Cuba under Fidel Castro Cuba and overthrow Castro; the plan resulted in the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961. On 15 April, CIA-supplied B-26's bombed three Cuban military airfields; the U.S. announced that the perpetrators were defecting Cuban air force pilots, but Castro exposed these claims as false flag misinformation. Fearing invasion, he ordered the arrest of between 20,000 and 100,000 suspected counter-revolutionaries, publicly proclaiming that "What the imperialists cannot forgive us, is that we have made a Socialist revolution under their noses". This was his first announcement that the government was socialist. The CIA and Democratic Revolutionary Front had based a 1,400-strong
USS Invade (AM-254) by Savannah Machine & Foundry Co., Savannah, Georgia; launched 6 February 1944; sponsored by Miss Thayer C. Allen; and commissioned 18 September 1944, Lt. H. H. Silliman in command. After shakedown in Chesapeake Bay, "Invade" steamed to Casco Bay, Maine, for training 24 November 1944. Following these operations and additional drills out of Norfolk, Virginia, the minecraft assumed duties there as towing ship for aircraft targets and as an experimental minesweeper. She remained on this important duty through the end of the war and reported 21 September 1945 to the Mine Warfare School at Yorktown, Virginia, as a training ship.