| Jets
for Argentina
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
June 2012
During the Second World War, the Brazilian
military reaped enormous benefits from its
active participation on the Allied side. A
division of Brazilian troops and a squadron
of Brazilian fighter aircraft fought in Italy,
and the Brazilian Navy participated in patrolling
the South Atlantic. Huge amounts of modern
equipment flowed into the Brazilian inventory,
and the old military balance of South America
appeared to have been shifted. In particular,
the big Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters
given to Brazil greatly outclassed Argentina's
Curtiss Hawk 75's, the export version of the
1930s-vintage P-36.
In Argentina, the cabal of colonels who had
seized power in 1943 differed as to how this
change should be met. Vice President and Secretary
of War Juan Peron advocated a "third
way" between the capitalist and communist
worlds, presaging Jawaharlal Nehru's non-aligned
movement of a decade later. For his troubles
he was forced out of the government in the
fall of 1945, but stormed back into power
in the February 1946 presidential elections
with the aid of his charismatic new wife,
Evita, and his popularity with the country's
powerful trade unions.
Peron had long advocated that Argentina
acquire the most modern arms, both from foreign
suppliers and from a domestic arms industry.
As Secretary of War, he'd headed an unsuccessful
mission to Germany in 1943 in search of technology
and weaponry. With the war now ended, Peron
cast about for surplus modern weapons, purchasing
two dozen Fiat G.55 fighters in Italy. He
also began recruitment of talented Nazis and,
in particular, French collaborationists.
These included Emile Dewoitine, the French aircraft
designer and industrialist whose firm had supplied
the Luftwaffe with aircraft after the fall of
the Vichy government. Dewoitine, condemned by
the post-war French government, escaped to Spain
and was personally shepherded to Argentina by
Cardinal Antonio Caggiano of Buenos Aires, who
had gone to Rome to offer Argentine refuge for
French war criminals seeking asylum from the
Vatican.
Dewoitine immediately took up a post at the
Instituto Aerotecnico in Cordoba. Dewoitine
brought with him a set of drawings he'd made
in the late 1930s for a jet fighter, which
was never built due to lack of a practical
engine. But the Argentines had acquired a
sample of the Rolls-Royce Derwent 5 that powered
the Gloster Meteor, which was installed in
Dewoitine's design, named the Pulqui ("Arrow"
in one of Argentina's indigenous languages).
The Pulqui did not take flight until August
1947, and the new jet proved unsatisfactory.
It managed only 450 miles per hour —
slower than the conventional Fiat fighters
obtained in Italy — and that was before
any armament had been fitted. It did allow
Argentina to claim several points of aeronautical
trivia — as the first nation in Latin
America to fly and to design its own jet fighter
— but Peron had found better sources
of advanced aircraft.
Argentina entered the Peronist era flush
with the cash profits of wartime trade, mostly
in food products. Peron immediately clashed
with the United States and Great Britain,
launching a very popular program to nationalize
key industries. Thus when he sought to purchase
arms from the United States, the Americans
rebuffed the advances. The nearly-bankrupt
British could not be so choosy, and agreed
to sell the Argentines 100 Gloster Meteor
jet fighters, the most advanced weapon system
in the British inventory, plus 45 modern heavy
bombers (15 Avro Lancasters and 30 Lincolns).
Fifty of the Meteors came from Royal Air Force
squadrons, while the other 50 would be newly-built
models with parts made at Gloster and assembled
at the Fabrica Militar Aviones in Cordoba,
Along with the assembly deal came a license
for the Rolls-Royce Derwent 5 jet engine.
Over intense American opposition, the British
delivered the first jets in the summer of
1947, and a dozen pilots began training alongside
British fliers at RAF Morton Valence. The
Argentines set up their first jet fighter
squadron in December 1947, followed by another
in 1949. Soon after, both were expanded into
jet fighter wings.
The jets and modern four-engine bombers gave
the Fuerza Aerea Argentina a substantial qualitative
edge over its Brazilian and Chilean rivals,
but Peron was not satisfed to stand pat. The
"ratlines" from Europe had brought
in Nazi Germany's top aircraft designer, Kurt
Tank, who now joined the design team in Cordoba
under the pseudonym Dr. Pedro Matthies. Tank
had designed the Focke-Wulf FW.190 and a number
of proposed jets that did not enter service.
He brought along several engineers from Focke-Wulf,
including the Austrian con artist Ronald Richter,
who convinced the Argentines that he could
power jet fighters with nuclear fusion engines
"the size of a milk bottle."
More usefully, Tank brought plans for the
Ta.183 jet fighter, a small, swept-wing craft
selected by the Luftwaffe in February 1945
as the successor to the Me.262. He and his
team developed these ideas into the Pulqui
II, a much more modern design. He raised the
wings to the "shoulder" position,
a feature that would cause the aircraft to
stall at high speed, and lengthened the fuselage
to incorporate a bigger engine. The Heinkel
jet engine of the German version gave way
to the powerful Rolls-Royce Nene II, a pirated
version of which also powered the very successful
Soviet MiG-15. Armament comprised four 20mm
cannon mounted in the fuselage. The plane
featured a pressurized cockpit, and could
clock over 650 miles per hour.
The Pulqui II first flew in June 1950, in
the hands of senior Argentine test pilot Osvaldo
Weiss. Former Focke-Wulf pilot Otto Behrens
conducted the next test, and called the plane
"the worst I've ever experienced as a
test pilot." Two fatal crashes —
one of which killed Behrens — and mounting
costs killed the project. Peron had squandered
Argentina's war profits, and the country sank
into an economic crisis — certainly
not helped by Peron's bestowing of millions
on the nuclear fusion project — that
drove Peron out of power in 1955. "Dr.
Matthies" moved on to India, where he
designed the much more successful Hindustan
Marut jet fighter. The Argentines ordered
35 Canadair Sabre jet fighters in 1953, but
had to cancel the order for lack of money.
Surplus U.S. Air Force F-86 Sabres finally
arrived in 1960.
Argentina never used its first-generation
jets in combat against a foreign foe. The
Glosters (as the Argentines called their Meteors),
heavy bombers and Fiat G.55 piston-engine
fighters all took part in the two 1955 uprisings
against Peron, as did one of the surviving
Pulqui II test models. Jet fighters flew for
both sides, but do not appear to have engaged
one another in combat. A rebel Argentine Navy
destroyer shot down a loyalist Gloster, and
despite active participation by the jet squadrons
and heavy bombers Peron was forced from power
and fled to Paraguay on a Navy river gunboat.
Cone
of Fire includes Argentine Meteor,
Pulqui I and Pulqui II jets, plus the heavy
bombers and G.55 fighters — they were
just too wonderful to leave out. In the post-1945
hypothetical scenarios they show that Peron
was correct: The jet planes give Argentina
a significant advantage in the air over the
Brazilians and Chileans. On the negative side,
the Cone is huge and the jets don't fly very
far. Cone of Fire scenarios put most
actions well out of range of air forces, everywhere
except Tierra del Fuego, where airfields are
hard to come by.
Order
Cone of Fire now! |
