Bay of Pigs

[PaulMG]

Has anyone done or thought of trying, a scenario that depicts the Cuban Bay of Pigs debacle? Or a "what if" where the USA supports the anti-Castro forces?

No armour for the USA and a few old bits for the Cuban/Soviet/Civilians

[LongLeftFlank]

Not to my knowledge. My first thought is: you'd be better off using CMBN than CMSF for such a thing, since I believe both sides used WWII era weapons (US M1 and M2 carbines, .30cal). I doubt large supplies of Soviet arms had made their way to Castro yet, so they'd largely still bear the arms of the Batista army (i.e. US) and wear US pot helmets (green painted, without camo), maybe with a red star to show their new alignment.

Also, I could be wrong, but this action would seem to me to be fairly uninteresting tactically. Weren't the bulk of the rebels quickly pinned down on a sandbar and basically sniped / mortared into submission?

[PaulMG]

First part, I thought of SF first because of the Syrian civilians and regulars and that maybe with all the modules there might be a lower tech Western army to use for USA/Batista. With BN the enemy would have to be Germans.

Second part, that is why the "what if". They were pinned or destroyed because the USA didn't support them. I always wondered what would have been, had the USA invaded and occupied Cuba before the Soviets got the missles in. Or if they invaded after the Missile Crisis. And a what if allows you to give the Cuban/Soviets some toys to play with.

[LongLeftFlank]

You can play BLUE on BLUE in CMBN. Mod up the Airborne for rebels and the Army for Castroites. Same face mods would apply for both sides.

[Erwin]

You'd be better off doing a scenario on the US attack on that other little island of Grenada. That used more modern weapons.

[Sequoia]

Somalia- Blackhawk Down probably would work too. One could use Mikey D's Africa Mods.

[Erwin]

+1 to that. The RL disaster may not be fun. But, you could do a fictionalized version that gives the US a chance...

[Vark]

You mean without the political interference so that M1's and M2's and Spectres are deployed, alongside?

[Erwin]

I think that the UN forces were Pakistani(?) And they didn't like moving into town.

But, how about a rescue mission to get the beleaguered US Rangers out, using NATO units to stand in for the UN troops?

What attracts me to that is the breadth/variety of units using all modules, and using the less powerful units esp vehicles.

[Sublime]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall reading that the Soviet missile battery commanders were given enough independence of action that they were authorized to use the nuclear missiles if the US invaded Cuba..

Does anyone know where the missiles would have been aimed at, or if they would have even been able to aim them at the invasion beaches to use tactically?

Theres been some interesting discussions vis a vis the whole nuclear holocaust in 1962 idea. A lot of people with the benefit of hindsight feel the US would have clobbered the Soviets (of course clobbered is relative, if 5 icbms out of 100 hit thats still millions dead) due to our huge bomber fleet and large advantage at the time of missile technology.

Of course its all opinion, and I know nowhere near as much about this as say - WW2 or Vietnam or whatever..

[PaulMG]

The threat of mutual destruction is a factor with Cuba but the same can be said about Cold War games and lots of people want to play those. There was always the chance that one side (US into Cuba) or the other (WP into Germany) would chance an invasion betting that the other side would not use nukes. At least not right away.

[LongLeftFlank]

There's a lot of silly mythology still floating around about the Missile Crisis, even after the Russians subsequently got to tell their side. It was basically the legitimizing act of the Kennedy Administration, which up to then had been viewed as callow, uncommitted and indecisive, deeply disappointing the various liberal Democratic constituencies that had fluffed JFK into power in 1960 (sound familiar?)

The Crisis also made the academic careers of a whole bunch of Ivy League intellectuals who didn't otherwise fit into the military-industrial complex (they were incapable of building a bomber), and they were pleased to overinflate and overanalyze it for the next 40 years. "How We Smart Guys Saved The World"

The Russians were simply neither prepared nor willing to start WWIII over Cuba in 1962. They would have had ample enough reason to do it earlier over the American Jupiter missiles that had been installed in Turkey along their own border in 1958. Once the Russians broke silence on the topic in the 1990s they agreed that the risk of WWIII was high, but it wasn't because they were planning to push the button -- they thought the Americans would.

