CUBANS OVER THE CONGO
ENGINES WARMING ON THE RAMP, BOMBED UP, GUNS AND ROCKETS LOADED, THE CUBAN LIBERATION AIR FORCE WAS RARING TO FLY TOP COVER OVER THE BAY OF PIGS ON APRIL 16, 1961, WHEN THE UNITED STATES LOST ITS NERVE.
No less than a U.S. major general took a jeep out to the flight line at Puerto Cabezas on the Nicaraguan coast to give them the throat-slash, cut-engines wave, then threw his hat to the ground in disgust. “This is straight from Washington,” he fumed. “We can’t make another flight.”
At dawn the previous day Cuban exile Gustavo “Gus” Ponzoa had flown the first attacks on the air base at Santiago de Cuba. In a vintage Douglas B-26B Invader bomber disguised with Cuban air force insignia, he’d blown up a DC-3 he once flew for Cubana Airlines and returned to base feeling “sky high,” positive he and his fellow exiles were going to free their island from Fidel Castro’s Communist regime.
“You couldn’t get a better bunch of guys,” Ponzoa said. “We were strong as hell.” When the White House grounded them, leaving their countrymen stranded on the beach, “It was like a cold bucket of water poured over
