Mexico was at war with the Axis from 1942, and the air unit it sent to fight, Escuadrón 201 of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force, trained in the United States, mainly at Greenville in Texas and Pocatello in Idaho, according to Spanish Wikipedia. The name “Aztec Eagles” covered the whole contingent: pilots, mechanics, armourers and everyone else.

It sailed from San Francisco in the US Navy transport Fairisle on 27 March 1945 and reached Manila on 30 April. From Porac, Pampanga, in the Clark Field complex on Luzon, it flew 25 P-47D-30-RA Thunderbolts alongside the US Fifth Air Force from June to August 1945. English Wikipedia counts 59 combat missions over Luzon and Formosa, 50 of them judged successful, and five pilots killed in action; other accounts count missions differently. The men came home on the Sea Marlin, landing at San Pedro, California, on 13 November, and paraded in the Plaza de la Constitución in Mexico City on 18 November 1945.

Coming home was awkward. Spanish Wikipedia records that the squadron was based at Las Bajadas in Veracruz, because Balbuena, then the air force’s home in Mexico City, did not have a runway long enough for the P-47. Two of its dead pilots lie in a mausoleum in Chapultepec Park, and a Mexico City Metro station and several neighbourhoods carry the squadron’s name.

The squadron number survived the long run-down of Mexico’s piston fighters. Spanish Wikipedia describes the modern Escuadrón 201 as eight or ten Pilatus PC-7s at Base Aérea Militar No. 4 in Cozumel, some of which were replaced by T-6 Texan IIs from 2012; English Wikipedia’s airport article lists it with T-6C+s. How and when the squadron moved to the island was not found in the sources checked, and SEDENA does not publish its order of battle.

Cozumel’s first airport was a product of the same war. English Wikipedia says work began when the United States needed a stopover for aircraft during the Second World War; Ixtepec, on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, was built at the same time. Though it could take jets and international flights, the field never became a US military base, and by 1944 it was used only for emergencies and by the Mexican military. Commercial domestic flights followed, and today’s international airport was built in the late 1970s and expanded in 1999.

The air force side, Base Aérea Militar No. 4 “General Eduardo Aldasoro Suárez”, has an aviation apron of 2,550 square metres with parking positions, heliports and a hangar. It shares two asphalt runways with the airlines and the cruise-ship tourists: 05/23, 3,098 metres, and 12/30, 2,700 metres. Since February 2025 it has had a neighbour on the mainland, BAM 20 at Tulum.

Cozumel is one of a group of air force bases around the Yucatán Peninsula, a region where the air force’s main day-to-day task is watching for clandestine flights. On 10 February 2025 President Claudia Sheinbaum opened Base Aérea Militar No. 20 at Tulum, on the mainland opposite the island, saying it would protect and watch over national airspace and help civilians in environmental emergencies, according to Infodefensa. The same report counted the whole air force at 10,538 people, 209 aircraft, 117 helicopters and seven drones.

To the north-west, BAM 8 at Mérida hosted Jaguar 2025 with the Guatemalan Air Force from 29 September to 3 October 2025, an exercise in identifying and intercepting clandestine flights. In April 2026 the Tulum base staged an air show with the F-5s of Escuadrón 401 and the Águilas Aztecas display team. Which of these activities involved Cozumel’s own squadron was not reported in the sources checked.