Brazilian Army Aviation (1919–1941)
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Brazilian Army Aviation, created in 1919, operated fixed-wing aircraft (planes) as part of the Brazilian Army until its incorporation into the Brazilian Air Force in 1941, when it ceased to exist. The Brazilian Army returned to having an air component in 1986, with the same name and history, but using rotary-wing aircraft (helicopters) instead. From 1927 to 1941, aviation became the fifth branch of the army, alongside infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineering. Its staff were trained at the Military Aviation School, founded in 1919 in Campo dos Afonsos, Rio de Janeiro, and remembered as a precursor to the current Army Aviation Instruction Center and Air Force Academy.
The army's first aerial experience was with observation balloons in the Paraguayan War, in 1867. At the beginning of the 20th century, the military use of a new technology, the airplanes, attracted interest in Brazil. Their use in the army began in the Contestado War, where Ricardo Kirk, the only Brazilian army aviator at the time, died in a flight accident in 1915. There was no aerospace industry in the country, and it was difficult to create a military aviation school. The Brazilian Navy managed to create its Naval Aviation in 1916, and the army, taking advantage of the equipment leftovers from the First World War and the hiring of French instructors, founded its Aviation Service in 1919.
In addition to the school at Campo dos Afonsos, a flight group was established in Rio Grande do Sul in 1922, but deactivated in 1928. The involvement of aviators with tenentism led to a halt in the development of aviation by president Artur Bernardes from 1924 to 1926. In 1931, the military air mail and a new operational unit, the Mixed Aviation Group, were created. Brazilian military aviation had its first use on a large scale in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932. From 1933 onwards, aviation spread outside Rio de Janeiro, with regiments founded throughout the country, and in 1941 it already had 330 aircraft, although not all of them were modern or in good condition.
The aviators developed their own ethos, differentiating themselves from their companions on land and contributing to the formation of the Brazilian Air Force in 1941. This new institution united army and naval aviation and also centralized the administration of commercial flights, arising from a civilian and military movement who saw the separate existence of army and naval aviation as a resource waste. Army Aviation was recreated in 1986, but only using helicopters.