On April 19, 1961 two United States B-26 were shot down in Cuba, in a battle that could be considered as the beginning of the end of the battle at Playa Giron, or Bay of Pigs. One of these bombers dropped by the action of a Sea Fury and two T-33 Cuban and the other by the fire of anti-aircraft batteries deployed in the Australia sugar mill, where Fidel Castro had set up his command.
The B-26 were part of the Brigade 2506, organized by the CIA and consisting mostly of Cuban exiles to enter Cuba and try to win as fast a beachhead to allow them to apply for U.S. intervention. But the attempt in 1961 ended in failure. After three days of fighting the invaders did not achieve their immediate objective (the beachhead), the support promised by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) never came by the reluctance of President John F.
Kennedy, and most of the brigade was captured. The two B-26 was piloted, among others, four Americans, members of the Alabama National Guard and had been recruited by the CIA in view of her experience of these devices. It was Thomas Willard Ray, Leo Francis Baker, Riley W. Shamburger, Wade C.
Gray. All four were from the city of Birmingham and part of the hundred members of Brigade 2506 who died as a result of the failed landing in Cuba. At 50 years of that battle, the brigade who died in that operation are not in U.S. cemeteries. Some because they fell into the sea and their bodies were never recovered.
The others remain in Cuba to never having been claimed by the authorities in Washington or failure to open a negotiation about the regime in Havana. The U.S. government has never sought ways to repatriate the bodies of those sent to fight, unlike what has been done by soldiers dead or missing in the Vietnam War.
By contrast, the Kennedy administration itself negotiated with the Cuban authorities after the events of Playa Girón delivery of nearly 1,200 men captured during the failed invasion. About 60 were sent to the U.S. for being sick or injured and 1,113 were redeemed in exchange for $ 53 million in food and medicine, in late 1962.
Even former prisoners were greeted by JFK himself in a ceremony at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. But for the dead was little or nothing. Even his family received a special pension for the death of their husbands, fathers or sons, as acknowledged by the president and historian of Brigade 2506, Esteban Bovo.
And on the subject of negotiations have sought to repatriate the dead, replied: "Nothing can negotiate with that man", referring to Fidel Castro and in open disagreement with the agreements that did reach the Cuban leader with the Kennedy Administration. The veteran explained that the 104 brigade killed as a result of the acts of 1961 (including those who died during training in Guatemala in the journey to Cuba and who died in a boat that spent 15 days adrift after fleeing, after the battle), and apart from those whose bodies were not recovered, many were buried in the same place where they fell, others were buried in the cemetery of Jaguey Grande, near the sugar mill Australia, and not a few were placed in mass graves in the Colon Cemetery, Havana.
Among the latter group are the five brigades that, after being caught for having infiltrated into Cuba in the weeks before the Bay of Pigs landing, were shot on the same April 19, 1961, and five other invaders who were executed on September 5 same year by order of a Cuban court. Also in the Havana cemetery are nine brigades that suffocated when they were transferred to the Cuban capital in closed trucks.
However, the cases that best reflect the fate of the dead of Brigade 2506 are precisely those of the four Americans killed five decades ago Alabama. One of the B-26, where they were W. Riley Shamburger, Wade C. Gray, crashed into the sea, so that their bodies were never found. But another bomber fell to the ground.
Thomas Willard Ray, Leo Francis Baker would have survived the demolition, but were killed by militants, apparently having resisted capture. Anyway, their families had to make a long struggle to recover their bodies and know the circumstances that had died, something that nobody told them for years.
So, it took nearly two decades for the widow and two sons of Thomas Pete Ray's body could bury his father. Only in 1972 the CIA acknowledged that Ray belonged to his staff. Some time later the family learned that the body of the aviator was in a freezer at the Institute of Legal Medicine of Havana.
It was then that Ray's daughter, Janet Ray Weininger, claimed the body on the Cuban authorities, after which he was sent back to Alabama, in December 1979. Catherine Baker has had less luck. After decades of asking questions and knocking on doors, the wife of Leo Francis Baker came to get some answers in 1982.
Only this year the State Department informed him that her husband had died in the Bay of Pigs and his body was buried. After years of requests for the widow, the U.S. diplomatic apparatus had acted and had asked the Cuban authorities information about the case of Baker. The response was immediate: the description of a member of the Alabama National Guard undoubtedly coincided with those of a body identified as No.
