RAY, Thomas, "Pete"

Name: Thomas "Pete" Ray
Rank/Branch: Captain/Alabama National Guard
Unit:
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record:
Date of Loss: 19 April 1961
Country of Loss: CUBA
Loss Coordinates:
Status (in 1973): Died in captivity
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: B26
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident: Leo Baker, DIC

Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews. Updated 2020.

REMARKS:

From the National Alliance BITS 'N' PIECES newsletter 03/27/98

"CIA Acknowledges U.S. Pilots downed in Bay of Pigs Mission"

How many American Servicemen, Active Duty, Reserves or National Guard
were lost during the ill fated CIA operation to invade Cuba on April 19,
1961? According to an L.A. Times article by Mark Fineman and Dolly
Mascarenas at least two Americans recruited from the Alabama National
Guard, were shot down over Cuba.  Both crewmen, Capt. Pete Ray and
flight Engineer Leo Baker survived the crash.  Both men were shot and
killed by Cuban soldiers. "Baker whose features appeared Latin was
buried along with other unclaimed Cuban invaders..."

What happened to Pete Ray?  According to the article "Castro was so
determined to prove the Americans were there he froze Ray's remains for
more than 18 years."

Finally, in 1979, due to efforts of Ray's daughter, Janet Ray Weininger
"and after 19 months of painstaking diplomacy with a U.S. government
that still did not want to claim him as one of its own, Cuba returned
the pilot's body to Alabama."

In 1978, agents met with Weininger "...the agents told the truth about
Ray and handed over two medals and a citation posthumously awarding Ray
the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the agency's highest award for
valor..."

"Last month, the CIA released a document confirming that U.S. pilots had
in fact been shot down over Cuba in 1961.  And last week, agency
officials acknowledged publicly for the first time that the Alabama
pilot was one of theirs."

"These were vortex people, the most important people in the world for a
few moments, and then the government just cuts the strings and cuts them
loose to drift," said Ray's cousin, Thomas Bailey an Alabama journalist"

"...Weininger said she harbors no animosity toward the Cubans for
keeping her father's body all those years.  "I blame my government...
They led these men into harm's way and then turned  [their] back on
them."

==================================================

Los Angeles Times
03/15/98

Bay of Pigs: the Secret Death of Pete Ray

* The Alabama Air Guard pilot died during ill-fated Cuban invasion
attempt. For years, the CIA hid his fate from his family.  Havana,
meanwhile, kept his body frozen.

By MARK FINEMAN and DOLLY MASCARENAS, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Los Angeles Times Sunday March 15, 1998
Home Edition Part A Page I Foreign Desk

HAVANA--When Thomas "Pete" Ray's B-26 bomber was shot down by Cuban
antiaircraft batteries near Playa Giron on April 19, 1961, he wasn't
there.

So said the CIA......

Times staff writer Fineman reported from Havana, Washington, Miami and
Birmingham, Ala.  Times researcher Mascarenas reported from Havana.

=================================
11/19/2004
US judge orders Cuba pay 87 million in 1961 death of CIA pilot

MIAMI, Nov 18 (AFP) - A US judge Thursday awarded more than 80 million
dollars to a woman who sued Cuban President Fidel Castro for the execution
of her father after a CIA plane he flew was downed during the 1961 Bay of
Pigs invasion.

"I honored my father, I stood up for him," Janet Ray told journalists after
the ruling was announced.

Judge Ronald Dresnick awarded 83 million dollars to Pete Ray's daughter and
a further four million dollars to his estate.

Janet Ray told the Miami court earlier that her father survived the downing
of the CIA plane during the botched invasion, but was later shot
point-blank, and that his body was kept for 18 years in a Havana morgue
where it was repeatedly desecrated.

"Pete Ray was not provided any of the international protections or rights
awarded to prisoners of war prior to his execution," Dresnick said in his
ruling.

"Pete Ray was the victim of an extrajudicial killing," he said.

He also said the evidence showed that the defendants' actions "deprived Ms.
Ray of a normal adulthood."

For years, she wrote letters to Castro and sought help from her
representative in Congress to recover her father's body, which Cuba returned
only in 1979.

Despite being vindicated by the judge's ruling, the pilot's daughter said
she felt "like an elephant is still sitting on my chest."

The lawsuit was filed under legislation that allows victims of US-designated
terrorist states to sue for damages, and named as defendants the Cuban
president and his brother Raul Castro, neither of whom showed up for the
trial.

Castro has been found guilty in other trials filed under the same
legislation, and in some cases the plaintiffs were paid out of frozen Cuban
assets in the United States.

The 1961 Bay of Pigs fighting lasted 68 hours and killed 176 Cuban forces
and 120 US-based exiles.