196117–20 April 1961 · Playa Girón

Bay of Pigs invasion

The shoreline at Playa Girón on Cuba's Bay of Pigs, where the 1961 invasion landed — Photo: Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

About 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed at Playa Girón and Playa Larga on the Bay of Pigs, expecting a popular uprising against Castro. Cuban forces defeated them within three days and captured most of them. The failure embarrassed the Kennedy administration and pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, setting the stage for the missile crisis.

Military & Battlefields
Espionage & Intelligence
Havana, Cuba

Sites

Site 1: Museo GirónMuseum with aircraft and weapons from the battle.Map ↗
Site 2: Playa LargaNorthern landing beach, with roadside memorials to the dead.Map ↗