425-E and buried in the block 5, second class, row 10, grave 18 Christopher Cemetery Colon in Havana. However, there would be no funeral in Birmingham. It was not possible to exhume, because the body was dumped at some point to a common grave, it would be very difficult to distinguish the remains of other fighters. 
The B-26 were part of the Brigade 2506, organized by the CIA and consisting mostly of Cuban exiles to enter Cuba and try to win as fast a beachhead to allow them to apply for U.S. intervention. But the attempt in 1961 ended in failure. After three days of fighting the invaders did not achieve their immediate objective (the beachhead), the support promised by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) never came by the reluctance of President John F.
Kennedy, and most of the brigade was captured. The two B-26 was piloted, among others, four Americans, members of the Alabama National Guard and had been recruited by the CIA in view of her experience of these devices. It was Thomas Willard Ray, Leo Francis Baker, Riley W. Shamburger, Wade C.
Gray. All four were from the city of Birmingham and part of the hundred members of Brigade 2506 who died as a result of the failed landing in Cuba. At 50 years of that battle, the brigade who died in that operation are not in U.S. cemeteries. Some because they fell into the sea and their bodies were never recovered.
The others remain in Cuba to never having been claimed by the authorities in Washington or failure to open a negotiation about the regime in Havana. The U.S. government has never sought ways to repatriate the bodies of those sent to fight, unlike what has been done by soldiers dead or missing in the Vietnam War.
By contrast, the Kennedy administration itself negotiated with the Cuban authorities after the events of Playa Girón delivery of nearly 1,200 men captured during the failed invasion. About 60 were sent to the U.S. for being sick or injured and 1,113 were redeemed in exchange for $ 53 million in food and medicine, in late 1962.
Even former prisoners were greeted by JFK himself in a ceremony at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. But for the dead was little or nothing. Even his family received a special pension for the death of their husbands, fathers or sons, as acknowledged by the president and historian of Brigade 2506, Esteban Bovo.
And on the subject of negotiations have sought to repatriate the dead, replied: "Nothing can negotiate with that man", referring to Fidel Castro and in open disagreement with the agreements that did reach the Cuban leader with the Kennedy Administration. The veteran explained that the 104 brigade killed as a result of the acts of 1961 (including those who died during training in Guatemala in the journey to Cuba and who died in a boat that spent 15 days adrift after fleeing, after the battle), and apart from those whose bodies were not recovered, many were buried in the same place where they fell, others were buried in the cemetery of Jaguey Grande, near the sugar mill Australia, and not a few were placed in mass graves in the Colon Cemetery, Havana.
Among the latter group are the five brigades that, after being caught for having infiltrated into Cuba in the weeks before the Bay of Pigs landing, were shot on the same April 19, 1961, and five other invaders who were executed on September 5 same year by order of a Cuban court. Also in the Havana cemetery are nine brigades that suffocated when they were transferred to the Cuban capital in closed trucks.
However, the cases that best reflect the fate of the dead of Brigade 2506 are precisely those of the four Americans killed five decades ago Alabama. One of the B-26, where they were W. Riley Shamburger, Wade C. Gray, crashed into the sea, so that their bodies were never found. But another bomber fell to the ground.
Thomas Willard Ray, Leo Francis Baker would have survived the demolition, but were killed by militants, apparently having resisted capture. Anyway, their families had to make a long struggle to recover their bodies and know the circumstances that had died, something that nobody told them for years.
So, it took nearly two decades for the widow and two sons of Thomas Pete Ray's body could bury his father. Only in 1972 the CIA acknowledged that Ray belonged to his staff. Some time later the family learned that the body of the aviator was in a freezer at the Institute of Legal Medicine of Havana.
It was then that Ray's daughter, Janet Ray Weininger, claimed the body on the Cuban authorities, after which he was sent back to Alabama, in December 1979. Catherine Baker has had less luck. After decades of asking questions and knocking on doors, the wife of Leo Francis Baker came to get some answers in 1982.
Only this year the State Department informed him that her husband had died in the Bay of Pigs and his body was buried. After years of requests for the widow, the U.S. diplomatic apparatus had acted and had asked the Cuban authorities information about the case of Baker. The response was immediate: the description of a member of the Alabama National Guard undoubtedly coincided with those of a body identified as No.
425-E and buried in the block 5, second class, row 10, grave 18 Christopher Cemetery Colon in Havana. However, there would be no funeral in Birmingham. It was not possible to exhume, because the body was dumped at some point to a common grave, it would be very difficult to distinguish the remains of other fighters.
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