american history is filled with great moments of triumph the bay of pig's invasion is not one of them it was an event which saw the united states aid cuban exiles in invading cuba with the intent of overthrowing its new communist ruler fidel castro in case you're wondering it failed miserably but given the sheer disparity and power between the united states and cuba how did it fail surely victory in cuba would have been easy so first a bit of background after half a decade of turmoil the cuban government was overthrown by a communist revolution and the certain fidel castro was placed in charge of the country castro soon seized foreign-owned assets mostly american and demanded american troops leave the country with the exception of guantanamo bay which was legally not a part of cuba anymore and so castro had no authority there this nationalization of mostly everything cost american businesses and the us government a great deal of money which upset them what really annoyed them though was that their old allied neighbor was now friends with their ideological opponents in the ussr as such castro had to go and president eisenhower ordered the cia to make plans for the overthrow of the cuban government however eisenhower wouldn't get to do anything about it since his term was up and in 1960 he was replaced by john f kennedy who ran on a strong anti-communist platform and as such kennedy would have to act on castro or he'd look like a fool he was presented with two plans for overthrowing castro plan one was for a u.s backed invasion from the south whereby rebels would depart from nicaragua and seize trinidad the cuban city that is not the island these rebels would then set up a new government there which the us would then promptly recognize and support in the war along with the cuban people who would inevitably rise up against castro plan two was for the exiles to land here in the bay of pigs with very little direct american assistance the idea was that they would land secure a beachhead begin a guerilla war and then the cuban people would rise up to support them kennedy wanted plausible deniability and so he opted for plan too the forces landed in cuba and within three days they'd been completely defeated so what went wrong well first of all kennedy's insistence on having deniability meant that the cuban exiles were poorly supported and the 1500 of them were easily outmatched by cuba's military kennedy was in a tough spot if he directly aided the exiles he'd have risked upsetting the ussr and escalating things and if he'd have done nothing he'd have looked weak on communism and also the ussr might have access to america's front yard much of the failure was down to the lack of american air support for the exiles which would have certainly tipped some things in their favor but kennedy even when he knew the invasion was failing refused to send in the air force and the reasons for this were that one america's previous foray into korea and its current one in vietnam weren't exactly proving to be riveting quick successes and two the cia had told him that even without air support they'd expected the exiles to win since it was inevitable that the cuban people would rise up against their communist overlords one problem though castro was proving to be quite popular and so the cuban people were largely outraged at this foreign-backed invasion and his popularity sword afterwards the exiles were all killed or captured and had the u.s made a greater contribution they could have potentially succeeded although as the cia would soon learn not with the support of the cuban people i hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching with a special thanks to my patrons james bisonette kelly moneymaker rob waterhouse moe marvin cassell aaron the white jordan longley james castaneda gustav swan jerry landon maggie patzkowski copper tone rasheed ali winston k wood misses it spinning three plates lexi schwinn matthew shipley anthony beckett robert wetzel marcus arsenault corso wolf spencer lightfoot and charles the first