It has been 65 years since four Alabama airmen lost their lives in the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion mission to overthrow Fidel Castro and his regime.
In 1961, Leo Baker, Wade Gray, Pete Ray, and Riley Shamburger, members of the 117th Reconnaissance Wing, now the 117th Air Refueling Wing, lost their lives as they invaded Cuba in a Central Intelligence Agency mission to take the island from Castro.
The four men trained anti-Castro Cuban pilots and crew members in Nicaragua to provide air support for the invasion force before beginning their aerial assault on Cuba.
The invasion was a failure almost from the outset and Cuban armed forces ended the assault completely after two days.
According to the CIA, Pete Ray and Leo Baker died in a gunfight with the Cubans after surviving the crash of their Douglas B-26 Invader on the beach.
The B-26 piloted by Riley Shamburger and Wade Gray crashed into the ocean after being shot down by a Cuban Air Force Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star fighter.
To commemorate their sacrifice, the 106th Air Refueling Squadron of the Alabama Air National Guard collaborated with the Southern Museum of Flight to honor these men.
Due to the classified nature of American involvement in the attack, the CIA failed to publicly acknowledge the men and the mission for more than 20 years.
Privately, all four men were posthumously awarded the Agency’s highest honor for bravery — the Distinguished Intelligence Cross — and they received four of the original 31 stars on the CIA Memorial Wall when it was created in 1974.
The 117th Air Refueling Wing holds an annual wreath-laying ceremony at the gravesite of Thomas “Pete” Ray at Forest Hill Cemetery.
This commemoration has taken place annually since 2012, several years after the U.S. government’s admission of the airmen’s identities.
