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Bumpy Road”—code name for the operation which became known as the Bay of PigS episode—came to my attention in September I960, and the whole operation was a strange one. But the way I found out about the operation was really fantastic.
Vice Admiral G. C. Towner, Commander, Amphibious Forces, At- antic Fleet, told me that the commander of one of his LSDs, while in Uert0 Rico I believe, was visited by J'Wo men who identified themselves as eing with the CIA. They said they Ranted, in effect, to requisition his s *P to carry some landing craft and crews from, as I recall, Vieques to a P°int off southern Cuba. This was to c in connection with some operation t ey couldn’t tell him about.
'Vdl, of course, he told them in
ship and couldn’t respond to any request. He’d have to get orders ough the Navy chain of command. So Towner came to me with this t0ry- I immediately called General ynian Lemnitzer (chairman of the „°*nt Chiefs of Staff) and asked him, hat is all this about?”
' Lemnitzer responded by saying, °n t you know?”
j, ^ Sa'd, "I don't know any more than told you. What’s it all about? I’m going to turn my ship over to a th ’6 characters who say that Th^fe ^rom CIA or anyplace else.” e general said that he would get 0fen W. Dulles (director of the CIA) £ Bis deputy, General Charles P.
eB, to give me a briefing, no C tUrne<^ out that neither Dulles 0r tBe deputy could come down. So jr 2 November, Richard M. Bissell, ■> Cl A s deputy director for plans, ar- ‘Ved to brief me.
Wa WaS realiy appalled. The military th' n 1 keing asked to approve any- was just being told that this ^eration was directed by the Presi- nt> and this was what was to be
done. I asked a series of questions: “Didn’t it occur to any of you that I’m responsible, among other things, for the defense of Guantanamo? What do you think might happen? Are we likely to get a reaction?” None of my questions got answered.
This plan had been drawn up a long time before. It was based on the idea that if Cuban insurgents invaded Cuba, everybody would run down from the mountains and the countryside, join this movement, and throw out Castro. Well, by the time the CIA got around to executing the plan—Eisenhower postponed it until it passed on to Kennedy—the picture had completely changed. Castro had received military equipment from the Soviets.
As described, however, my task was pretty simple. All I had to do was bring some landing craft into the transport area off the beach and turn them over to these insurgents. They were going to make the landing some time in November, but later that was postponed indefinitely because the insurgents weren’t ready.
I had gotten assurances from time to time—the last was on 9 February—that U. S. forces would not be directly involved in this operation. At a White House briefing I asked, “Am I likely to be involved in a bail-out operation?” The President said, “No,” and that U. S. forces would not be overtly involved.
I relayed my concern about the lack of intelligence that was available to me concerning Cuba. On 20 December, I forwarded more than 90 specific intelligence requirements on Cuban military and paramilitary forces, together with 29 equally specific requirements on Cuban counterrevolutionary forces, to the Joint Chiefs and the CIA. On 21 February, I received a reply stating that my requirements had been referred to the services for fulfillment. Of the 90 requirements on Cuban armed forces, less than 12 were satisfied.
If I had been able to count on my role being restricted to what was told to me, it wouldn’t have made a hell of a lot of difference. But I was looking a little bit farther ahead as to what might happen and what I might have to do.
We were forbidden to fly reconnaissance missions. About all we had going was very casual and very limited strategic air cover. We did have a Washington-controlled, high-altitude reconnaissance effort to be followed up by tactical reconnaissance where this seemed to be indicated. But it wasn’t sufficient in detail or in timeliness.
The first directive I received to support this operation came on 10 February from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (It really was a personal memorandum from the chairman to
me. The Joint Chiefs of Staff as a body was not really involved in this. The members acted only as independent service chiefs.) It said that it was necessary to take precautions to assure that U. S. support of the Cuban volunteer force was not apparent and the support for this operation be conducted so that the U. S. might plausibly deny participation. That nailed it down pretty firmly as to what our attitude was. The result, of course, was that I was cut off from further information.
It outlined a 10 April D-day. The instructions called for one destroyer to escort the CEF (Cuban Expeditionary Force) convoy from a point in the southern Caribbean to a point southwest of Cienfuegos from D-2 until dark on D-l. Then this one destroyer was supposed to be well clear of the coast by dawn. I was also supposed to provide combat air patrol over these ships from sunrise to sunset on only D-l, and this patrol was to be controlled by the destroyer.
An LSD was to transport three LCUs and four LCVPs from Vieques to an area southwest of Cienfuegos and transfer these craft at 0600 on the 10th to the CEF and then get out. All Atlantic Fleet units were to be clear before dawn.
No rules of engagment were provided, which left me hanging.
I had some problems even carrying out this simple directive. I couldn’t use planes from Key West without overflying Cuba. Roosevelt Roads was too far away. I didn’t have a CVA, and I couldn’t fly aircraft out of Guantanamo without disclosing our participation. Of course, there was no problem about getting a destroyer, but we were low on LSDs.
But my main concern was the security of my own command and my readiness for contingency operations. For example, an attack on Guantanamo, or even Key West, wouldn’t have been impossible.
I decided to use the ASW force that I had. I took the ordinary S2F squadron off the Essex (CVS-9) and put on a fighter/attack squadron of A-4Ds which I had armed with rockets. I used two destroyers instead of one. I mean, one destroyer is silly.
I had an amphibious squadron with a marine battalion landing team embarked just off Guantanamo, and I held some destroyers in Guantanamo that had completed their refresher training. I sent the 6-inch gun cruiser Galveston (CLG-3) into Guantanamo. In addition, I advanced the date of deployment of a marine fighter squadron to Guantanamo and held an attack squadron that was down there and scheduled to come back.
