◆ SpookStack

as far back as D-6. But .•• you risk your covert operation when you start doing that You couldn't depend on doing it all at one .•. on one strike. In other words, if you would like to establish the fact that you have control of the air before you hit the beaches. You have got to go before D-Day, unless you are prepared for air-to- air combat -- which we were not. The thing is, I don't think the air operation really ever got seriously nailed down to a schedule until after we went to the second landing site. You see, the air people wou1d like to have gone in and neutralized it all be- fore the ground force was there. But, of course, ... you start compromising your covertness •.. What you did was to alert the world press that something was probably going on. In other words, we couldn't do everything we desired to do to guarantee neutralizing the Cuban Air Force in one day. ?J Unlike Cols. Beerli and Gaines, Gar Thorsrud, who was Air Commander at JMTIDE, and would be responsi- ble for setting the tactical .air operations into motion, was far more optimistic about what might have been attained by the single D-Day air strike using the full force of B-26's as originally intended. Thorsrud said: The tactical strikes -- or if you want to call them strategic -- really didn't matter whether it was TRINIDAD or Playa Giron, because we had to knock out the air -- the enemy air capabilities, and I was in on the tactical planning on how we hit those fields. The time of day, and the type of weapons that we were going to use. That was for the first day of the operation. That was to go in simultaneously - 185 -