And why should they have done so? Pro-Soviet "peoples movements" were rising up all over the globe (including in Western Europe). The long run tide of history seemed to be running in a socialist direction; even the American press seemed to think so. Khrushchev was a brutal, cunning peasant, but he'd rolled from Stalingrad to Berlin with the Red Army and knew his enemy well enough to realize that he wouldn't win WWIII (either the Americans or nobody would).

Had the US finally attacked Cuba, they would have started in classic American style with massive bombing, which would have given the Soviet engineers plenty of time to blow up the missiles and installations before the Rangers came floating in to secure them. The subsequent Marine reoccupation of Cuba would have been a walkover militarily, opposed largely by guerrilla action. Castro would simply have gone back to the Sierra Maestra for a while, whilst the UN tut-tutted about the American Bully and finally imposed a political settlement that effectively put him back in power.

The dangerous time for WWIII IMHO was the period 1970-1982, when senile a**holes like Brezhnev who hadn't heard much actual gunfire in the Great Patriotic War plus self-promoting know-it-all technocrats like Ogarkov came to the fore and started to drink their own Koolaid about how the awesome modern Red Army was going to roll over the drugged out hippie draftees of the rotten West in 48 hours with their superpowered Operational Maneuver Groups and Pioneers and Backfire bombers and Spetsnaz reidytaktik, etc. etc. Fortunately, the 1973 Yom Kippur War gave them some pause, and the Afghanistan quagmire discredited them altogether.

FWIW, Soviet defector and writer Razun (Suvorov), while generally a crackpot, also floats a very interesting theory that Nixon/Kissinger deciding to install nuclear mines at key points along the German frontier (basically "use em or lose em" demo charges) made it abundantly clear that in the event of a Pact invasion, the US would indeed go nuclear, and would do so immediately. I have never seen independent corroboration of that theory (it may still be classified), so definitely take with a huge tablet of iodized salt, but it's interesting.

[jocvtrhythgd]

First part, I thought of SF first because of the Syrian civilians and regulars and that maybe with all the modules there might be a lower tech Western army to use for USA/Batista. With BN the enemy would have to be Germans.

[John Kettler]

Sublime,

There were also 200 tac nukes on Cuba with release authority in the hands of the on scene commander. Delivery means included FROG-7 rockets and Il-28 bombers. That's without factoring in the nuclear torpedoes on the FOXTROT subs we played nasty games with. Those subs had NO PALs (Permissive Action Links),and those nuclear fish could've been fired at any time. Goodbye carrier battle group! Needless to say, I nearly vomited when McNamara revealed this staggering info a few years ago. Kennedy chose wisely in not invading.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Erwin]

Nice analysis LLF. I recall that the US did later pull out the missiles from Turkey supposedly as compensation for the USSR backing off Cuba. Not sure who was face-saving about that.

[John Kettler]

Erwin,

Those Jupiter and Thor IRBMs were high priority to threats to Russia, because they posed an essentially zero warning time situation to the Kremlin, as opposed to the 30 minutes flight time from the U.S. The Russians felt highly aggrieved by this situation and wanted the U.S. to be in an equivalent position. Unfortunately for them, we found out before they were really ready.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Erwin]

Another argument I recall was that the USSR Cuba adventure was a response to the Turkish missiles, hence their removal quietly afterwards. How can one know which story is true. Maybe both are.

[John Kettler]

Erwin,

If you go back and look at our military base locations at the time, we had Russia pretty much surrounded, and well did the Russians know it. That was bad enough, but the missiles in Turkey were in Russia's back yard, thus, both galling and a deadly near instantaneous threat.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

LongLeftFlank,

As I recall the story, the intelligence tasking for the GRU was to find out what those strange concrete chambers with heavy doors and locks being built in the planned VDV (Soviet Airborne) landing zones were for. When the answer came back "nuclear mines" the Soviet General Staff was horrified. Am pretty sure each chamber was designed to hold one of these. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Atomic_Demolition_Munition

On the other hand, after the Berlin Wall fell, an actual Soviet battle plan for Europe surfaced and was reported in ARMED FORCES JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL. It envisioned using 200 tactical nuclear strikes to reach the English Channel in two weeks. That puckered up quite a few people!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Erwin]

Of course, having contingency plans for something is a lot different than doing it. One needs contingency plans for everything - even far out events. Am confident that the US has "contingency plans" someplace for a war with the UK and/or Europe. That's someone's job.

