Mexican naval aviation had a long, thin prehistory before Las Bajadas. Its own lineage starts with a Mexican-built float biplane that Carlos Santa Ana flew in the port of Veracruz in 1918. In 1926 the Navy had a squadron of floatplanes built for it but no pilots, and the first naval aviator, Carlos Castillo Bretón, qualified only in 1927. By 1943 just seven naval officers had become pilots, and some of them had moved to the air force.

The war changed that. German submarines sank the Mexican tanker Potrero del Llano on 13 May 1942 and the Faja de Oro on 20 May, and Mexico declared war on the Axis that month. In 1943 the Navy established its Naval Aviation School at Las Bajadas, on the airfield that had opened outside Veracruz in 1942. English Wikipedia records that its aircraft came from the Mexican Air Force and that they patrolled the Gulf of Mexico for German submarines before settling into training. No contact with a U-boat is recorded in the sources checked.

After the war the naval aviation turned to search and rescue, coastal patrol and disaster relief, and Las Bajadas grew with it. In 1974, according to Wikipedia’s airport article, the Veracruz Naval Air Station was established and took over the old airport facilities. The base, known by its Spanish acronym BASANVER, shares the airport’s runway 01/19, 2,400 metres of asphalt; a second runway, 09/27, is closed.

Under the Navy’s organic law, reformed in November 2025, a naval air base is the unit that plans, carries out and supervises air operations and gives logistic support to the aircraft assigned to it, while the squadrons fly and maintain them. Wikipedia calls Las Bajadas the largest and oldest naval air base in Mexico and says it controls operations on the Gulf coast, with a flight crew training centre alongside its squadrons.

It is the hub of a network. Wikipedia lists the Gulf of Mexico fleet’s other naval air bases at Tuxpan, where the fleet has its headquarters, Tampico, La Pesca, Campeche, Chetumal and Isla Mujeres, and the Pacific fleet’s from Guaymas and La Paz down to Tapachula, with island stations on Socorro and María Madre. In 2023 the whole naval aviation counted about 120 aircraft in some 18 squadrons, by Wikipedia’s FlightGlobal-based figures.

In 1999, after a decade in which the Navy had bought Russian Mi-2 and Mi-8 helicopters, An-32B transports and Finnish trainers, it began a programme to build kit aircraft and light helicopters at Las Bajadas. Wikipedia’s airport articles show the result scattered around the Navy: Lancair kit-built aircraft fly with the observation and transport squadrons at Tapachula and La Paz.

The base’s most sophisticated aircraft were the Navy’s E-2C Hawkeyes. Three were bought from Israel — the E-2 article dates the sale to both 2002 and 2004 in different passages — and the first Mexican aircraft was rolled out in January 2004 for the 1st Early Warning and Reconnaissance Naval Air Squadron. Whether any still flies is unclear: they no longer appear in the 2023 inventory.

Wikipedia lists the 1st Maritime Patrol Naval Air Squadron at Las Bajadas with CASA C-212PM patrol aircraft, alongside the early warning squadron; its unit list carries no citation, and the Navy does not publish its order of battle, so the current line-up is not confirmed. The Naval Aviation School that started here has moved: the Mexican Navy article and the La Paz airport article place it at La Paz, Baja California Sur, as part of the Centre for Naval Aeronautical Studies.

Veracruz International Airport around the base also handles airline, tourism and flight-training traffic. All the aircraft on the naval side are Mexican Navy aircraft; no foreign units are reported there.