New Questions About The "Bay of Pigs" Fiasco

Factual Questions
1

A new book has come out on this (sorry, the wife took it back to the library).
Anyway, the book is not kind to JFK-his actions in this reveal him to be timid, indecisive, and downright criminal (sending the Cuban liberation brigade to certain death and capture).
Anyway, the book claimed that:
-a US Navy task force was sent to Cuba, including the carrier “Kittyhawk”. Normally, the Kittyhawk carried propeller drive planes, this time it received a squadron of jet A4 fighter/bombers. The ship was hove to off South Carolina, and a work detail painted over the ship’s ID number. A canvas screen was also hung over the transom, concealing the ship’s name.

  • Kennedy told the invasion force that planes from the Kittyhawk would destroy Castro’s airforce (which included a number of British-made jets.
  • after the initial landings, ships carrying supplies for the invading force were attacked and sunk by the Castro airforce-the US watched this happen and did nothing.
    -Kennedy was urged by the admiral in charge, to order an airstrike 9this would have completely destroyed Castro’s airforce, and saved the expeditionary force from air attack.
    If all of this is true, Kennedy was guilty of extreme treachery-without air support, the invasion stood zero chances of success.
    The other claim I found interesting: as part of a plan to rescue the troops taken prisoner, the Kennedy adminstration agreed to pay Castro off in cash and medicines. Part of the cash was obtained from Cardinal Cushing of Boston-who had collected the money under the guise of funding a church run charity in Latin American (the Society of St. James).
    All pretty devastating to Kenndy’s image-is this stuff true?
    I promise to get the book title!:smack:
2

I know little about the whole incident, much less specifics like this but the above claim just smacks of improbability. There are experts who can tell which tugboat is which just from looking at the anchor. Naming a whole carrier from it’s silhouette would be child’s play. What would be the point? This is not even ‘plausible deniability’.

3

Plus the fact that not a whole lot of Navies even have carriers. It’s not like Castro would think it was a Uruguayan supercarrier launching planes at him.

And looking at Wikipedia - the Kitty Hawk wasn’t even commissioned until April 29, 1961 - 10 days after the Bay of Pigs.

4

That does seem unlikely. Covering over a carrier’s ID with paint and canvas wouldn’t do anything to actually conceal a carrier’s identity (were the Cubans supposed to believe it was some other country’s aircraft carrier?) but it was a red flag that the carrier was doing something covert.

If you can’t be invisible, your next best disguise is looking innocent. The Kittyhawk should have just acted normal like it was on a routine training cruise.

eta: Reading muldoonthief’s post, what probably happened was the Kittyhawk was still undergoing some last minute cosmetic work as part of its shakedown cruise. People saw paint and canvas and assumed a sinister motive.

5

The presence and activity of US forces was a feint. It was never intended that US forces would set foot on, or attack the island of Cuba by air or sea (and was so stated by JFK), although there were some CIA operatives present (and possibly a SEAL team). The ship activity was intended to draw off the attention of the Cuban armed forces, while a force of guerilla fighters made landing, and planes (admittedly of US manufacture) piloted by Cuban exiles made air strikes. As history reveals, it was a cock-up from the get-go, with most of the equipment becoming lost upon the attempted landings.

As for what JFK may or may not have told the guerilla fighters, it’s doubtful that he would have spoken directly to any of them about US involvement. Without having read the book you are referring to, it’s impossible to determine the truthfulness of the assertions. It was a CIA operation from start to finish, with the go-ahead given by the president.

6

Getting back to the main point of the OP, Kennedy never told the invasion force anything. The President wasn’t briefing Cuban exiles.

The landing forces may have been told that they’d get American air support if they ran into trouble but that was just a bunch of smoke. Kennedy had not given any prior authorization before the mission began. And he had been told direct American support wouldn’t be needed. The biggest mistake Kennedy made was trusting people who turned out to be untrustworthy.

Some people in the military and CIA may have assumed Kennedy would agree to American intervention after the invasion began. But they assumed wrongly. It’s the President’s job to decide when to use military force and he decided this wasn’t the time. The people who should be ashamed are the ones who made promises they didn’t have the authority to make.

7

Pretty much this. Who else would have had carriers at that time, let alone ones carrying jet powered air craft? The only ones I can think of besides the US would be the Brits and maybe the French (did they have any carriers at that time??). Who else had them who would possibly have attacked Cuba, or provided support to the rebels??

The claim doesn’t even make any sense.

Here is the Wiki page for the Kittyhawk…look at the picture. Even if you painted it a different color and changes the number, it’s still pretty distinctively a US carrier. It would be like painting stripes on an elephant and saying it was a zebra.

From the Wiki page:

-XT

8

Well, according to the Navy, the 29th is the correct date of commissioning.

9

French aircraft carrier Béarn - Wikipedia. The Clemenceau was active in 61, but November not April.

10

Yeah, the sidebar of the wiki article has the correct date.

Of course, you could get into even wackier conspiracy theories where they sent the Kitty Hawk to Cuba pre-commissioning so it wouldn’t be an official act of war if those dastardly Cubans saw through its canvas disguise.

11

Here’s the Wiki for the Clemanceau…look at the different lines. I’m unsure why anyone would think we could possibly deflect any air attacks on Cuba to the French, but anyone looking at the Kittyhawk, no matter how it was painted, wouldn’t believe it looks like a French carrier.

