Victory at the Bay of Pigs

From Tricontinental Magazine, 1981 a look at the great revolutionary victory at the Bay of Pigs.

Cuban writers H. Zumbado and Arnaldo Tacoronte who fought at Playa Giron, are co-authors of the book Company, Attention!, which won the 26th of July Contest sponsored by the Cuban Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in 1975.

This is an excerpt:

THE battle began in the early morning of Monday, April 17. 1961, when the Second Infantry Battalion of mercenary troops landed at Playa Larga, on the Bay of Pigs, and at Playa Giron, some 35 miles to the east, in accord with the plan for Operation Pluto. drawn up by the CIA and the Pentagon.

The plan, of course, didn't take into account the fact that a battalion of militiamen was operating in the zone: Battalion 339, from Cienfuegos, armed only with .R-2 rifles and submachine guns, but determined to fight the enemy.

The paratroopers of the mercenary First Battalion were dropped a bit farther north, near Palpite and Soplillar. Caught between the two enemy forces, Battalion 339 defended itself heroically as it was hit from both sides.

Some 30 kilometers north of Playa Larga, at the Australia Sugar Mill, from 200 to 300 men assembled and asked for arms. The seven available guns were given to a people's patrol, headed by the sugar mill's administrator, which went out to check on the two farmers' cooperatives in the area, where paratroopers were said to have landed. The patrol returned quickly, reporting the singular fact that it had been attacked along the road by a B-26 bomber bearing Cuban insignia though Havana confirmed that no Cuban B-26s were in the air.

At 8 a.m., acting on orders from Fidel, Captain Fernandez - "the Gallego" - head of the Matanzas School for Militia Chiefs, arrived at the Australia Sugar Mill with part of a battalion from the school.

Fidel arrived soon afterwards and, as Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, immediately set up General Staff headquarters in the Australia Sugar Mill.

The rest of the battalion arrived from the Matanzas School for Militia Chiefs - six companies and two mortar batteries making a total of some 700 men. Palpite and Soplillar had to be captured, at once, to establish a firm base.

At the same time, the old, patched up planes of the Revolutionary Air Force - which weren't included in the plan for Operation Pluto, either - took off from the San Antonio de los Banos Air Base.

The ancient Sea Furies, T-33s and B-26s began flying over the Bay of Pigs. Below were the landing craft and the mercenary ship Aguja - the former Houston - armed with antiaircraft guns. In the air, there were enemy B-26s. A rocket hit the Garcia Line's Aguja, and the ship went down, tossing members of the Fifth Infantry Battalion into the sea, where some drowned and others managed to swim to shore.

Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Air Force and Cuban antiaircraft units - all of which Operation Pluto had ignored - shot down one, two, three, four, five enemy B-26s.

Cuban planes made 17 flights that day, losing a B-26 piloted by Luis Silva Tablada and a fighter plane flown by Lieutenant Carlos Ulloa, a Nicaraguan pilot who fought along with the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force.

At midday on April 17, Palpite and Soplillar were captured, and the march toward Playa Larga began. At 1 p.m., B-26s bearing Cuban insignia greeted the advancing Battalion of Militia Chiefs. It was a trap: the planes then turned and strafed the battalion with .50 caliber machine guns, also using rockets, bombs and napalm. The houses in Palpile were set on fire.

At 4:30 p.m., Fidel set up the Palpite Command Post, from which the attack on Playa Larga was to be launched that night.

Darkness fell.

On that first day of the battle of Giron, a well-trained, well-armed mercenary brigade of 1500 men, wearing arm bands with a white cross on a blue and green background bearing the number 2506, invaded the southern part of what was then Las Villas Province, seizing Playa Larga and Playa Giron.

The advance paratroopers dropped near Palpite and Soplillar were forced back, but the invaders dug in at Playa Larga, with the revolutionary troops holding firm in the Zapata Swamp, just opposite.

Other revolutionary troops were advancing toward Giron: from the north, past the Covadonga Sugar Mill; from the northeast, via Horquita; and from the east, all along the coast. The situation was tightening up.

Then came the great surprise. The planes that weren't there, according to Operation Pluto, turned out to be very much in evidence, doing plenty of damage. By nightfall on April 17, the first day of battle, the enemy had lost five planes and five ships (more than half its total fleet}, but it remained entrenched at Playa Larga throughout that night.

The Second Infantry Battalion, which had landed with the backing of two squadrons from the Heavy Weapons Battalion - one armed with .50-cahber machine guns and the other with recoilless rifles - was joined by the remnants of the Fifth Battalion, which had been dumped into the sea by the Aguja, and a motorized company from the Fourth Battalion - two M-41 Walker Bulldog tanks and a 106.7-mm. mortar platoon from Playa Giron.

All this reinforced the enemy's position at Playa Larga.

The enemy found a triangular open space with a mound of earth where its guns could be placed and tanks hidden - a narrow strip of land no more than 200 meters long on which it emplaced all its mortars, machine guns, recoilless rifles, tanks and infantry troops.

