The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba began

Before dawn on April 17, 1961, roughly 1,400 Cuban exiles of Brigade 2506 landed at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s southern coast. Armed with American weapons and ferried by American landing craft, they were the visible edge of a covert operation the CIA had been planning since the Eisenhower administration to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Almost nothing went to plan. An earlier air strike had failed to destroy Castro’s small air force, which now sank supply ships and pinned the invaders on the beach. President Kennedy, anxious to hide US involvement, withheld further air cover. The exile force, badly outnumbered, had no realistic path inland.

Brigade 2506 was defeated within two days; more than 100 were killed and nearly 1,200 captured.

The fiasco humiliated Washington, hardened Castro’s grip, and pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union — setting the stage for the missile crisis a year later.