight with. Am taking to the woods. 1 can't wait for you."  Prisoner Jose A. Miró Torra being interrogated Abandoned by the United States, surrounded by a force 10 times larger, pounded by artillery and fighter bombers, pushed back to the beaches and swamps, unable to escape, out of ammunition, Pepe San Roman ordered his command to break into groups and escape however they could. Grayston Lynch later remarked that it was the first time he had ever felt ashamed of his country. Aftermath: Brigade 2506 lost 80 men killed in the combat on land and another 40 during disembarkation. Castro listed his losses officially at 87 KIA although unofficial estimates by surviving rebels and CIA personnel involved in the operation put his losses at more than 1,600 dead and another 2,000 wounded. San Roman and about 50 of his followers struggled in the Zapata Swamp for two weeks before hunger and thirst forced them to surrender. Castro eventually captured 1,180 invaders. The Bay of Pigs defeat changed the course of history, for out of it grew the Communist perception that the United States no longer possessed the moral courage to honor its commitments and resist violations of the Monroe Doctrine. The Cuban missile crisis four months later, the raising of the Berlin Wall, the Dominican Republic intervention, guerrilla warfare in Latin America and the fall of Nicaragua to Communism, all quite arguably grew out of the Bay of Pigs. |
JFK, a guy I can never ever even have the faintest glimmer of respect for.
I am goinng to leave this one for a little later. Am seeing Red.
Good Morning Bump
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Today is Norton Update Day. Be sure to update your virus difinitions.
For those affected by the Internet worm which shut down CNN's computers yesterday a patch is avaiable from Microsoft.
In the heart of the town lived an old woman. According to the testimony of a Presbyterian minister, one morning several enemy soldiers knocked on her door and demanded breakfast. She asked them in and said she would prepare something for them. When the food was ready, she said, "It's my custom to read the Bible and pray before breakfast. I hope you won't mind." They consented, so she took her Bible, opened it at random, and began to read Psalm 27. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (v.1). She read on through the last verse: "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart" (v.14). When she finished reading, she said, "Let us pray." While she was praying, she heard sounds of the men moving around in the room. When she said "amen" and looked up, the soldiers were gone. Meditate on Psalm 27. If you are facing enemies, God will use His Word to help you. —Haddon Robinson
Face the enemy without fear; Though an army may surround you, You are safe—God's arms around you. —Hess Let your fears drive you to your heavenly Father.
When Fear Seems Overwhelming |
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on August 17:
1601 Pierre de Fermat mathematician who needed wider margins
1786 Davy Crockett US, frontiersman/adventurer/politician
1840 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt England, writer (Irish Land League)
1844 Menelik II King of Ethiopia (1896-1913)
1870 Frederick Russell developed 1st successful typhoid fever vaccine
1876 Eric Drummond 1st Secretary-General of League of Nations (1919-33)
1887 Marcus Garvey began back-to-Africa movement among US blacks
1888 Monty Wooley NYC, actor (Pied Piper, Man Who Came to Dinner)
1892 Mae West Bkln, actress (Go up & see her sometime)
1905 John Hay Whitney publisher (NY Herald Trib 1961-67)
1914 Franklin D Roosevelt Jr son of FDR/(Rep-D-NY, 1949-55)
1918 Mort Marshall NYC, actor (Cully-Dumplings)
1920 Georgia Gibbs Worcester Mass, singer (Ballin the Jack, Kiss of Fire)
1921 Maureen O'Hara Dublin Ireland, actress (Miracle on 34th St, The Quiet Man)
1923 Larry Rivers modern/abstract painter (Wash crossing Delaware-1953)
1926 Haakon Barfod Norway, yachting (Olympic-gold-1948, 52)
1927 Robert Moore Detroit Mich, actor (Marshall-Diana)
1929 Francis Gary Powers US spy (USSR captures him in 1959 U-2 incident)
1932 Chet Allen Chickasha Okla, actor (Jerry-Bonino, Slats-Troubleshooter)
1932 V.S. Naipaul Trinidad, novelist (Middle Passage)
1939 Luther Allison Arkansas, guitarist (Bad News is Coming)
1940 Thomas Williams US, ice hockey player (Olympic-gold-1960)
1941 Boog Powell baseball player (AL MVP 1970)
1943 Robert De Niro NYC, actor (Bang the Drum Slowly, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas)
1943 Yukio Kasaya Japan, 70m ski jumper (Olympic-gold-1972)
1951 Alain Mimoun France, marathon runner (Olympic-gold-1956)
1951 Alan Minter England, light-middleweight boxer (Olympic-bronze-1972)
1952 Kathryn C Thornton Montgomery Alabama, PhD/astronaut (STS 33, sk: 49)
1953 Kevin Rowlands rocker (Dexy's Midnight Runners-Come on Eileen)
1958 Belinda Carlisle Hollywood Ca, (GoGos lead singer, Heaven on Earth)
1960 Sean Penn actor/journalist/world statesman (Fast Times at Ridgemont High)
1969 Donald E Wahlberg Jr, Boston, rocker (New Kids-Hangin' Tough)
Sad thing it was: The Cubans who were betrayed, left to die & get "the shaft" from Fidel.
And that then-President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was such a Hypocrite, a Wuss, a Liar and a Betrayer.
No Wonder Liberals still Hero-Worship him as if he'd actually done something bold & brave.
Hello... Yes, and the Cubans suffer to this day from the despot Castro.
free dixie HUGS,sw
The no air cover Kennedy Bay of Pigs
Johnson micromanaging Vietnam
Carter's give away of the Panama Canal and the Iran Hostage crises
Clinton and Somalia (and now what we've learned about how he allowed Al Queda to develop)
Criminal. /venting
POPE AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. -- Staff Sgt. James Hader Jr., conducts final checks before opening the troop door for Soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., during a personnel drop mission here, July 11. Sergeant Hader is from Charleston Air Force Base, S.C. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jacob N. Bailey)
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During the US Civil War, fierce fighting was taking place near Moorefield, West Virginia. Because the town was close to enemy lines, it would be controlled one day by Union troops, and the next by Confederates. 