Every war and armed operation of Brazilian military aviation
Brazilian military flying began before the air force did, in the Contestado War and the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, whose loss and victory claims come from a single modern account cited by Wikipedia. The Araguaia campaigns of 1972–1974 are given as the court and commission findings record them: in 2010 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that Brazil had violated the American Convention, and the air force’s own role was not confirmed. Guerrilla casualties in Operation Traíra are Brazilian figures. Where a consolidated sortie or loss figure exists in the official record it is given here; where accounts disagree, the range is shown and the disagreement named. Blank cells are blank because no figure could be verified, not because the fighting was small.
From the Contestado War in 1915 to the Amazon border interdiction that continues today.
| Conflito | Anos | Contra | Aeronave principal | Missões | Aeronave perdida | |
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| The Contestado Warthe first military flying in BrazilBrazilian Army aviation | 1914–1915 | Contestado rebels | Three monoplanes | 1 | ||
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Flew reconnaissance for the army against the rebels of the Contestado. The Contestado was a rebellion of settlers in the disputed border region between Paraná and Santa Catarina. General Setembrino de Carvalho called on Lieutenant Ricardo Kirk, who had earned his brevet at Étampes in 1912, to support the land campaign from the air. Kirk and the Italian civilian pilot Ernesto Darioli flew reconnaissance from União da Vitória with three monoplanes from the remnants of an aviation school and the Aeroclube Brasileiro. On 1 March 1915 Kirk crashed near General Carneiro; Portuguese Wikipedia calls it the first fatal accident of a Brazilian aviator. He is now the patron of Brazilian Army Aviation. Resultado The air detachment did not continue after Kirk’s death; the war ended in 1916. Aircraft types and the number of sorties were not confirmed.
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| The Constitutionalist Revolutionthe Paulista WarArmy and Naval aviation (federal government) | 1932 | São Paulo state forces | Waco CSO, Potez 25 TOE, Savoia-Marchetti S.55e mais 2 | |||
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Federal army and naval aviation flew reconnaissance and bombing against the forces of São Paulo. The revolt of São Paulo against Getúlio Vargas’s provisional government ran from 9 July to 2 October 1932. The federal side had about 58 aircraft — Waco CSOs, Potez 25s, Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boats, Martin PM-1s and Corsairs among them — against nine or ten Paulista machines, including four Curtiss Falcons. A Paulista Potez 25, A-212, is credited by the same account with the first aerial victory in the Americas before the Chaco War. The campaign showed the government both the value and the weakness of two separate air arms, part of the case for the single service of 1941. Resultado São Paulo surrendered on 2 October 1932. Loss and victory claims come from a single modern account cited by Wikipedia.
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| The anti-submarine war in the South Atlanticthe sinking of U-199Brazilian Air Force | 1942–1945 | Alemanha e Itália | PBY Catalina, Lockheed Hudson | |||
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Patrolled the coast and escorted convoys against German and Italian submarines alongside the US Navy. Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy on 22 August 1942 after submarine attacks on its shipping. On 31 July 1943 three aircraft found U-199 on the surface east of Rio de Janeiro: a US Navy PBM Mariner of VP-74, a Brazilian Hudson and a Brazilian Catalina named Arará, flown by Second Lieutenant Alberto M. Torres. Arará’s depth charges sank the boat. Uboat.net gives 49 dead and 12 survivors, including the commander, Hans-Werner Kraus; the Catalina crew threw a dinghy to the men in the water and they were picked up by USS Barnegat. Torres later flew P-47s in Italy with the 1st Fighter Group. Resultado U-199 was sunk on 31 July 1943, with 49 dead and 12 survivors. Credit for the sinking is shared between the US and Brazilian aircraft in uboat.net; Wikipedia attributes the fatal depth charges to the Catalina.
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| The Italian campaignthe 1st Fighter Group, Senta a Púa!1st Fighter Group (1º Grupo de Aviação de Caça) | 1944–1945 | Alemanha e República Social Italiana | P-47D Thunderbolt, Piper L-4 | 2,550 | 16 | |
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Flew fighter-bomber missions with the US 350th Fighter Group against bridges, rail, vehicles and artillery, and supported the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. The 1st Fighter Group was formed on 18 December 1943 under Major Nero Moura with about 350 men and 43 pilots. It trained on P-40s in Florida, flew air defence in Panama and converted to the P-47 at Suffolk County, New York, before landing at Livorno on 6 October 1944. Attached to the US 350th Fighter Group, it began operations from Tarquinia in November and fought through the winter and the spring offensive in the Po valley. On 22 April 1945 it flew 11 missions and 44 sorties, the date now kept as Fighter Aviation Day. Wikipedia’s tally, drawn from FAB sources, credits it with 1,304 motor vehicles and 13 locomotives destroyed among other targets. Its cry “Senta a Púa!”, brought in by Lieutenant Rui Moreira Lima from the pilots at Salvador, is still the motto of the Jambock squadron at Santa Cruz. Resultado Operations ended on 6 May 1945; the group received the US Presidential Unit Citation in 1986. Target-destruction totals are the unit’s own claims as reported by Wikipedia; numbers of pilots taken prisoner were not confirmed.