I am not saying that you a wrong about anything, just that there are other interpretations that have to be taken into account.

[sburke]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall reading that the Soviet missile battery commanders were given enough independence of action that they were authorized to use the nuclear missiles if the US invaded Cuba..

Does anyone know where the missiles would have been aimed at, or if they would have even been able to aim them at the invasion beaches to use tactically?

Theres been some interesting discussions vis a vis the whole nuclear holocaust in 1962 idea. A lot of people with the benefit of hindsight feel the US would have clobbered the Soviets (of course clobbered is relative, if 5 icbms out of 100 hit thats still millions dead) due to our huge bomber fleet and large advantage at the time of missile technology.

Of course its all opinion, and I know nowhere near as much about this as say - WW2 or Vietnam or whatever..

Here's a good read on the period, talk about an easy start for a Hot war scenario for 1961.

Berlin 1961 Frederick Kempe

http://www.amazon.com/Berlin-1961-Frederick-Kempe/dp/0399157298

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704816604576335594159928256.html

[LongLeftFlank]

There were also 200 tac nukes on Cuba with release authority in the hands of the on scene commander. Delivery means included FROG-7 rockets and Il-28 bombers.

John, I know you have a defense research background and family in the military, but anyone with even a passing familiarity with the military infrastructure needed to support 200 deployable tactical nuclear weapons, even if the majority are aerial bombs or battlefield rockets, should realize that the above statement is.... just a tad exaggerated. And is simply not supportable by the physical Soviet infrastructure in place on Cuba, which was largely still under construction in October 1962.

Like I said before, a lot of US careers -- civilian and military -- were made based on exaggerating the gravity of the Threat once it had passed. So yes, rumours got around. But that's all they were.

The Russians, as it turned out, didn't originally think it was that big a deal given Turkey and the DEW line and all that, and were actually quite surprised at the visceral and highly public US reaction. As I noted before, they thought JFK was going to be the one to press the button, which is why they folded their tents fast and got the hell out.

[LongLeftFlank]

Of course, having contingency plans for something is a lot different than doing it. One needs contingency plans for everything - even far out events. Am confident that the US has "contingency plans" someplace for a war with the UK and/or Europe. That's someone's job.

Absolutely. An expeditionary corps consisting of 10th Mountain Div, 82nd Airborne and various NatGuard formations has held thinly disguised exercises for swiftly occupying Quebec (both with and without the cooperation of Anglophone Canada).

btw 82nd AB is an interesting division, as it's the one regular division trained to conduct military operations within the US should that become necessary and the National Guard prove either insufficient or unreliable (e.g. Little Rock schools). And it is also no coincidence that Fort Bragg is the closest division home base to the US capital.* Although American checks and balances being what they are, please note that MCB Camp Lejeune isn't much farther away. So the next Bonus Army can look forward to being dispersed by 82nd Airborne or 2nd Marines.

* Yes, AP Hill, Dix and Quantico are all closer, but there are no combat divisions based there.

[John Kettler]

LongLeftFlank,

The number I gave was from my memory of the McNamara interview. Here's some real meat, with details I've never seen before, to include type breakdown and yields.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y98/may98/04e4.htm

Discussion of the nuclear release issues, weapon capabilities and likely effects.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/sovietanal.htm

This one seems to be a partial article, with some of the documentation missing.

http://sixtiesinstereo.com/content/sixties/readings/savaranskaya_tactical_nuclear_weapons.pdf

I don't know whether or not you know this, but General Curtis LeMay of SAC went to President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and openly proposed premptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, saying it would "set them back twenty years." When asked how much this would cost, the President was told "only 10-15 million Americans." To cut to the chase, LeMay was ejected from the Oval Office and told never to bring up the subject again. Not only had I encountered that story myself somewhere, but a highly cleared person recently confirmed it for me.

Regards,

John Kettler

[LongLeftFlank]

Yes, the LeMay story was true and verified from multiple sources. The big guy had lost his marbles by that time -- too many cigars interfering with the purity of his precious bodily fluids maybe.

As for the other stuff you reference, it'll be a cold day in hell before I ever click on a link called "cubanet.org".