Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History (48 page)

“A LOT OF
people like the quiet and stillness of cemeteries,” Janet Ray said to me before I came to visit her father’s grave here at Forest Hill Cemetery, which presses up against Birmingham, Alabama’s
Shuttlesworth International Airport. “But I find it comforting to hear the planes coming and going. My dad flew out of that airport in April 1961, and this was the last time I saw him alive.” There is no question that Thomas “Pete” Willard Ray is buried at Forest Hill. Several FBI agents, a Birmingham coroner, and members of his own family, Janet included, all positively identified his body before it was laid to rest on December 8, 1979. Why Ray’s corpse had gone missing since April 19, 1961—the day his B-26 bomber crash-landed in Cuba during one of America’s worst Cold War crises—is the real story.

And it begins two years earlier, in 1959.

Near the end of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s final term in office, the Central Intelligence Agency began recruiting Cuban exiles and refugees to form a clandestine paramilitary unit that would invade their former homeland, stir up popular support against Fidel Castro, and overthrow his regime. Ranging in ages from sixteen to sixty, the men called themselves Brigade 2506 in memory of a comrade, Carlos Santana, accidentally killed during training exercises; 2506 was his enlistment number.

Their success would hinge on wiping out Cuba’s air power before the main ground assault, and CIA planners recommissioned old B-26 Douglas Invaders for the attack. The World War II–era bombers had been mothballed for years, but with a new paint job and some minor adjustments they could be made to resemble Cuban B-26s left over from the Batista era. By using these planes, the CIA gambled that Brigade 2506’s “Liberation Air Force” (LAF) could catch the Cubans by surprise and convince Castro’s people that his own military had turned against him. And once the LAF pilots controlled the skies, they would be able to cover amphibious forces coming ashore off freighters disguised as merchant vessels. The CIA proposed an early-morning invasion near the city of Trinidad, where anti-Castro sentiment was still strong. Also close by were the Escambray Mountains, a potential hiding spot for Brigade 2506 forces in case their mission unraveled.

Since Alabama’s Air National Guard was the last unit to fly and maintain the B-26s, Alabama guardsmen were enlisted to teach LAF
crews how to master the vintage aircraft and assist with mission planning. Under no circumstances, however, would Americans be allowed to fly the bombing raids. They were to remain on base and help rearm and repair the B-26s when they returned from Cuba. Although our government was providing all of the ships, planes, weapons, and funding for the invasion, as well as training Brigade 2506 members in Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Louisiana, the CIA didn’t want anyone to suspect that the United States was involved in any way.

Training camps were later moved to a coffee plantation in Guatemala owned by the brother of the Guatemalan ambassador to the United States, and another base was later set up in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, to serve as the primary staging area. “I’m willing to support you, but be sure you get rid of that son of a bitch,” President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua told his CIA contacts, referring to Castro, “or you are going to live with him for the rest of your life.” (Somoza was also a dictator, but having been raised in America for much of his youth, the West Point–educated strongman was “our” dictator.)

Pete Ray, a twenty-nine-year-old Air Force veteran and Alabama guardsman who’d joined the Army in 1960 to fly helicopters, enthusiastically volunteered for the assignment when the CIA came calling. “My father loved his country and loved flying,” Janet told me. “As a boy he went to the Birmingham airport to watch the planes and hang out with the pilots. He enlisted in the Air Force when he was seventeen, and he had to forge his mother’s signature on the application form because technically he was too young.” (I asked Janet where the nickname Pete came from, and she said she didn’t know. “That’s just what everyone called him.”) Ray had married his high school sweetheart, Margaret Hayden, in 1952, and they built a house together in Center Point, a leafy suburb just outside of Birmingham.

Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, had received briefings about the covert operation before assuming the presidency and, after giving it his full attention once in office, worried that the undertaking would be too “noisy.” On March 11, 1961, Kennedy ordered a smaller invasion and nixed Trinidad as the landing area. He directed the CIA
to find, within a matter of days, a less populated spot that also had an airstrip nearby so the B-26s could continue their flights from within Cuba. Sleep-deprived intelligence analysts came back to the president with a new beachhead along the Zapata Peninsula that met his approval: Bahía de Cochinos, the Bay of Pigs.

