Wings of Denial: The Alabama Air National Guard’s Covert Role at the Bay of Pigs

by Don Dodd, Warren Trest

After nearly four decades of government denial, the deeds of four Alabama Air National Guardsmen who died at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 have been made public and their names memorialized at the CIA’s Wall of Honor in Langley, Virginia. Their stories can now be told. The four guardsmen who died flew with a group of Alabama volunteers to secret CIA bases in Guatemala and Nicaragua to train Cuban exiles to fly B-26 bombers in support of the invasion forces. When the small group of exhausted pilots could no longer sustain the air battle, seven Alabama Guardsmen flew with them into combat on the final day of the invasion in a futile attempt to stave off defeat at the embattled beachhead. The body of one of these men, Thomas W. “Pete” Ray, remained in Cuba until 1978 where it was frozen as a war trophy and as evidence of U.S. complicity in the failed 1961 invasion.

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 2001

Reviews

[Jeff Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can you say, this mission was set to fail from the beginning, no real plan for success, no real take charge general, and air support cut in half before commencing.
How about Fidel Castro (The Bearded Woman) keeping Captain Thomas W. Ray body in a morgue for over 17 years as war booty!
As the saying goes, (Could have, Should have, Would have) something should have been done to Flugencio Batista so communsium could have been avoided in Cuba.