The embarked aviation issue (or embarked aviation problem) was a dispute between the Brazilian Navy (MB) and the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) over the aircraft that would operate on board the aircraft carrier Minas Gerais, acquired in 1956. The FAB wanted to maintain its monopoly of military aviation, existing since its creation in 1941 by the merger of the Army and Naval organic aviations. The MB, which had not accepted the loss of its aviation, recreated it, under strong opposition from the FAB, in the mid-1950s. The solution to the impasse was the "Castelo Branco corollary", in 1965, which legitimized Naval Aviation, but restricted it to rotary-wing aircraft (helicopters). The fixed-wing aircraft (planes) remained in the hands of the FAB, whose 1st Group of Embarked Aviation (GAE), with P-16 Tracker planes, started to operate on the aircraft carrier.
The Ministry of Aeronautics and the FAB came up with the concept of "Single Air Force", which they justified based on current legislation and resource savings; air support to the MB and the Army would be provided through cooperation with the FAB. From the MB's point of view, this cooperation was unsatisfactory and naval aviation would allow for better coordination and specialization. It had references abroad: in the post-Second World War (1939–1945), several western powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom maintained the aviation carried on aircraft carriers as part of their navies. In Brazil, the rivalry between the two branches was evident in the General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMFA) and even in newspapers of great circulation. The competition for resources and operating autonomy highlights the autarkic behavior of the Brazilian Armed Forces corporations in the period.
The MB created the Navy Aeronautics Directorate (DAerM) in 1952 and the Naval Aeronautics Instruction and Training Center (CIAAN) in 1955, already thinking about training the staff of a new naval aviation. The justification it found was the purchase of Minas Gerais, inaugurating a material and political race with the FAB to supply the personnel, helicopters and planes that would serve on board. The focus was on anti-submarine warfare capability. The FAB created the 1st GAE, which was not allowed to land on the ship, and the 2nd Liaison and Observation Squadron (ELO). The MB also managed to get pilots and maintenance personnel and aircraft, but they were technologically inferior and obtained by tricks such as landing in crates and secret assembly. Even so, the information reached the press and was disclosed with great controversy. Naval Aviation was not recognized by the air traffic control of the Department of Civil Aviation, managed by the Ministry of Aeronautics.
The crisis reached its peak in the "Tramandaí incident", in December 1964, when an S-55 had its rotor machine-gunned on the ground by FAB soldiers to prevent its take-off. Two ministers of the Air Force ended up asking for resignation, but the government of president Castelo Branco reached a final agreement, dividing the aviation boarded by categories (fixed and rotary wings). FAB and MB exchanged aircraft and the 1st GAE began operating in Minas Gerais in 1965, but the agreement did not fully satisfy either party. The Minister of the Navy also asked for his resignation upon learning of the result. The Army also recreated its organic aviation in 1986, only with helicopters, without fanfare from the FAB. After the end of the useful life of the 1st GAE aircraft, the MB overcame resistance from the FAB and regained the right to use fixed-wing aircraft in 1998, forming the 1st Squadron of Interception and Attack Airplanes with A-4 Skyhawk jets.
Background
External
After World War II (1939–1945), military naval aviation enjoyed great prestige. Naval aviation acts for the benefit of a naval force or in subsidiary activities of a navy. It can exist as land-based aircraft but operating at sea; rotary wing aircraft operating from ships such as cruisers; or fixed or rotary wing aircraft operating specifically from aircraft carriers. In World War II, aircraft carriers replaced battleships as the backbone of large naval forces. In the Battle of the Atlantic, both carrier and land-based aviation were decisive instruments in anti-submarine warfare. Although naval aviation can be defined as organic (maintained, piloted and commanded) of navies, aircraft carriers created the belonging problem of embarked aviation between navies and air forces.
After the war, military forces such as the British, American and Canadian had both maritime air services, belonging to the air forces, and naval air services, operating mainly from aircraft carriers. In the United Kingdom, the first country to form an independent air force, the Royal Air Force, in 1918, all military aviation was brought under the new Ministry of Air. Italy followed suit in 1929. Germany defined that naval air units would belong to the Air Force in 1939, but controlled by the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in times of war. Some historians attribute the lack of organic aviation in the British Royal Navy to the lesser development of British naval aviation in the interwar period compared to the United States, where there was still no independent air force. In 1937, the Royal Navy once again had organic on-board aviation. France and Argentina created independent air forces without eliminating organic aviation from their navies. The U.S. Air Force, created in 1947, accepted that the U.S. Navy operated its own airborne aviation, although it objected to land-based long-range naval aviation.
