Between 1931 and 1937 Deutsche Luft Hansa and the Zeppelin company ran regular airship flights between Germany and Brazil. Until 1936 the airships tied up at Campo dos Afonsos in Rio de Janeiro. On 31 March 1934 the Zeppelin company was authorised to build a dedicated airship port at Santa Cruz, and the Bartolomeu de Gusmão Airport, named after the Brazilian-born balloon pioneer, was inaugurated on 26 December 1936.

The complex was more than a field: it had an enormous hangar, a factory for hydrogen and a branch railway line to the city centre. Portuguese Wikipedia gives the hangar’s dimensions as 274 metres long and 58 metres high, says it was begun in 1934 by the Brazilian company Construtora Nacional Condor, and says President Getúlio Vargas inaugurated it.

The investment barely paid off. After the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst on 6 May 1937, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin asked on 17 June 1937 to suspend operations to Brazil. The hangar survived. It was listed as national heritage by IPHAN in 1998, per Portuguese Wikipedia, or on 14 March 1999, per English Wikipedia, and is described as one of the few rigid-airship hangars left in the world. It is still used for military aircraft.

Brazil’s 1st Fighter Group was formed on 18 December 1943 and flew P-47 Thunderbolts in Italy with the US 350th Fighter Group in 1944 and 1945. Its first pilots landed back at Campo dos Afonsos on 16 July 1945, and the rest arrived by ship two days later. Santa Cruz became the group’s base, and it has stayed there ever since.

The aircraft changed with each decade. English Wikipedia lists Gloster F-8 Meteors from 1953 to 1968, Lockheed T-33s from 1968 to 1972, Embraer AT-26 Xavantes from 1972 and Northrop F-5s from 1975. The first three F-5Bs left Palmdale on 6 March 1975 and reached Brazil on 12 March; the first F-5Es followed in June. Because Santa Cruz was being renovated, the group first operated them from Galeão, Poder Aéreo recalls.

The two squadrons are the Jambock, after the group’s wartime call sign, and the Pif-Paf. The F-5s, modernised by Embraer as F-5EM/FM, are now being run down: the 2022 retirement plan counted 14 here and set a minimum fleet of 20 for the whole air force until 2028. In November 2023 Poder Aéreo reported that a 1st Fighter Group pilot would train on the Gripen C/D in Sweden in 2024, which the author read as a hint about where the next Gripens would go.

Santa Cruz has also been a showroom. In 1973 two demonstrators visited the base during an international aerospace salon: the single-seat MB-326K attack prototype and the Harrier demonstrator G-VTOL. Neither was bought. In August 2016, for the Rio Olympic Games, the air force put F-5Ms armed with air-to-air missiles, A-29 Super Tucanos, an E-99 airborne early warning jet and C-105 and C-130 transports on alert here. Around the reorganisation into wings that made the base Ala 12, it also received the P-3AM Orions from Salvador and the Caracal helicopters of the Puma squadron from Campo dos Afonsos.

On 3 June 1982, during the war between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), an RAF Vulcan returning from the Black Buck 6 raid broke its in-flight refuelling probe and could not reach Ascension. The crew, captained by McDougall, diverted towards Rio de Janeiro. According to the British accounts cited by Wikipedia, two F-5Es of the 2nd Squadron of the 1st Fighter Group were scrambled from Santa Cruz and intercepted the bomber.

The Vulcan was cleared to land at Galeão with less than 2,000 lb (910 kg) of fuel. One Shrike anti-radar missile had been jettisoned; the other stayed stuck on its pylon and remained in Brazil. Brazil held the aircraft and crew. The historian Lawrence Freedman writes that a deal was struck on 4 June; the crew flew to Ascension on 10 June. Some Wikipedia base articles give the date as 3 May 1982; the operation’s own article and its sources say 3 June.