-XT

12

Oh, I have no doubt that no confusion with a French carrier was possible (and I wonder what it would have been doing cruising there in the first place). But you were apparently wondering if the French Navy even had carriers at the time. Seems like it did. I was just answering this, not the actual OP

13

Gotcha. I wasn’t sure if the French had any new carriers in commission at that time…I knew they still had some from before WWII hanging about. I don’t think anyone else had any carriers besides us, the Brits and the French. I don’t think the Russians had any at that time, though even if they did I can’t see how anyone would believe a Russian aircraft carrier was bombing Cuban targets or shooting down Cuban air planes to assist a rebel take over. :stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

14

On April 17, 1961 (first day of the invasion), the following non-USN, non-RN aircraft carriers were in commission:
[ul][li]Argentina[/li]Independencia - 18,000 ton British-built light aircraft carrier operating US-supplied F4U Corsairs
[li]Australia[/li]HMAS Melbourne - 20,000 ton British-built light carrier operating mostly British aircraft
[li]Brazil[/li]Minas Gerias - 18,000 ton British-built light aircraft carrier operating mostly helos and the US-supplied S2F Tracker (Note: just entered Brazilian service in February of that year)
[li]Canada[/li]HMCS Bonaventure - 20,000 ton British-built light carrier operating US-supplied F2H Banshees
[li]France[/li]Arromanches - 18,500 ton modified British-built light aircraft carrier operating US-supplied F4U Corsairs, SC2C Helldivers, TBM Avengers, and French aircraft
Lafayette - 15,000 ton US-built light aircraft carrier operating F6F Hellcats
[li]Netherlands[/li]Karel Doorman - 20,000 ton British-built light carrier operating mixture of US and British aircraft
[/ul]
The two things these all have in common is small size (the largest is one-quarter the size of USS Kitty Hawk) and the aircraft carried were either not US types or they were very different from the types used by the CIA or carried on contemporary US decks. The CIA used twin-engine land-based B-26 Invaders and Kitty Hawk carried high-performance jets like F8U Crusaders and F4H Phantoms.

Bottom line: muldoonthief was right. Any carrier launching planes at him in the spring of 1961 would be presumed to have a USS prefix on it, no matter what amount of canvas was draped over the side.
A small number of other carriers were either just about to come into or just out of commission at this time and not listed. These were all light aircraft carriers of classes designed in the US and UK in WWII.

15

There was a lot of confusion in the planning stages, including Kennedy’s part; he wasn’t the pawn of the CIA that he has been painted as being.
Read “An Uncertain Trumpet” by General Maxwell(?) Taylor, and E Howard Hunt’s stuff.
Also, IIRC, there was a government white paper, or some such, called “Operation Zapata” or something like that.
I think it was Taylor’s book that said that the original plan, military wise was pretty good, but, Kennedy started fiddling with it, and that started to bollix things up. He may have even forced a change in plan from the original landing site to the actual Bay of Pigs.
I think the Zapata book says something like the overarching reason for failure was that the military ‘failed to impress on the President the low percentages for success.’ Now, that can mean two things: 1. The CIA didn’t want Kennedy to put the kibosh on their plan so they kept him in the dark, or
2. Kennedy was so gung ho for his concept of rapid deployment, non conventional warfare to be ramrodded through that he refused to hear the military when they tried to tell him that his changes were cutting chances of success way, way down.

At any rate, none of the OP sounds too far from the truth.
The administration, IIRC, payed off Castro with some non-military equipment, tractors, etc…medicines and the troops had a Christmas eve return in Miami, 1962. IIRC, it was broadcast…

The administration did stand by and do nothing, once things started turning to crap (other than rescue who we could) …put whatever interpretation on that that you want: K was weak, he wasn’t going to waste troops on an impossible rescue, he didn’t want the Russians to think it was a full scale invasion… who knows how to interpret it. Insiders will say he had good motives, detractors will say bad…
IIRC, we hit the Cuban Air Force really, really hard on the first day-something like a 70-80 percent destruction rate…I think that the military wanted a second strike that K refused, can’t remember reason for the refusal…
It doesn’t sound unreasonable that some ship(s) had covered numbers. The US only wanted a casual plausible deniability, not a Stealth program. Intelligence wasn’t as hi tech then, and the US was a bit more certain of success than our Monday morning quarterbacking makes us. A covered name then would go a lot further than a covered name now. After all, didn’t the strike force change serial numbers and repaint the planes? The NYT had a really cool report the Saturday morning (??) of the invasion: the general theme was…uh, I can’t remember, but it had something to do with PO’d Cubans, not the US.

BTW, is everybody taking the statement “…Kennedy told the invasion force…” as literally as it sounds they’re taking it???

That’s about it.
Best wishes,
hh

16

Wikipedia has a pretty good synopsis of the main event.
The medicine etc…was common knowledge back then. (A lot of the OP was common knowledge back then.) IIRC, Castro asked for 100 million, but, the admin said ‘no way’ and came up with 58 mil in baby food and meds.

etc…
Best wishes,
hh

17

While there might well have been U.S. special forces present, the SEALs weren’t established until later the same year.

18

The only proof that anyone could have brought to bear, that the US used one of their carriers would have been a photo of the carrier, with that big number on the bow, the island and the deck.

Anyone looking at a carrier would have known right away it was an American carrier, but not which particular one. You can’t sheep dip a carrier, but for legal purposes regarding the UN, it may have been good enough.

Declan

19

A general involved in the military planning who wrote a book saying it wasn’t a military screw-up. And an intelligence agent involved in the intelligence planning wrote a book saying it wasn’t an intelligence screw-up. And the dead guy isn’t around to write a book so let’s blame him. Hey, it worked for Manstein and Gehlen.

20

As other posts have pointed out, it’s not like a license plate on the back of a Toyota. You can identify an aircraft carrier without reading its ID number. And “legal purposes” had nothing to do with it - nobody was looking to write a speeding ticket.