Cuban Pilots’ Bodies Said to Be Found

A U.S. Defense Department official said Monday that he had found two bodies believed to be those of anti-Castro Cuban pilots who crashed on their way to support the aborted 1961 invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

Bradley Adams of the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Laboratory told journalists that three weeks of excavation had uncovered human remains and personal effects.

The Army will conduct dental and DNA tests to determine whether the bodies are those of Cuban exiles Crispin Garcia and Juan de Mata Gonzalez, who were aboard a B-26 bomber that crashed near the northern Nicaraguan town of San Jose de Bocay.

The invasion failed to advance beyond a beachhead, and the exiles were quickly surrounded by Cuban government forces, who killed about 200 and captured 1,500.