MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Aircraft remains trawled in S. Atlantic date back to 1961

ARA Texan SNJ-5C

Remains of a military aircraft trawled by an Argentine fishing vessel 159 kilometers off Santa Cruz belong to an Argentine Navy North American SNJ-5C Texan that went down in 1961 and not to aircrafts involved in the 1982 Falkland Islands conflict as originally believed.

The fact the remains were recovered in an area that Argentine aircraft flew over when taking off from Rio Gallegos in the continent to attack and bomb the Royal Navy Task Force in the Falklands created the original expectation. However numbers in the command panel, an emergency exit and landing gear proved, according to Argentine Navy records that they belonged to a North American SNJ-5C conditioned to operate from an aircraft carrier which was lost December 12, 1961 while attempting to land. The Texan aircraft, 2-A-306 was manufactured in the US in 1937 and incorporated to the Argentine Navy in 1959 and belonged to the Third Air Squadron based in Comandante Espora, Bahía Blanca. However in 1961 it had been adapted with a special hook to operate in Argentina's aircraft carrier "Independencia", which at the time was on military exercises in the area. Reports of the accident say the aircraft sank immediately after the pilot missed the landing. The exact location was 51º. 35' South and 66º 55' best, approximately 511 kilometers from the Falkland Islands. The fishing vessel which trawled the remains was the "San Arawa II", 56 meters long with a crew of 48 which normally operates from the port of Ushuaia. According to the Argentine press the Texan SNJ-5C model fought in the Second World War and the Korean peninsula and Vietnam conflicts. The Argentine Navy had 94 of these aircrafts which was 9.5 meters long with a wing span of 14 meters and weighted 2.300 kilos. "They also had an active participation in the Revolucion Libertadora of 1955" when the Argentine Armed Forces ousted President Juan Domingo Peron, according to the Buenos Aires press. The appearance of aircraft remains in the South Atlantic is a highly sensitive issue in Argentina because although the Argentine Air Force admits having lost 47 aircrafts and 55 men during the 1982 Falklands conflict it has never revealed how many of those crafts remain disappeared most probably on the sea bed of the South Atlantic, "waiting for some fishing nets to trawl and pick them up".