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Argentine pilots and G-1?

Flightengineer

Well-Known Member
For a number of reasons I've always been interested in the Falkland war aviation history and have friends in UK who were involved in it.
Recently I found a photos of Argentine navy pilots made during this war. Jackets looks like G-1. Are these American jackets or Argentinean analog?
Does anyone know about this and may have more information?


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Photos are taken from here

 

MikeyB-17

Well-Known Member
There’s a long history of South American countries buying US kit and aircraft. P-47’s, P-51’s, Corsairs etc. were all operated by countries down that way, including being used in anger in actual wars-P-51’s and Corsairs were both used as late as 1969 during the‘Football war’ between Honduras and El Salvador. The Argentinians were flying American Skyhawks amongst other things. The General Belgrano was an ex-USN cruiser which survived Pearl Harbour. There are pics in the old ELC Golden Book of Brazilian ground crew wearing D-1’s. They’re G-1’s, all right.
 

Flightengineer

Well-Known Member
I know who flew which planes, but I've not seen the G-1 before as part of the equipment outside US. Saw only Luftwaffe pilots wear CWU jackets.
 

Griffon_301

Well-Known Member
G-1 jackets would make sense as the Argentine Navy had a long history of cooperation with the US Navy. They used Corsairs and Panthers amongst others and I guess it's only natural that the Argentine pilots acquired USN jackets as well...
 

Lorenzo_l

Well-Known Member
At the time of the Falklands war, the Argentine navy were flying A-4 Skyhawks. They had an aircraft carrier, called "veinticinco de Mayo" (Twenty-fifth of May) that remianed in port for the duration of the conflict (I suppose they did not want to risk losing it). The Argentine navy pilots were trained by, and probably partly in the US, so I am pretty certain those are G-1 jackets.
 

B-Man2

Well-Known Member
There’s a long history of South American countries buying US kit and aircraft. P-47’s, P-51’s, Corsairs etc. were all operated by countries down that way, including being used in anger in actual wars-P-51’s and Corsairs were both used as late as 1969 during the‘Football war’ between Honduras and El Salvador. The Argentinians were flying American Skyhawks amongst other things. The General Belgrano was an ex-USN cruiser which survived Pearl Harbour. There are pics in the old ELC Golden Book of Brazilian ground crew wearing D-1’s. They’re G-1’s, all right.
Mikey !
Without realizing it , you just may have found Jorge’s “Time Machine” :oops:. Think of all the NOS jackets that are probably in their boxes just sitting around down there in South America . And..... guess who’s down there right now !..,.....;)
 

Griffon_301

Well-Known Member
I actually think that there is not that much stuff to be found as most pilots purchased or acquired their jackets while training in the USA I guess...
I highly doubt that the South American countries that acquired surplus US weapons cheaply spent money on such unnecessary stuff as jackets that could not even be used in the first generation jet fighters like the Panther and even less in Skyhawks... :D
 

B-Man2

Well-Known Member
I actually think that there is not that much stuff to be found as most pilots purchased or acquired their jackets while training in the USA I guess...
I highly doubt that the South American countries that acquired surplus US weapons cheaply spent money on such unnecessary stuff as jackets that could not even be used in the first generation jet fighters like the Panther and even less in Skyhawks... :D
Phil
Check out his most recent post today and the photos . Maybe just a coincidence ? ...Maybe .
 

Griffon_301

Well-Known Member
I will! :D on second thought, as I know from my Dad how the US occupation forces in Austria transferred surplus gear from their stores in Bavaria to the fledgling Austrian Army in the 1950s, it might also be that some stuff was transferred in bulk just to clear some warehouses and make space for new things that were issued to the US forces in Europe then...
 

MikeyB-17

Well-Known Member
Mikey !
Without realizing it , you just may have found Jorge’s “Time Machine” :oops:. Think of all the NOS jackets that are probably in their boxes just sitting around down there in South America . And..... guess who’s down there right now !..,.....;)
By George, Holmes-I think you’ve got it! :D
 

Ed Rooney

Well-Known Member
I was at Oshkosh 86. The weather was quite cool that year, with daytime highs rarely above 70, and nights in the 40s. I recall some Argentine pilots there, and they were all wearing G-1s. Lots of leather jackets that year.
 

oose

Active Member
They wore MA-1 as well sometimes reversed with the orange on the outside during flight operations, here are a few shots I found years ago, not sure what website they came from now. It does look a little chilly!

All the best
Stu
 
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oose

Active Member
They were taken I think during the Falklands war, combat missions over the South Atlantic at that time of year duelling Harriers and antiaircraft units, probably meant that there was a chance of being shot down, so the orange makes sense if you want to be plucked from the freezing sea quickly.