I kept Rear Admiral John E. Clark in the Essex, which was his ASW carrier. He was ready. All this activity was designed to appear as typical ASW operations for the Caribbean area, except our carrier didn’t have ASW aircraft by that time.
I told Lemnitzer what I had done and was ready to do.
On 5 April, I received word from the JCS that D-day was delayed at least 48 hours and probably a minimum of 96 hours.
Then came the word that there wouldn’t be any expeditionary force convoy. Instead, I would provide area coverage with destroyers, and still I was required to be well off the coast on D-day. I would be permitted to put up a combat air patrol during daylight on D-2 and D-l only, and I was to avoid overt association with this expeditionary force.
My rules of engagement were to withhold engagement to the last possible moment and to take action only when total destruction of the expeditionary force ships was imminent and not to attack unfriendly aircraft until they actually started runs with open bomb bay doors or were actually strafing.
Then I got instructions to prepare a compound on Vieques, which was later used as a refuge for these poor devils who we rescued from Cuba when the Castro forces beat the hell out of them.
Next I received word that the CIA wanted to keep military aircraft 70 miles off the coast of Cuba from 14 April until the operation was completed. So I did all that.
At about 0900 on the 17th, I got a warning message from the JCS to provide combat air patrol for shipping outside Cuban territorial waters dur
ing daylight on D-day and to provide a DD for air warning to this expeditionary force, which was beyond my original instructions.
This was the first indication that I might be called on to provide further support, although I fully expected it- Then I was asked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to put some air early warning ships on some widely separated points about 30 miles offshore.
Finally, I was advised that two of the transports had been sunk and one damaged. This was the first indication, of course, that we were in a real disaster. Then I got a message from Clark telling me that these expeditionary force ships were under heavy air attack and the steps that he was taking. He put up a combat air patrol for his own protection.
Next we got a confirmation that two transports had been sunk and that the Department of Defense had been requested to provide jet aircraft sup' port, but there hadn't been any presidential approval of this request. I was- however, directed in great detail by 3 dispatch from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to set up wha[ amounted to a safe haven for surviving CEF transports about 15 miles offshore and to establish a combat air patrol to cover them and all that. It was really 3 tactical order addressed to me as fleet commander in chief. I wouldn’t have sent the thing to a captain. It was not just what they wanted done, but exactly how to do it, down to how many destroyers to use.
So I called Lemnitzer on the scram' ble phone and said, ’Tve gotten 3 good many orders in my life, but th|S is a strange one. The last paragraph m it says that the Joints Chiefs of Star interpret this to mean, set up a safe haven. This is the first order I ever g°r from somebody who found it necessary to interpret his own orders.”
He asked me, “Where did you get this directive?” And I said, “I got ,c from you.” He said, “Who do y°0 think wrote it?” I said, “You did- He said, “No, I didn’t. That ord£f was written at 1600 Pennsylvanl‘l Avenue.” .
I said, "Well, you can just te 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that 1111 not going to do it that way. I’ll ,
what they want done, but I’ll use all the forces that I think are necessary. They don’t know what’s going on as tnuch as I do.”
This thing really went from bad to worse. I did put up a combat air patrol, and I did provide a safe haven. But it was all extemporaneous pretty touch from then on.
We were still trying to play that we tBdn t have any hand in it. I was to Prepare unmarked aircraft for possible combat use, which I did. Corn- Key West began to get six F3Hs ready, hen D.C. latched onto the fact that I ad a PhibRon embarked, and I was t°ld to move it to within four hours’ ^earning of the landing area, which I ad already done. I could see that one coming! And then I got a message to Prepare unmarked boats for possible evacuation operation, which I had al- teady done, except the unmarking Part. And the end of this one was like everything else I got, “there is no intention of intervening with U. S. forces!”
Then I ordered the Independence (CVA-62) and a couple of cruisers to speed up and get down to the general area, thinking that maybe I'd need the carrier’s attack aircraft.
I was directed to put six unmarked aircraft in the air between 0630 and 0730 local time on the 19th to defend the force against air attack by Castro forces. “Do not seek air combat, but defend forces from air attack. Do not attack ground targets.” Here were these poor expeditionary guys getting cut up, and I couldn’t blast the Cuban forces that were attacking them. All I could do was to give them air cover to protect them against air attack only.
I also was ordered to rendezvous with some expeditionary force aircraft that were flying from Nicaragua, I believe, with the idea of protecting them against attack and let them go ahead and do the bombing of Cuban forces and so on. However, they got to the rendezvous point an hour ahead of the schedule and retired before my forces got there. Now I was told, though my own records don’t substantiate this, that that expeditionary force’s air
strikes were canceled by Kennedy.
I finally got a directive to have destroyers take people off the beach and to give them air cover. If the DDs were fired on they were authorized to fire back. As I recall one of the destroyers was fired on and did fire back. She knocked out that shore battery.
We picked up quite a few people.
The foregoing is an extract, edited only for clarity and continuity from one of the Naval Institute’s oral histories, published for the first time with the permission of Admiral Dennison, who was Commander in Chief, U. S. Atlantic Fleet, and Supreme Allied Commander during the period under discussion.
Finally, on the 20th, I got a message that the JCS didn’t see any need for any further combat air patrol in the area of the beaches and to put my PhibRon back to normal operations. I decided to keep that PhibRon right where it was. I called that normal.
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