Word: 26s
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...Planned. The plan still assumed that U.S. military help would be on call during the landing. Castro's air force consisted of not quite twoscore planes-a dozen or so obsolete B-26s, plus about the same number of obsolete British Sea Furies. But in addition there were seven or eight T-33 jet trainers, the remnants of an earlier U.S. transaction with the Batista government, so the force was not the pushover it appeared at first glance. Armed with rockets, these jets would be more than a match in a battle for the exiles' B-26s...
...stood to reason that, considering how small the landing party was, the success of the operation would hinge on the B-26s' controlling the air over the beachhead. And the margins that the planners accepted were narrow to begin with. The B-26s were to operate from a staging base in a Central American country more than 500 miles from Cuba. The round trip would take better than six hours, and that would leave the planes with fuel for only 45 minutes of action over Cuba. In contrast, Castro's air force could be over the beachhead...
...intervention in Cuba by U.S. armed forces." But policymaking New Frontiersmen, convinced that the U.S. will be blamed for any anti-Castro revolt, were prepared to give solid assistance (short of troop support) to ensure that a coup does not fail. At week's end, as B-26s bombed Havana (see THE HEMISPHERE) the time for such help seemed drawing near-and the path ahead full of possible pitfalls...
Within 25 days the runway and buildings were completed. When the job was finished, the U.S. delivered eight surplus B-26 light bombers to the Guatemalan government. Last week five B-26s were at the new strip, along with one C-54 four-engined transport and four C46 twin-engined Curtiss Commandos. The strip will accommodate these ships, but to say that it will handle jets was an overstatement: it is only 6,000 ft. long, marginal for jets in Guatemala's hot weather...
Cuba's Fidel Castro and his bearded rebels are probably not up to Trujillo's. Castro's warriors carry good U.S. arms, number 25,000. His defection-ridden air force includes 18 B-26s, seven T-33 Lockheed jet trainers, no jet fighters...