It was 63 years ago today when the Cuban people suffered a hard blow as several of their children died in the bombing perpetrated on April 15, 1961 by U.S. aircraft on three airports to prepare the conditions for the Bay of Pigs invasion two days later.
Early in the morning of April 15, 1961, camouflaged planes bearing the Revolutionary Air Force flag simultaneously attacked the airport of Ciudad Libertad (in the capital), the air base of San Antonio de los Baños, southeast of Havana, and the airfield of the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba.
Eight B-26 aircraft departed from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, with the objective of destroying, on the ground, the modest Cuban aviation and to ensure impunity for other enemy incursions by land.
The attack was also intended to make the international public opinion believe that an internal rebellion was taking place in the country and to that end, one of the camouflaged planes landed in Miami, validating the hypothesis of the desertion and rebellion of the Cuban pilots.
The bombings caused the death of seven people and 53 wounded, most of them civilians, due to the strafing of neighborhoods around Ciudad Libertad, in addition to material damage, although the attackers did not manage to destroy as many planes as they expected.
At the burial of the victims of the air raid, historic leader Fidel Castro declared the socialist character of the Revolution.
“What the imperialists cannot forgive us is that we are here, what the imperialists cannot forgive us is the dignity, the integrity, the courage, the ideological firmness, the spirit of sacrifice and the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people,” said Fidel Castro at the mass ceremony near the Colón cemetery, the largest in the Antillean nation.
The attack on the Cuban airports was the prelude to the mercenary invasion that would take place in the early morning of April 17 at Playa Giron and Playa Larga, located in the western province of Matanzas.
After 60 hours of hard fighting, the mercenaries were defeated and surrendered in Playa Giron at sunset on the 19th and this action represented the first great defeat of imperialism in Latin America.
More than six decades have passed since those events and the United States still continues to try to suffocate the Caribbean nation, this time with economic sanctions, the tightening of the blockade and the inclusion of Cuba in the unilateral list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
It was 63 years ago today when the Cuban people suffered a hard blow when they lost several of their children in the bombing perpetrated on April 15, 1961 by U.S. aircraft at three airports to prepare the conditions for the invasion of Playa Giron, two days later.
In the early hours of April 15, 1961, camouflaged planes bearing the insignia of the Revolutionary Air Force simultaneously attacked the airport of Ciudad Libertad (in the capital), the air base of San Antonio de los Baños, southeast of Havana, and the airfield of the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba.
Eight B-26 aircraft departed from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, with the objective of destroying, on the ground, the modest Cuban aviation and to ensure impunity for other enemy incursions by land.
The attack was also intended to make the international public opinion believe that an internal rebellion was taking place in the country and to that end, one of the camouflaged planes landed in Miami, validating the hypothesis of the desertion and rebellion of the Cuban pilots.
The bombings caused the death of seven people and 53 wounded, most of them civilians, due to the strafing of neighborhoods around Ciudad Libertad, in addition to material damage, although the attackers did not manage to destroy as many planes as they expected.
At the burial of the victims of the air raid, historic leader Fidel Castro declared the socialist character of the Revolution.
“What the imperialists cannot forgive us is that we are here, what the imperialists cannot forgive us is the dignity, the integrity, the courage, the ideological firmness, the spirit of sacrifice and the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people,” said Fidel Castro at the mass ceremony near the Colón cemetery, the largest in the Antillean nation.
The attack on the Cuban airports was the prelude to the mercenary invasion that would take place in the early morning of April 17 at Playa Giron and Playa Larga, located in the western province of Matanzas.
After 60 hours of hard fighting, the mercenaries were defeated and surrendered in Playa Giron at sunset on the 19th and this action represented the first great defeat of imperialism in Latin America.
More than six decades have passed since those events and the United States still continues to try to suffocate the Caribbean nation, this time with economic sanctions, the tightening of the blockade and the inclusion of Cuba in the unilateral list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
