The Brilliant Disaster by Jim Rasenberger

Author:Jim Rasenberger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2013-08-03T20:35:21+00:00

AT BLUE BEACH (Playa Girón) the landing was progressing too slowly. Troops had been ordered to gain shore with all due speed, but the coral was a killer of speed and a slayer of boats. The landing craft kept getting hung up, forcing the men to wade and waddle in from a hundred yards out. Every attempt to surmount the coral only made matters worse. One of the landing craft sank after gutting its bottom. Another was beached. With fewer craft to bring in the men, the landing would move more slowly.

Grayston Lynch, aboard the Blagar, contacted Pepe San Román, who was onshore now with the landed units of infantry. Over the radio, Lynch recommended scrapping the Green Beach landing. According to plans, the Blagar was supposed to take the 3rd Battalion to Green Beach once Blue Beach had been achieved. As things were going, this meant the 3rd would be attempting to land at Green Beach in daylight and would therefore be exposed to Castro’s still extant (though not yet seen) air force. It would also remove the Blagar—and the Blagar’s eleven mounted machine guns—from Blue Beach. They would need those guns when Castro’s planes arrived. San Román agreed. Better to get the 3rd into Blue Beach before dawn. Later they could truck them to Green Beach.

San Román also consented to Lynch’s recommendation to hold off bringing in the heavier equipment—tanks, mainly—until later in the morning, when the tide was up, at about 7:00 A.M. This obviously ran counter to the logic of completing the landing before dawn, but it was a concession to the coral. There was really no way to land the heavy equipment until the water rose and allowed the LCUs (landing craft, utilities) to pass over the reefs and get closer to the beach. With incoming aircraft on the one hand and coral reefs on the other, the leaders were caught between rockets and a hard place.

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