Battle of Duarte Bridge

The Battle of Duarte Bridge took place on 27 April, 1965, during the Dominican Civil War. The loyalist forces were turned back and decimated by rebel attacks.

Battle
On 24 April 1965, young military officers rose in revolt in Santo Domingo. The following day, the rebel-held presidential palace was strafed by the Dominican Air Force and shelled by naval vessels. Because crowds of mostly unarmed civilians occupied the Duarte Bridge, during 26 April airplanes routinely strafed the bridge to clear a path for loyalist tanks. The air force also bombed and strafed other sites in the capital with the loss of several aircraft. About noon 27 April, the loyalists resumed their bombardment; strafing by the airplanes drove the crowds from the Duarte Bridge, and bombing shattered many of the buildings and structures to the west. Outwardly the damage west of the bridge seemed impressive with countless dead bodies lying on the streets.

Sometime around 17:00 hours on 27 April, the aerial bombardment lifted and a sizeable loyalist force of tanks, artillery, and infantry began to rumble across Duarte Bridge under covering fire from 12.7 mm machine guns on the eastern bank. The rebels left two large truck trailers used to haul sugar cane blocking the path, but as the tanks pushed their way through these obstacles, one of the two pre–World War I 75 mm cannon on the rebel side got off one shot and destroyed the first tank. Soon a hail of machine gun fire silenced the 75 mm cannons and the rest of the tanks proceeded into the city.

When the tank column passed José Martí Street one block from Duarte Avenue, hidden machine guns opened up on the infantry, and most of the soldiers either fled or were killed. Without infantry cover, the tanks, already in the narrow streets of the neighborhood, were sitting ducks for the shower of Molotov cocktails soon raining down from the surrounding buildings. As the remnants of the loyalist infantry fled back across the Duarte Bridge to the east bank, the first tanks in the column exploded in flames. The raging fires panicked the crews of the remaining tanks and most of them abandoned their vehicles. Only a few tanks escaped and fled back across the Duarte Bridge.