The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Bay Of Pigs

The Cuban Missile crisis was a time period during the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States. It was a political standoff between these two countries that lasted for a total of 13 days in took place between October 16-28 1962. It was called the Cuban Missile Crisis because it was all about the United States finding out that the Soviet Union had put nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of America. In 1959 Fidel Castro took control of the island Cuba located in the Caribbean, once taking control he began to align himself with the Soviet Union. Once aligned with Khrushchev the leader of Soviet Union the Cubans relied on the Soviets to provide Cuba with Economic and military aid. The crisis started when an American …show more content…
In 1959 Fidel Castro a Cuban Nationalist overthrew the American-backed Cuban government. This Bay of Pigs operation also played a key role in “Presidential campaign between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy” The American people were becoming “fearful of a growing Communist presence in Cuba, and the candidates played upon their fears.” Many Cubans were happy that Fidel overthrows Fulgencio Batista as Batista was pro-American and American Companies which were taking over Cuba and Batista were doing nothing about it. The plan for the invasion was to use Cuban exiles being trained by American soldiers to lead the invasion and to keep US involvement out of it. Kennedy was worried that people would find out the US was involved in the invasion, but the CIA told him that it would not and that if the plan worked it could start up an uprising to kick Castro out of power. The plan had a few parts, the first part was to destroy Fidel Castro minuscule Air Force, hopefully making it impossible for his air force to provide resistance. A group of American Bombers painted to look like stolen Cuban Planes, went off to destroy they air bases, but little did Kennedy know Castro found out about his plan and had moved his planes to safety before they could be destroyed. Kennedy began to doubt the Central Intelligence Agency's promise that this plan would be secret and successful but it would be too late to stop the plan. So on April 17, 1961, the Brigade of Cuban exiles began its invasion of Cuba on the Bay of Pigs and isolated part of the island. The Central Intelligence Agency goal of keeping this mission secret did not last for long as there was a radio station on the beach which the reconnaissance team from the Central Intelligence Agency failed to spot, broadcasted the operation across Cuba. Many of the