1918–1941: floatplanes at Veracruz

Mexican naval aviation began, by the account of the English Wikipedia, in 1918, when Carlos Santa Ana successfully tested a Mexican-made float biplane in the port of Veracruz. It was a false dawn. In 1926 a squadron of floatplanes was designed and built for the Navy, but there were no naval aviators to fly them; the first, Carlos Castillo Bretón, qualified in 1927 after training in the United States and Mexico. For the next fifteen years the arm was more idea than force: Wikipedia counts seven naval officers qualified as pilots between 1927 and 1943, some of whom left to join the Mexican Air Force. The Navy itself, in the law that governs it today, treats the Aeronáutica Naval as one of its three corps, beside the General Corps and the Marine Infantry.

1942–1945: the U-boat war and the school at Las Bajadas

The Second World War gave the arm a mission. German U-boats sank the Mexican tankers Potrero del Llano on 13 May 1942 and Faja de Oro a week later, and Mexico declared war on the Axis that month. In 1943 the Navy set up its Naval Aviation School at Las Bajadas, outside Veracruz, using aircraft handed over by the air force, and, according to Wikipedia, flew them on patrols over the Gulf of Mexico looking for submarines before they were returned to training. No Mexican naval aircraft is credited with an attack on a U-boat in the sources checked. Las Bajadas became, and remains, the largest and oldest naval air base in the country; in 1974 the Veracruz Naval Air Station took over the old airport buildings there.

1946–1999: search, rescue and a Russian shopping list

After the war the Aeronáutica Naval settled into the work it still does most: search and rescue, coastal patrol and help for the population after storms and earthquakes. Its fleet stayed small and second-hand until the 1990s, when the Navy went shopping in unusual places. Wikipedia lists Russian Mi-2 and Mi-8 helicopters and Antonov An-32B transports, French, American and German helicopters, and Finnish L-90 Redigo trainers. In 1999 it started building kit aircraft and light helicopters at Las Bajadas. The result was one of the most varied inventories of any navy in the hemisphere, spread across bases on two coasts: the Gulf fleet’s stations from Tampico to Isla Mujeres, the Pacific fleet’s from Guaymas and La Paz to Tapachula.

2000–2016: Hawkeyes, Panthers and Black Hawks

The 2000s brought real capability. Three former Israeli E-2C Hawkeye radar aircraft were bought, the first rolled out in January 2004, to watch the sea approaches. Eurocopter developed the AS565 MBe Panther, with folding rotors and Arriel 2N engines, initially for the Mexican Navy, to fly from its patrol ships. In August 2011 the Navy received three navalised UH-60M Black Hawks, and in March 2014 it ordered two T-6C+ Texan II trainers. Fixed-wing patrol was rebuilt around CASA aircraft: Wikipedia’s inventory, drawn from FlightGlobal, lists seven C-212s and six CN-235s, and the C295 article counts four C295Ms and two C295Ws at Tapachula.

2006 to today: the war on the cartels

In the federal campaign against the drug cartels since 2006, Navy helicopters have flown marines and support into some of the most prominent operations. The cost has been real. On 15 July 2022, the day marines arrested the drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero in Sinaloa, a Navy Black Hawk crashed at Los Mochis and 14 of the 15 people on board were killed; Wikipedia records that the Navy did not link the crash to the arrest, while an unnamed US official told CBS News that it was linked to the operation. In January 2023, when security forces captured Ovidio Guzmán López in Culiacán, the government acknowledged that Navy aircraft took part, and Zona Militar reported that military and civil aircraft were hit by cartel gunfire.

2017–2026: hurricanes, a crash and a quieter fleet

The other half of the job is weather. When Hurricane Otis devastated Acapulco in October 2023, the army and Navy sent 8,000 troops; Wikipedia records that the Navy alone delivered 4,000 grocery packages and 156,450 litres of water, and that 10 of the military’s 11 medical evacuations were by air. In 2023 the Aeronáutica Naval had about 120 aircraft in 18 squadrons, according to Wikipedia’s FlightGlobal-based figures, with Mi-17s, Panthers and Black Hawks as the helicopter core and King Air 350s for maritime surveillance. Since 2024 it has served under a new Secretary of the Navy, Admiral Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, and the reformed naval law of November 2025 keeps it as one of the Navy’s three corps. No major new aircraft delivery for 2024–2026 was confirmed in the sources reachable for this page.

现有船队和订单

比奇飞机公司, CASA, 欧洲直升机公司, 空客, 庞巴迪, 塞斯纳, 里尔喷气机, MD直升机公司, 莫尔, 米尔, 施韦泽, 西科斯基, 兹林

前舰队

安东诺夫, 梅塞施密特-博尔科-布洛姆 (MBB), 诺斯罗普·格鲁曼公司, 瓦尔梅特