In Brazil
In Brazil, the Naval and Army aviation, whose training schools were respectively founded in 1916 and 1919, coexisted without any link for 22 years. Each was under the authority of a different ministry: that of the Navy and that of War. Civil aviation was the responsibility of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works. The Ministry of Aeronautics, created in 1941, became the highest authority for national aviation. The two military aviation units were united into the Brazilian Air Force, a Single Air Force. The Navy missed a great opportunity for air-naval expansion during Brazil's participation in World War II, after 1942, when FAB patrol aviation, from land bases, was used against German submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic.
The Ministry of the Navy was against this merger and did not appreciate the loss of its Naval Aviation to the FAB. According to admiral Renato de Almeida Guillobel:
The "large number of brilliant officers", however, had the opposite feeling. In 1958, another admiral, Fernando Almeida da Silva, retrospectively assessed this first generation of naval aviators:
From then on, a bilateral rivalry between the Navy and the Air Force was born. Thus, the embarked aviation problem arose long before Brazil purchased its first aircraft carrier.
Conflicting thoughts
After World War II, the Navy did not give up on recovering its Naval Aviation, mainly due to the importance of aircraft for its focus in the period, anti-submarine warfare. In the context of Brazil's alignment with the Western bloc in the Cold War, the hypothetical threat would be the attack on Brazilian maritime trade by Communist bloc submarines, just as the trade routes had been attacked by the German Navy in World War II. The most powerful and longest-range anti-submarine mechanism would be a Hunt and Destroy Group, composed of an aircraft carrier and four to six destroyers. It would not necessarily need to be Brazilian. In the hemispheric defense arrangement between Brazil and the United States, the U.S. Navy would have extensive operations in the Atlantic, and the MB would be responsible for coastal defense of trade from the ports of Rio de Janeiro and Santos to the island of Trindade. Naval investments under admiral Guillobel (1951–1954) had auxiliary functions.
The cheapest option would be a land-based naval patrol aviation, but this would not be politically viable. The FAB could already perform this function, and maintained that the centralization of air activities in a single force saved resources; a separate naval aviation would duplicate an expensive infrastructure (air bases, training schools, parks and maintenance workshops), in addition to violating the legislation that granted the aviation monopoly to the Ministry of Aeronautics. The recreation of Naval Aviation was brought to the agenda of the General Staff in 1947, receiving opinions from the Brazilian Army, Navy and Air Force. The General Staff of the Air Force accepted maritime aviation on land or embarked, as long as it was under the command of the FAB. The General Staff of the Navy argued that organic aviation already existed in other navies and guaranteed better coordination and more specialized personnel, especially considering the peculiarities of naval aviation. The final opinion, the Secret 47-C letter, was to keep the air assets centralized in the FAB, which should cooperate with the MB. However, according to vice-admiral Fernando Almeida da Silva, the cooperation provided by the FAB was "insufficient, precarious and difficult to obtain".
The FAB was content with the status quo of the cooperation doctrine decided in 1947, while the MB wanted a revision. In addition to the barracks, the debate also appeared in major newspapers. The General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMFA), the successor body of the General Staff, was the stage for rivalries between the Army, Navy and Air Force. The creation of a naval aviation became a real possibility, but it was not known which corporation it would belong to. The FAB feared competition for resources with future Navy aircraft. Thus, a "technological, operational and doctrinal race" emerged. Both wanted maximum independence and freedom of action, the MB in control of the aircraft, and the FAB in command of maneuvers on deck, and therefore they exchanged accusations in the press and sought materiel conquests and government decisions. The continuous dispute showed that the EMFA did not bring the expected cohesion to the three Armed Forces corporations, and the Command and General Staff Schools maintained their autonomy. Even so, in the following decade the two branches were already careful to separate the doctrinal controversy from the operational issues in the air-naval instructions, in which their officers developed a good rapport.
MB and FAB maneuvers
First measures In 1946, the Navy's Board of Hydrography acquired a twin-engine Beechcraft D18S, but it was registered as a FAB plane, which was responsible for its maintenance. The plane was lost in an accident in 1952.
The FAB already took some preventive measures in advance, the biggest of which was the sending of 35 pilots to learn operations aboard aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy in 1948–1949. The political-military debate became more intense, with an offensive content, after the creation of the Navy's Aeronautics Directorate (DAerM) in 1952, achieved after negotiations with president Getúlio Vargas and Minister of Aeronautics Nero Moura. This moment is presented by some as the resurgence of Naval Aviation, but "it would still be many years before a Navy pilot, piloting an aircraft of that institution, took off from one of its ships or naval air base". The counterpart of the FAB, created in the same year, was the Nucleus of Tactical Aero Command (NUCATAER), whose function was "to plan and coordinate joint operations with the Army and the Navy".