Nation: HOW THE CUBAN INVASION FAILED

Last April’s U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs will be long remembered and angrily debated. In the September issue of FORTUNE, the magazine’s Washington Correspondent Charles J. V. Murphy tells in behind-the-scenes detail the incredible story of how that invasion jailed. Excerpts:

THE idea for the invasion had taken root during the early summer of 1960. By then, thousands of defectors from Castro’s Cuba were in the U.S. Many of them were soldiers. The job of organizing and training them was given to the Central Intelligence Agency. It became the specific responsibility of one of the CIA’s top deputies, Richard M. Bissell, a former economist who is also a highly practical executive.

During the summer and fall of 1960, President Eisenhower from time to time personally reviewed the scheme. In late November, the last time it came up for his comprehensive review, an operational plan had not yet crystallized. It was taken for granted that a landing in force could not possibly be brought off unless the expedition was shepherded to the beach by the U.S. Navy (either openly or in disguise) and covered by air power in whatever amount might be necessary. Eisenhower, the commander of Normandy, understood this well enough.

After his election, Kennedy had been briefed fairly frequently on the Cuban situation. He discussed Cuba at length in both his preinaugural talks with Eisenhower. On taking office, Kennedy decided that he had to have from the Joint Chiefs of Staff a technical opinion of the feasibility of the project.

How It Was Planned. The plan still assumed that U.S. military help would be on call during the landing. Castro’s air force consisted of not quite twoscore planes—a dozen or so obsolete B-26s, plus about the same number of obsolete British Sea Furies. But in addition there were seven or eight T-33 jet trainers, the remnants of an earlier U.S. transaction with the Batista government, so the force was not the pushover it appeared at first glance. Armed with rockets, these jets would be more than a match in a battle for the exiles’ B-26s.

It stood to reason that, considering how small the landing party was, the success of the operation would hinge on the B-26s’ controlling the air over the beachhead. And the margins that the planners accepted were narrow to begin with. The B-26s were to operate from a staging base in a Central American country more than 500 miles from Cuba. The round trip would take better than six hours, and that would leave the planes with fuel for only 45 minutes of action over Cuba. In contrast, Castro’s air force could be over the beachhead and the invaders’ ships in a matter of minutes. Hence the absolute necessity of knocking out Castro’s air power, or at least reducing it to impotence, by the time the ground battle was joined.

This, in general terms, was the plan the Chiefs reviewed for Kennedy. They judged the tactical elements sound, and indeed they accorded the operation a high probability of success. But some of Kennedy’s closest advisers were assailed by sinking second thoughts. What bothered them was the “immorality” of masked aggression. They recoiled from having the U.S. employ subterfuge in striking down even as dangerous an adversary as Castro, and they were unanimously opposed to having the U.S. do the job in the open.

The Changes. The “immorality” of the intervention found its most eloquent voice before the President during a meeting in the State Department on April 4, only 13 days before the date set for the invasion. The occasion was Bissell’s final review of the operation, and practically everybody connected with high strategy was on hand—Secretary of State Rusk, Secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of the Treasury Dillon. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Lemnitzer. CIA Chief Allen Dulles, as well as McGeorge Bundy, Paul Nitze, then Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, Thomas Mann and three Kennedy specialists in Latin American matters —Adolf Berle, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Richard Goodwin. There was also one outsider, Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose support Kennedy wanted. After Bissell had completed his briefing and Dulles had summed up risks and prospects, Fulbright denounced the proposition out of hand: it was the wrong thing for the U.S. to get involved in.

Rusk said he was for it, in answer to the President’s direct question, but as would presently be manifest, he privately had no heart for it. Two other men among the President’s senior foreign policy advisers, not present at the meeting, shared Fulbright’s feelings: Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles and Adlai Stevenson. In deference to these views, Kennedy made two separate rulings which were to contribute to the fatal dismemberment of the whole plan. First, U.S. air power would not be on call at any time. Second, the B-26s flown by “our” Cubans could be used in only two strikes before the invasion—first on D-minus-two-days and again on the morning of the landing.