According to Operation Zapata, as it was then being called, sixteen B-26 bombers would strike on April 15 and 16, followed the next day by ground forces and paratroopers. A lone LAF pilot pretending to be a Cuban defector would land his B-26 in Miami and declare that he was part of a larger coup. CIA operatives would broadcast the story, along with fake radio bulletins detailing the government’s collapse, into Cuba to incite public uprisings. Finally, after the Brigade 2506 troops had either captured or assassinated Castro, a provisional, pro-American government would be installed.

That, at least, was the plan.

Until, with hours to go, it changed again. Further hoping to lower the operation’s decibel level, President Kennedy cut the number of B-26s in half, from sixteen to eight. When the order was relayed to Puerto Cabezas, the LAF airmen were furious. Even before the reduction they felt undermanned and outgunned; every bombing run would require seven hours of nonstop flying (six for the round-trip journey alone), and their planes carried no air-to-air missiles, leaving them vulnerable to enemy jets. With the odds already stacked against them, the pilots insisted that they needed all sixteen bombers, if not more. Their entreaties fell on deaf ears, and they were commanded to suit up and get ready.

At daybreak on April 15, the tiny squadron of eight B-26s skimmed over the Atlantic, staying below radar, and caught the Cuban Air Force off-guard. They inflicted massive damage on three airfields before antiaircraft guns blew one B-26 out of the sky and punched holes into two more, forcing the planes to land in Key West, Florida, and the Cayman Islands. Hastily patched up and refueled, they hobbled back to Puerto Cabezas.

Around seven o’clock that same morning, LAF pilot Mario Zúñiga
made a dramatic emergency landing at Miami International Airport and announced that he and other members of Castro’s military were in revolt. Almost nobody believed him. His B-26 looked like it had recently been pulled out of storage and repainted, and one keen-eyed reporter observed that “dust and undisturbed grease covered [the plane’s] bomb-bay fittings, electrical connections to rocket mounts were corroded, [and] guns were uncocked and unfired.” Others noted that, though Zúñiga’s bomber certainly appeared similar to those in Castro’s Air Force, the nose of his B-26 was metal, while theirs were made of Plexiglas.

From photographs taken by U-2 reconnaissance planes, the White House learned that only half of Cuba’s warplanes were destroyed in the first assault. Recognizing that the element of surprise was now gone and not wanting to lose additional bombers, President Kennedy and his advisors postponed further raids until the main invasion, when Brigade 2506’s approximately fourteen hundred troops would be going up against tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers.

Frogmen and demolition experts disembarked from the cargo ships just before midnight on April 16 and were quickly spotted by Cuban militia, who then ran off after the two sides briefly exchanged gunfire. Word of the invasion reached Castro at his headquarters, but he and his senior officers couldn’t determine if there were multiple attacks across the island or just one major thrust at the Bay of Pigs. Adding to their confusion were reports of landings along the northern coast near Bahía Honda. This, in fact, was a feint conducted by CIA operatives motoring around on small rafts outfitted with large speakers broadcasting sounds of crackling radio transmissions, men yelling orders, and heavy equipment being moved.

Due in part to the CIA’s diversionary ploys, most Brigade 2506 members made it ashore by dawn on April 17. Later that morning, however, Castro directed the bulk of his troops to the Bay of Pigs and ordered his remaining T-33s and Sea Furies into the air. The jets descended on the incoming forces and sank or scared away the cargo ships offshore carrying much-needed munitions and supplies. As the LAF crews predicted, the Cuban warplanes outmaneuvered them
handily, and four B-26s were quickly shot down. Without cover from above and surrounded by an advancing army, hundreds of Brigade 2506 members became mired in the swamps around the bay and were easily killed or taken prisoner.

