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to the wishes of the Air Commander at JMTIDE. 17/ On 10 April 1961, Lt. Col. George Gaines was at JMTIDE to begin the briefings for CIA staff person- nel and advisers on the D-2 and D-Day air targets. The briefings began at 1300 in the afternoon, continued through that day and on through 11 April until the final preparations for the attack plan were worked out. On 12 April, the six Cuban combat crews, plus the spare crew, chosen for the D-2 strike, were moved into isolation -- an area surrounded by concertina wire adjacent to the operations compound and guarded by two security officers. Here, they were given a general operations and intelligence briefing and the crews were assigned to the individual targets. Be- ginning at 0800 local time on 12 April, the crews studied the targets with the advisers and intelligence \ officers in a series of two hours on - one hour off sessions throughout the day. 18/ Each crew was called on to present its attack plan for a specific target from memory, and Col. Gaines said the system worked well: . We had the Cuban pilots go over and over and over their role, and striking those three bases, to the point where - 193 -