Customer Reviews

Wings of Denial: The Alabama Air National Guard's Covert Role at the Bay of Pigs

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Collaboratively written by historians Warren Trest (USAF Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama) and Donald Dodd (Professor Emeritus of History, Auburn University, Montgomery, Alabama), Wings of Denial: The Alabama Air National Guard's Covert Role at the Bay of Pigs is a riveting expose of the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs attempted invasion of Cuba. Four Alabama Air National Guardsmen perished in the invasion, and the body of one of them was frozen as a war trophy in Cuba until 1978. Meticulously researched, and enhanced with black-and-white photographs, Wings of Denial is a powerful and timely message in view of today's rapidly evolving international conflicts about the deadly cost of unrestrained national hubris.

This book started out great and I was very excited about the information being presented. Then it seemed to get a little sidetracked on the story in Washington D.C. rather than what was going on in Guatemala, and I was slightly diasapointed overall. I have been researching the air war at the Bay of Pigs and have read many books on the subject. I found several minor errors in the book. For example, the photo on page 86 identifies the man as Jose "Pepe" San Ramon when in fact the man is Major Pedro Luis Diaz-Lanz. That does not overshadow the book, but it made me wonder what else was incorrect. Never the less, I do recommend the book to anyone wanting to get an overall sense of the errors made at the Bay of Pigs on a political as well as military sense. I did find it very interesting to read the follow up on some of the principle Guardsmen after the Bay of Pigs.

I really enjoyed this book. It arrived in new condition. I was a member of the Alabama ANG for 15 years and actually knew 2 of the people who were involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. I had borrowed the book from a friend years ago and read it but I wanted to have a copy for my self since it tells the story of a famous incident in the history of the US involving the ALANG. The book also shows clearly how our government threw that ALANG and Cubans under the bus and continued to do the same thing in Viet Nam. Reed

While I found this book interesting I felt something was missing about the aircraft (a/c) these men flew and worked on. I found nothing that described what weapons the a/c carried other than brief descriptions of training Cubans on machineguns, a comment on FRAG bombs, but nothing on bomb load, and a brief statement that a Cuban T33 turned away rather than face the nose of the B26. This leads me to assume that the B26s were equipped with multiple nose mounted .50 Cal machineguns, the photos on Kindell make it hard to tell. While this is not critical to the story it does explain why they were attacking the Cuban Air Force on the ground and flying close air support once the operation started. The most interesting fact was the start of the micro-management of a combat operation by the White House that followed us into Viet Nam and how sorry the CIA was at keeping the operation secret. Just as importantly, that NO ONE, once they realized the operation was going to fail, had GUTS enough to stand up and tell Kennedy. Almost half the book is devoted to interviews and biblography. As a Alabamian I am very proud of the men that took on this mission and the four that gave their lives.