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Remarkable Historic Blunders these People Should be Embarrassed About

Khalid Elhassan October 12, 2021 38 min

Winston Churchill was indifferent to the suffering of starving Bengalis in 1943. Houston Museum of Natural Science

Blunder - Cuban exiles captured in the Bay of Pigs Invasion — Cuban exiles captured in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Flickr

22. The Final Blunder of the Bay of Pigs Invasion

The Cuban exiles overwhelmed a local militia, but once word reached Havana, a powerful counterattack, overseen by Fidel Castro personally, was organized. Pinned down, with their backs to the sea, no means of retreat, and no chance to advance into Cuba’s interior, the invaders were cut to pieces. The invasion had failed, but the next day, President Kennedy made a final gesture. With Castro’s forces now on full alert, any follow-up strikes by the B-26s would require fighter protection.

A B-26 practicing in preparation for the Bay of Pigs Invasion. CIA

So JFK authorized 6 fighter jets from the aircraft carrier USS Essex to fly cover over the Bay of Pigs for an hour on April 18th, 1961, to protect the bombers as they carried out another strike. However, the invasion, which had already gone from failure to fiasco, was destined to conclude with a farce. In a final blunder, the rendezvous between the carrier jets and the B-26s were missed: planners had failed to factor in the one-hour time zone difference between Cuba and the bombers’ base in Nicaragua.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.