Cuban exile pilots in the Congo; The Makasi

 Shortly after the Bay of Pigs occurred in 1961, the CIA recognized, as well as Castro, that the invasion’s failure was certainly attributed to the lack of air support for the Cuban exile forces that had attempted a beachfront assault. The CIA did not intend to make the same mistake twice and had begun to train an air force made up of the Cuban exiles known as the 211th Squadron. They were to be sent to the Congo to fight against the communist Simba rebels and even forces being locally trained by Che Guevara. By August 1964, the Simba forces had taken over nearly half of the Congo, including the all important Stanleyville that served as the eastern provincial capital. Col. Mike Hoare had been battling with the Simba forces since July that same year and needed one more thing; air support. Col. Hoare’s main column consisted of 200 trucks and jeeps including Swedish armored personnel carriers and a German-made Ferret armored car.

They attached red flags on the front and back of the column attempting to make themselves easily distinguishable for the 211th above. For them, everything ahead of the red flags was a target in their killbox. “That was a thick jungle in the Congo, as you can imagine,” said Ponzoa, nicknamed El Mirlo, (the Blackbird.) “We had to fly low, very low, usually following the roads. That was the only way to navigate over that jungle area. I’d spot the enemy and I’d radio down to Hoare’s men: ‘Throw a smoke grenade, let us know where you are.’…Hoare would radio up, ‘We’re down here! You guys are gonna hit us! You’re too close!’…It took a couple of missions before Hoare felt comfortable with the Cuban CIA air support. He’d never had any that was quite that close before.”

The 211th would be instrumental during Operation Dragon Rouge, the mission to free Stanleyville and the white hostages that were under Simba control. November 1st marked 5 Commando’s advance toward rebel headquarters upstream from Stan­leyville at Kindu. Ponzoa reported: “As we approached what appeared to be the town square we saw that the rebels had taken all the male hostages to the square, stripped them to their underwear and prepared to execute them. There was no time to ask the ground forces for a decision; we strafed the would-be executioners and radioed for the invading forces to move. 

Col. Hoare remembered the air cover with childlike enthusiasm: “The warplanes came screaming down from 5,000 feet, each blasting off its eight Browning .50 machine guns in a terrifying cruuuump! Now two Bravos came out of the sun and loosed off their rockets in a silent swoosh to explode on the target with a sonorous didoom!” Needless to say the 211th made life a whole lot easier for 5 Commando and Col. Hoare was eternally grateful for the much needed support. “He saw that we knew how to fly and how to shoot,” said Ponzoa. “From then on, he couldn’t do without us. He was always slapping us on the back when we met, all smiles.” 

Soon, the 211th discovered they were fighting against Guevara’s communist forces in the Congo. Enemy ground forces cut in on copilot Reginaldo Blanco’s radio to curse him out in Spanish. “I didn’t see Cubans from the Castro regime as my countrymen,” he said. “I saw them as the enemy.” After Stanleyville was liberated, Col. Hoare set his sights on the Unibra beer brewery that produced the popular brand Polar, and once liberated, with typical combat pilot bravado, the 211th adopted the brand’s snorting-buffalo logo as nose art and were known as the "Makasi" meaning strong in Lingali. 

The small air force made up of six T-28s and two B-26s would continue to assist Col. Hoare until he headed back to Durban in 1965, and would serve in the Congo until the Mercenary Revolt of 1967. The rebel commandos made the same tactical errors as the Simbas and Che and as punishment, were constantly strafed and bombarded with rockets by the “Makasi'' air force. As it turned out, the 211th didn’t necessarily fight for money and many of the “bonuses” they were promised were dulled out in the “worthless” Congolese francs. The Makasi air force longed and fought for a free Cuba and even “defeated” Che Guevara’s communist forces in the Congo, all to find out that their leaders were told that conditions had changed and they were no longer in a position to help them, even after all of their efforts and contributions.