Fearing an even greater bloodbath, the White House approved the one measure it had most wanted to avoid from the beginning. “Following is for your guidance,” CIA headquarters cabled its station chief at Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, on April 18:

Americans Doug Price and Connie Siegrist were airborne hours later and joined by several other B-26s flown by their Cuban comrades, including Mario Zúñiga, who had already slipped out of Miami and returned to Puerto Cabezas. The sortie scored a direct hit on a convoy of Soviet-made trucks and tanks bearing down on Brigade 2506 ground forces, but while the strike served as a short-term morale boost, it had minor tactical significance.

Castro was mobilizing his troops for a decisive, all-out offensive on April 19, and Alabama guardsmen were eager to jump into the fray. At this point Washington was willing to extend further military support and authorized A-4D Skyhawk fighter jets from the USS
Essex
to cover the next wave of B-26s, although only for a designated one-hour window of time.

Eight Americans—pilots Joe Shannon, Riley Shamburger, Billy Goodwin, and Pete Ray, accompanied by crewmen Leo Baker, Nick Sudano, Wade Gray, and James Vaughn—volunteered for a final, last-ditch air raid to assist Brigade 2506’s surviving members. Zúñiga, despite having barely slept in four days, insisted on going, too.

Six B-26s left Puerto Cabezas before sunrise on April 19, expecting
to rendezvous with their faster and better-armed escorts as they neared Cuban airspace. None of the Skyhawks showed. (A simple time-zone-related miscalculation was said to be responsible for the mix-up.) Wade Gray and Riley Shamburger were first to come under attack. A T-33 swooped in from out of nowhere and blasted them from the side, killing both men and sending their plane straight into the ocean.

With a T-33 trailing them, Pete Ray and his flight engineer, Leo Baker, made a dash for the sprawling sugar refinery that doubled as Castro’s field headquarters several miles north of the Bay of Pigs beachhead. A burst of antiaircraft fire struck their plane, and Ray transmitted a “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” distress call before crash-landing in a cane field. They were never heard from again.

Janet Ray was six years old when her father disappeared, and yet her memories of that time remain vivid. “We were living at my grandmother’s, right across the street from my school,” she told me. “I remember being on the playground at recess, and I watched through the chain link fence as this fancy black car drove up to the house and three men in suits got out. I knew something was wrong, and when I got home my mother was barely able to speak. The men had said that my father was ‘missing,’ but that’s all.”

More men in suits came the next week. One, a lawyer connected to the CIA named Thomas McDowell, informed Margaret that her husband was probably lost at sea and the chance of finding him was slim. McDowell returned on May 3 with Alex Carlson, a lawyer representing the “Double-Chek Corporation,” to tell Margaret that her husband was dead, and they instructed her not to discuss with
anyone
what he may or may not have been doing in Cuba. They would take care of that.

The next day Carlson held a press conference in Birmingham and announced that the four Americans were private mercenaries who died while flying noncombat cargo missions to aid anti-Castro freedom fighters. An anonymous group of affluent Cuban exiles, Carlson said, had paid the men through Double-Chek and would financially support the widows.

Carlson’s statement infuriated the families. “My dad wanted to serve his nation and fight for what he believed was right,” Janet told me. “He wasn’t a soldier of fortune out to make a buck. One newspaper article even ran a picture of him with the words ‘A nice nest egg’ underneath. It made me physically ill.”

Janet’s mother started receiving payments twice a month purportedly from Double-Chek, and this went on until 1976, when she remarried. Double-Chek was clearly a CIA front, and even Carlson had trouble keeping his details straight, sometimes spelling the company’s name Double Check, among other variations, in letters to the widows.

President Kennedy claimed “sole responsibility” for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but behind the scenes he angrily blamed the CIA for giving him flawed intelligence. After a full review of the failed invasion, he forced the agency’s director, deputy director, and chief of operations to resign. Unquestionably the lowest moment of his presidency, the Bay of Pigs undermined U.S. credibility around the world and transformed Fidel Castro into a communist hero who had defeated the “Yankee imperialists.” It also exacerbated tensions with the Soviet Union, culminating in a near exchange of atomic weapons in October 1962 after the Russians were caught putting medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba.