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President or the Secretary of State. could have been in ignorance of the course of events at Playa Giron is difficult to believe, let alone explain. Perhaps the Taylor aommittee itself failed to raise the proper question with reference to the Navy recon over the beach on D+l when there was no evidence of fighting in the Playa Giron area or, perhaps, the President upon being informed that there was no evidence of fighting should have asked what the hell was going on. Finally with refererence to Memorandum No. 1 of the Taylor Committee, mention must be made of the response to the speculation of how near the landing ever came to success. The comment was: Had the ammunition shortage been surmounted, which is to say, had the Castro air been neutralized, would the landing force have accomplished its mission? Considering their lack of experience, the Cubans ashore fought well and inflicted considerable losses on the Castro mil.itia while they had ammunition. Con- trary to the view held prior to the landing that with control of the air the CEF could have. maintained themselves for sometime, with the rapid appearance of the vastly superior Castro forces on the scene, the ultimate succe.ss of such a small landing force became very unlikely. The limited number of B-26 crews, if forced to continue to operate from Nicaragua, would have been strained to provide continuous daylight air support to the beach- head. An attempt by the landing force to exercise the guerrilla option and take to the hills would have been virtually impossible because of the presence of the encircling Castro forces and of the instructions which the invasion units had received to fall back on the beaches in case of a penetration of the beachhead. 198