Ahead lay the road to Palpite - so straight that the enemy could adjust the fire of its .50 Caliber guns to cover the road for three or four kilometers. making it extremely difficult for the revolutionary troops to advance.

But they did: the Battalion of Militia Chiefs and the Special Combat Column of the Rebel Army advanced on Playa Larga with tanks, 122-mm. howitzers, 37- and 85-mm. guns and mortars.

The attack, which was launched at about 1 a.m., turned the sky red. The enemy loosed a powerful barrage of thundering tank guns and bursting mortars. At the Granma base, four revolutionary artillerymen - all under 20 years old - were killed when a projectile fell on their antiaircraft gun.

Tracers from the .50 caliber guns were clearly visible at the Palpite Command Post, where Fidel was directing operations.

The advance on the enemy was led by four tanks, with the Third, Fourth and Fifth Companies of infantry troops from the School for Militia Chiefs, under the command of Lieutenant Diaz, marching alongside. The First and Sixth Companies moved toward Buenaventura, in the west, to attack the enemy flank.

Column One of the Rebel Army and a bazooka company brought up the rear.

The bitterly-fought battle went on and on. The only way to force the well-armed and extremely well entrenched mercenary forces out was to continue advancing.

As the militiamen in the Third Company and the soldiers in Column One reached the Playa Larga triangle, Lieutenant Diaz and several other militiamen were shot down while rushing the mercenaries' trenches. Meanwhile, a tank got stuck while entering the one-and·a·half-meter-lower area.

The battle continued. The order was given for all forces to open fire on the enemy's positions for ten minutes.

Battalions 180 and 144 arrived at dawn on April 18. Battalion 144 was sent through Soplillar to Galeton del Rosario, and Battalion 180 advanced with the tanks along the highway to Playa Larga.

Civilians ran out waving white flags as they entered Playa Larga. The enemy was nowhere in sight. The Second Battalion of mercenaries, reinforced by the Heavy Weapons Battalion, the Fifth Battalion and the motorized Fourth Battalion, had retreated toward Giron.

Playa Larga was taken in the early morning of Tuesday, April 18.

At about 3 p.m. that day, the revolutionary troops advanced toward Playa Giron in jeeps, buses, trucks and any other available means of transportation.

At the same time, Battalion 111 was advancing along the road from Soplillar to Cayo Ramona. Northeast of Giron, around San Blas, troops, artillery and tanks were moving up, while, farther to the northeast, around Yaguarama and Horquita, three battalions and a tank company were closing the gap. To the east, two more battalions were advancing along the coast.

By the night of Tuesday, April 18, forty hours after the mercenary landing, Brigade 2506 had lost one position after another and was continuing to give ground under fire - until it finally holed up at the last available place: Playa Giron.

There it remained well entrenched, with the tank companies along all three fronts, armed with M-41 Walker Bulldogs, two-ton trucks, medium-range .50 caliber artillery pieces, 106.7- and 81-mm. mortars, 75- and 57-mm. recoilless rifles, .50 and .30-caliber machine guns, 88.9-mm. rocket launchers, M-1 guns, Browning automatic rifles, M-3 machine guns and PRC-10 radio units. In the air, the enemy had only seven B-26s left, since two more had been shot down during the second day of battle, April 18.

Above all, however, it still had the tremendous advantage of holding a defensive position on favorable terrain similar to the situation at Playa Larga the night before, but with all its arms and men in one place.

In swampy areas, the lighting is necessarily confined to a very narrow space and attacks are made along the roads. There is almost no room for maneuvering. and numerical superiority is of very little or no help, since there's no way to bring up troops to attack along such a narrow front. Contrary to all the rules of warfare, tanks have to move toward the enemy in a column. and only one or two can fire.

The only way to destroy the enemy rapidly and totally to protect the survival of the nation and the Revolution, was to continue advancing without letup, exposing the fighters to the full force of enemy fire as they attacked rapidly unhesitatingly and bravely moving up on the double and pretending that the shots directed at them didn't really matter.

The final offensive to dislodge mercenary Brigade 2506 from Playa Giron began at dawn on Wednesday, April 19. The Cuban people's revolutionary troops, soldiers and militiamen advanced from every direction: from the west, along the highway paralleling the coast from Playa Larga to Playa Giron; from the northwest along the route to Cayo Ramona; from the north, along Cayo Ramona; from the north, along the embankment leading from the Covandonga Sugar Mill to San Blas; from the northeast, along the road linking Horquita and San Blas; from the east, all along the coast; and in the air with the old, patched-up planes flown by the recently trained pilots of the Revolutionary Air Force, who filled the skies with glory during those three days.

The constant artillery fire could be heard for miles.

Nothing could stop the advance. Hard-fought battles were waged all day along the Giron front, with intense fire from machine guns, mortars and howitzers and bombs. The revolutionary troops pressed on, breaking through the enemy's defense and crushing him. At 5: 30 p.m. on April 19, 1961, the last mercenaries surrendered. US imperialism had been dealt its first military defeat in America, by a people determined to advance its Revolution.