Dawn of April 15, by the timetable, the B-26s, having flown undetected through the night from their Central American staging base, appeared over Cuba and bombed the three fields on which Castro’s ready air was deployed. The attack was, on the whole, highly successful. Half of Castro’s B-26s and Sea Furies and four of his T-33 jets were blown up or damaged.

Request for Boxer. Sunday evening, only some eight hours after Kennedy had given the final go-ahead, the expedition in the first dark was creeping toward the Cuban shore. In Bissel’s office, there was a call on the White House line. It was Bundy, being even crisper than usual: The B-26s were to stand down, there was to be no air strike in the morning, this was a presidential order. Rusk was now acting for the President in the situation. Bissell was stunned. He and CIA Deputy Director General Charles Cabell, an experienced air man, went together to the State Department to urge Rusk to reconsider. Cabell was greatly worried about the vulnerability to air attack of the ships and then of the troops on the beach. Rusk was not impressed. The ships, he suggested, could unload and retire to the open sea before daylight; as for the troops ashore being unduly inconvenienced by Castro’s air, it had been his experience as a colonel in the Burma theater that air attack could be more of a nuisance than a danger. One fact he made absolutely clear: military considerations had overruled the political when the D-minus-two strike had been laid on; now political considerations were taking over.

Past midnight Bissell and Cabell restudied the battle plan while signals of consternation welled up from their men far to the south. At 4 o’clock, less than an hour before first light on the Cuban shore, Cabell went back to Rusk with another proposal. It was manifestly impossible for the Cuban Brigade’s small force of B-26s (only 16 were operational) to provide effective air cover for the ships from their distant base. Cabell now asked whether, if the ships were to pull back to international water, the U.S.S. Boxer, a carrier on station about 50 miles from the Bay of Pigs, could be instructed to provide cover. Rusk said no. The President was awakened. Cabell registered his concern. The answer still was no.

The End. The invasion force had little chance. They were without the ranging fire power which the B-26s with their bombs and machine guns had been expected to apply against Castro’s tanks and artillery. Castro’s forces came up fast. He still had four jets left, and they were armed with powerful rockets. He used them well. Before the morning was done he had sunk two transports and driven off two others.

Now Kennedy and his strategists became alarmed. About noon on Monday, Bissell was told that the B-26s could attack Castro’s airfields at will. But the orders came too late. Most of the pilots had been in the air for upward of 18 hours in an unavailing effort to keep Castro’s planes off the troops and the remaining ship. That night a small force was scratched together. It was over Cuba at dawn, only to find the fields hidden by low, impenetrable fog.

Tuesday was the turning point. The men ashore had fought bravely and gained their planned objectives. They had even seized and bulldozed the airfield. But they were desperately short of ammunition and food, and under the pressure of Castro’s superior fire power and number they were being forced back across the beach. There remained one last chance to make the thing go. Boxer was still on station. The release of a few of its jets simply for air cover should see two landing craft with ammunition and rations safely to the shore.

At a White House meeting that night, Bissell made it plain that unless U.S. air power was brought forward, the men on the beach were doomed. He asked that Boxer’s planes be brought into the battle. Rusk still would not have this. Several others were also opposed, including the President’s personal staffers. Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke vouched for the worth of Bissell’s proposition. The outcome of the meeting was a singular compromise. Jets from Boxer would provide cover next morning for exactly one hour, long enough for the ships to run into the shore and start unloading and for the remaining B-26s to get in a hard blow.

Next morning, through an incredible mischance, the B-26s were over Cuba half an hour ahead of schedule. Boxer’s jets were still on the flight deck. But Castro’s jets were ready. Two of the B-26s were shot down; others were hit and forced to abort. That was the melancholy end.