Sixty years ago, in the early hours of April 15, 1961, nine B-26 bombers painted with the emblems of the Cuban air force took off from the small airport of Puerto Cabezas, in Nicaragua, as part of Operation Pluto, the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Upon reaching the southern edge of the Isle of Pines, they split into three squadrons: Puma, headed for the Ciudad Libertad airfield; Linda, for the San Antonio de los Baños air base; and Gorilla, which turned eastward to attack the Santiago de Cuba airport.
The surprise attack was aimed at destroying the small Cuban air force to allow the mercenary brigade control over the skies and terrorize the population, especially in the two most important cities of the country.
The CIA chiefs were sure that the action would have a demoralizing effect similar to the one provoked in Guatemala during the 1954 invasion organized by the CIA to topple Jacobo Arbenz. However, the countdown to the greatest defeat of US imperialism in the region began on April 15 itself.
As part of the operation, a ninth aircraft flew to Florida so that its pilot could provide the public version of the supposed desertion and rebellion of pilots of the Revolutionary Air Force, opposed to the Revolution, to whom the attacks would be attributed, with the purpose of covering the participation of the United States in the conception, organization and direction of the invasion.
Rarely in history has the said U.S. agency suffered so many military, political and publicity setbacks since the beginning of a covert operation as result of its botched attempts to deceive world public opinion and of all kinds of miscalculations.
From the military point of view, the Cuban leadership foresaw an attack on the air bases and planned to disperse and hide in the airfields about twenty military airplanes in relative combat conditions, in most cases in precarious flying conditions and without spare parts, while counting on a meager number of pilots.
At the beginning of 1961, the Cuban army had received from the socialist bloc and the USSR hundreds of anti-aircraft batteries and guns. Young artillerymen, after an accelerated preparation, were deployed with those weapons to defend the airports of Ciudad Libertad, San Antonio and Santiago de Cuba.
Neither did the surprise factor have a significant influence on our fighters and pilots, who remained all the time in their anti-aircraft artillery pieces and practically slept under the wings of the planes, a sign of their good preparedness to repel an imminent aggression even before the attack on April 15.
Only five of the attack B-26s could return to Nicaragua. The others were shot down or forced to land in third countries. The air raid was met with heavy anti-aircraft fire from artillery crews of young men between the ages of 14 and 17.
Under Cuban fire, the enemy planes dropped their bombs on nearby areas, killing seven people, including the militiaman Eduardo García Delgado, who before dying wrote Fidel's name with his blood, and wounding 53 local dwellers.
Meanwhile, the mercenary pilot who landed in La Florida fulfilled his task, but few in the world believed the hoax that he was part of a group of conspirators in Cuba. He was so unconvincing that the White House refused to bring him forward, as Cuba demanded, under the hallucinatory pretext that it was to protect the airmen's relatives.
The US lost the battle at the UN when the flames of the attacks had not yet been extinguished and Foreign Minister Raul Roa, on the morning of April 15, denounced the attack in the plenary session and made sure that Havana's denunciation was supported by a good part of the member countries.
And if there were still any doubts about the Cuban people's decision to defend their country to the end, their resolve became evident just 24 hours after the bombings, when at the burial of the victims in the Cristobal Colon necropolis, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro declared the socialist character of the Revolution, thus forging the victory on the sands of Playa Giron and Playa Larga.
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