Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, flush with confidence after his success in Please click the icon to follow us on Facebook.crushing the Bay of Pigs invasion, made a decision that would have ruinous consquences for his country and himself and hasten the fall of the Soviet bloc: he directed his armed forces to immediately begin preparations for an amphibious landing at the western tip of the Florida Keys in a gambit to try and force the United States to close its naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Realizing that the proposed invasion, code-named Operation July 26th, would ultimately backfire on the Castro regime, his Soviet allies tried desperately to talk him out of launching it. The Soviets' fears proved to be well-founded -- as soon as the White House learned of the impending attack President John F. Kennedy initiated his own military plan, dubbed Operation Tripwire, aimed at stopping the invasion force dead in its tracks.

This chain of events would lead to the outbreak of the Florida Keys War less than a month later.