Introduction

In 1952, a few month before the Presidential elections, the Government of Cuba was overthrown in a military coup led by Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, an ex-member of Cuba's military and Cuba's elected president from 1940 to 1944.  During his second term, he led Cuba as a brutal and corrupt dictator. 

Soon groups within Cuba began to organize to overthrow Batista.  On July 26 1953, a group of men attacked several Cuban army barracks but were repelled.  Most were killed or imprisoned.  However the 26th of July 1953 is considered the official beginning of the Cuban Revolution, a revolution that would eventually lead to the overthrow of the Batista regime on January 1 1959.

Aviation played an important role during the Cuban revolution from 1956 to 1958 and again during the early days of the new Revolutionary government of Cuba, from 1959 to 1961. Aviation also played a primary role, not only in the different Cuban exiles groups' attempts to undermine and overthrow the young Revolutionary government after January 1959, but also in the CIA's plans when in early 1960, President Eisenhower instructed the CIA to begin planning the overthrow the Cuban government.

The Fuerza Aerea Ejercito de Cuba (FAEC), as the Cuban Air Force was officially called until January 1959, played a fairly important role in combating the rebels during the Cuban Revolution. In 1959, the most important among the rebel groups, the one headed by Fidel Castro, which called itself, the Movimiento 26 de Julio (26th of July Movement, or M-26-7), even created a small air Force of its own, called the Fuerza Aerea Rebelde (FAR). This force was instrumental in seizing or creating landing strips to receive men and supplies from overseas, and at the latter part of the war, to create its own offensive air force. After the rebels took power on Jan 01, 1959, the FAR and the FAEC were merged into the Fuerza Aerea Revolutionaria (FAR). This Air Force played a decisive role in defending the nascent Cuban government from the attempted invasion that took place at Bahia de Cochinos in April 1961.

When the CIA began to organize and train an invasion force in 1960, what was to be later called Brigade 2506, it created an Air Force that the Cuban members of the Brigade baptized the Fuerza Aérea de Liberación (FAL).

Many books and articles have already been published on the subject. A few of them were even written by those very pilots who were protagonists in these events, but no one has ever attempted to write the whole story of Cuban aviation during the revolution and of the early days of the Revolutionary government from a purely aviation perspective.

I have been researching this subject for years, by purchasing and reading every book, article and report I could find that touched this subject and by trying to locate and interview survivors. But these events took place over 50 years ago, and finding protagonists not only capable but also willing to tell their stories has proven much more challenging than I initially thought it would be.

This Blog will attempt to list the major aviation events between 1956 and April 1961 and list the names of all people who played an important role in these events.  I am doing this in an attempt to locate any survivors, or their relatives, in the hope of piecing together the roles played by each and every one. The other goal of this blog is to generate feedback. If you know anything, have any documents, testimonies, letters, pictures, logbooks, memoirs, anything related to these events, I would like to hear from you.



Gilles Hudicourt
Montreal, Canada

hudicourt@gmail.com