Sea Harrier Vs Mirage III
The Fuerza Aérea Argentina only attempted to fight the Sea Harriers in the air on a single day of the war; The 1st of May, 1982. On this day they sent several flights of Mirage IIIs over to the Falklands (10 sorties in total, in groups of two), however, most of the Mirages stayed at high altitude and never came down to engage. One of these Mirage flights fired a couple of missiles at a flight of Harriers led by Lieutenant Commander "Sharky" Ward, but the missiles were fired at extreme range and never posed any threat to the Harriers. Aside from that, in only one case did a pair of Mirages actually come down to fight, getting into a brief tussle with a pair of RN Sea Harriers flown by Lieutenants Paul Barton and Steve Thomas. The action is described in Jeffrey Ethel and Alfred Price's book "Air War South Atlantic."
Thomas picked up the enemy aircraft on radar: they were flying in echelon about 1,200 yards apart, slightly higher than he was. . ."I locked my radar on the leader, then began looking for others [because] I couldn't believe a pair of fighters would come in like that. . . This is the sort of thing one learns not to do on Day 1 at the Tactical Weapons Unit. We would never dream of flying that sort of formation, so it was mildly surprising they did."
Having made first radar contact on the enemy, Thomas took over lead of the pair and headed straight at the incoming raid. Meanwhile Barton accelerated to maximum speed and pulled away to the right, bent on hooking around to the side of the enemy fighters and disrupting their attack.
Thomas caught sight of the enemy aircraft at 8 miles and recognized them immediately: they were Mirages and a few seconds later they launched their attack from head-on at far too great a range and in any case beyond the homing capability of their [Magic 550] infra-red missiles. "At 5 miles their leader launched a missile at me, but I saw it diverge and go down to my left. At the same time I saw something tumble off the second aircraft, obviously a missile that had misfired. I did not feel threatened by either missile." As the enemy pair hurled towards him Thomas tried a lock-on with one of his Sidewinders but without success. Then he eased back on his stick and dropped his right wing. "I began turning hard to the right and passed about 100 feet over top of the leader. I could make out every detail of the aircraft, its camouflage pattern, and see the pilot in his cockpit."
Meanwhile, Barton was swinging round on the tails of the Mirages. As they swept past his nose he loosed off a brief burst at the rear aircraft with his cannon, but did not see any hits.
The two Mirage pilots, Captain Garcia Cuerva in the lead aircraft with Lieutenant Carlos Perona as his wing man, knew the Sea Harriers were in their general area but had lost sight of them. Cuerva lead the pair in a curve to the left, but as he did so Barton, unseen by either of them, swung in behind Perona into a missile firing position. "If he had seen me, any red-blooded fighter pilot would have broken hard towards me as I turned in. But he did nothing," Barton commented. The Sea Harrier pilot heard a growl in his earphones as the homing head of his starboard Sidewinder picked up the infra-red emissions from the enemy aircraft, then he pressed the button to lock-on the missile and heard the insistent 'nee-nee-nee' sound to confirm it was ready to fire. He eased his fighter down a little, to about 12,000 feet, to silhouette the Mirage against the cold background of the powder blue sky, then squeezed the firing button. With a muffled roar the Sidewinder sped off its launcher leaving a trail of grey smoke. "At first I thought it had failed. It came off the rail and ducked down. It took about half a mile to get its trajectory sorted out, then it picked itself up and for the last half a mile it just homed straight in." During all of this Barton saw the rear Mirage continue unconcernedly behind its leader, now in a slowly tightening turn to its left. "The missile hit him on the port side of the fuselage, then the whole rear half of the aircraft disappeared in a great ball of flame. The front half went down burning fiercely, arcing towards the sea."
The first thing Perona knew of the attack was when his Mirage broke up into a flaming mass around him. . . He [ejected and] came down just off the coast of West Falkland, and walked ashore.
Steve Thomas saw Barton's missile strike, as he was curving vengefully on the tail of the leading Mirage. He locked on one of his Sidewinders and launched it, but as he did so the Argentine pilot realized what was happening and started a high speed dive towards a patch of cloud below. When last seen the missile was close to and closing rapidly on the tail of the Mirage, then both plunged into the cloud.
At the time Thomas could claim only one Mirage 'possibly destroyed.' In fact the Sidewinder went off on its proximity fuse close to the enemy fighter and caused considerable damage. Streaming fuel from his punctured tanks, Cuerva knew he could not regain the mainland so he headed for Port Stanley to try and bring his crippled aircraft down on the runway there.
Unfortunately for Cuerva, the Argentine anti-aircraft gunners at Port Stanley mistook him for an enemy and shot him down in flames as he tried to land, killing him. The brief combat resulted in Sea Harriers - 2, Mirages - 0. In a separate engagement a Dagger flying at over 30,000 feet armed with an Israeli Shafrir missile took a head on shot against a Sea Harrier at 20,000 feet which the Harrier evaded, after which the Dagger was shot down by the Harrier's wingman, for an additional Sea Harriers - 1, missile armed Daggers - 0. That was the only day of the war when the Sea Harriers faced fighters trying to engage them. After that, the missile-armed fighters were withdrawn and all they faced were bomb-laden Skyhawks and Daggers.
What became clear to the RN pilots was that their opponents didn't have the first clue about how to dogfight. The Mirages they faced on 1 May were not well handled, and the many subsequent waves of fighter-bombers fared no better. The only tactic the Argentine pilots seemed to know when under attack was to scatter in different directions, dive to the deck, and run. Although the Skyhawks and Daggers did not carry missiles, they were all still armed with guns, and "Sharky" Ward once commented that had he been an Argie, he'd still have tried to turn and make a fight of it rather than just run and be shot in the back. Four Skyhawks turning as a co-ordinated group to engage a pair of pursuing Sea Harriers with their 20mm cannon could have posed problems. At worst it would at least have forced the RN pilots to make harder missile shots. Instead, simply turning tail and running turned it into an almost academic exercise for the Sea Harrier pilots.
Despite this, the Harrier pilots admitted that the Argentine pilots they faced over the landing beach of San Carlos Water (where most of the encounters took place) had balls of steel, flying fast at low level (often below mast height) into a defended anchorage. They were courageous, and skilled enough pilots at navigation and bombing - they'd just never been trained in how to conduct Air Combat Maneuvers or ACM, and were as helpless as newborn babes once a Harrier got on their tail.
 
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