Rafael del Pino

Brigadier General Rafael Del Pino was born on September 22, 1938 in Pinar del Rio, Cuba. In 1956 he joined the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement led by Fidel Castro and in 1958 joined Castro’s guerrillas with whom he fought until the triumph of the revolution on January 1, 1959. Del Pino ended the war as a First Lieutenant and was assigned to the Cuban Air Force where he began his flying training in early 1959. Throughout the 1960s, Rafael del Pino rose steadily through the ranks. He received his baptism of fire in April of 1961 during three days of aerial combat against the Bay of Pigs invasion force backed by the US government, shooting down two B-26 light bombers and sinking several vessels. As a result he was declared a Hero of Playa Giron (the Bay of Pigs) by Fidel Castro and given a meritorious promotion. In October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis Rafael del Pino was Air Force assistant to Fidel Castro in the Cuban Central Command Post and was later given command of the country’s large air force base in Holguin. He then went to the Soviet Union for advanced aerial instruction to perfect his ability in all types of Soviet combat aircraft. In 1965, he graduated from the Soviet Air Force’s Yury Gagarin War College. General Rafael del Pino later served two tours in Vietnam, in 1968 as an advisor to North Vietnamese fighter pilots in North Vietnam and a second in 1975 inside South Vietnam during which he entered Saigon with the Vietcong. Shortly thereafter in November 1975, during Cuba’s first major military intervention in Africa, General Rafael del Pino commanded the air forces of the Cuban Expeditionary Force that disembarked in Angola with Soviet backing and quickly occupied that former Portuguese colony. In 1977 he commanded Operation Pico against the Dominican Republic. Rafael del Pino was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in 1983 and named Deputy Chief of the Cuban Air Force and Air Defenses, a position he occupied until his defection in 1987. He has published several books “Amanecer en Girón” (La Habana, Cuba: Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1968) and “Proa a la libertad” (México, DF: Editorial Planeta, 1990) “Inside Castro’s Bunker”Amazon,2012 “9050 Horas”Amazon 2013, “Los Años de la guerra” Amazon, 2014. “Cenizas de una Revolución” Amazon, 2016, “Tiranicidio” Amazon, 2017.