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| The Jacareacanga revoltan air force mutiny against KubitschekRebel Brazilian Air Force officers | 1956 | Brazilian federal government | AT-11 (seized) | |||
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Air force officers seized aircraft and airfields in the Amazon against the new president, Juscelino Kubitschek. On 10 February 1956 Major Haroldo Veloso and Captain José Chaves Lameirão took an aircraft from Rio de Janeiro and seized the airfield at Jacareacanga in Pará, then Santarém and smaller towns. They opposed Kubitschek, whom they saw as Getúlio Vargas’s heir, after the crisis of November 1955. Portuguese Wikipedia, citing CPDOC/FGV, says the government had difficulty containing the revolt because the air force was reluctant to act against its own officers. It ended on 29 February 1956. Resultado The revolt ended after 19 days in a government victory; Major Veloso was imprisoned and some rebels fled abroad. A second air force revolt at Aragarças in 1959 was not covered by the sources checked and is not included.
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| The Lobster Warthe fishing dispute with FranceBrazilian Air Force | 1961–1963 | France (no fighting) | B-17, P-2 Neptune, S-2 Tracker | 0 | ||
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Maritime patrol aircraft tracked French fishing boats and the warships sent to protect them. The dispute was over whether lobsters on the Brazilian continental shelf were a sedentary resource of the shelf or a free-swimming fishery open to French boats. In February 1963 France sent the destroyer Tartu. A FAB P-2 Neptune made radar contact on 26 February and a B-17 photographed the ship the next day; from then on Brazilian aircraft visited it day and night, and Wikipedia recounts a low pass in which two aircraft approached with all lights off and switched them on over the destroyer. Brazil had a B-17 squadron of five, a Neptune squadron of 12 and four S-2 Trackers available. Diplomacy, not force, ended the stand-off. Resultado France withdrew its ships by 10 March 1963; an agreement was signed on 10 December 1964. The aircraft numbers are Wikipedia’s, citing Poggio (2016) and Neto (2021). |
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| The Araguaia guerrilla campaignscounter-insurgency under the military governmentBrazilian Air Force, with the Army and Navy | 1972–1974 | PCdoB guerrillas | ||||
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Supported Army counter-insurgency operations against guerrillas of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB). The campaigns took place under the military governments that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Wikipedia describes three phases: Operation Parrot (April–October 1972), when, according to a National Truth Commission report it cites, three areas were bombed with napalm; Operation Anaconda (1973), based on intelligence work; and Operation Marajoara (October 1973 – October 1974), in which about 400 counter-insurgency specialists were deployed. Wikipedia lists the Army, Navy and Air Force on the government side but does not say which service dropped the napalm. The fate of the disappeared remains the subject of court and commission findings rather than settled history. Resultado The guerrilla was destroyed by 1974. On 14 December 2010 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Gomes Lund v. Brazil) found that Brazil had violated the American Convention by using its amnesty law to avoid punishing violations. The specific air force role, aircraft and sorties were not confirmed; English Wikipedia separately lists T-6 and B-26 counter-guerrilla operations in 1970–1974 without detail.
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| Operation Traírathe FARC raid on the Traíra riverBrazilian Air Force, with the Army and Navy | 1991 | FARC | AT-27 Tucano, H-1H, C-130 Herculese mais 1 | |||
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Flew troops, attack and logistics for the Army’s response to a FARC attack on a border detachment. On 26 February 1991 about 40 FARC guerrillas calling themselves the Comando Simón Bolívar crossed into Brazil and attacked a 17-man Army detachment on the Traíra river, killing three soldiers, wounding nine and taking weapons. President Fernando Collor authorised a response with the knowledge of Colombia’s President César Gaviria; the two governments met at Leticia on 9 March. The air force sent six H-1H troop-carrying helicopters, six AT-27 Tucano attack aircraft and C-130 and C-115 transports. Resultado Portuguese Wikipedia, citing Pinheiro and Mendel (US Foreign Military Studies Office, 1995), reports 12 guerrillas killed and most stolen weapons recovered. Guerrilla casualty figures are Brazilian-sourced and were not independently confirmed; the FARC’s position was not found.
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| Amazon border interdiction and the shoot-down lawOperation Ágata and air policing of unregistered flightsBrazilian Air Force | 2002– | Drug-trafficking and illegal-mining flights | A-29 Super Tucano, A-1 AMX, E-99e mais 2 | |||
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Intercepts unregistered aircraft, mostly suspected drug flights, and attacks clandestine airstrips in joint operations. Decree 5,144 regulates article 303 of the Aeronautical Code in four steps: averiguação (identification by approach and radio or visual signals), intervenção (an order to change course and land), persuasão (warning shots with tracer) and destruição, applied only when the others fail. English Wikipedia records six AMX jets destroying clandestine airstrips in October 2002, A-29s firing warning shots at a drug-trafficking Cessna on 3 June 2009, and two A-29s destroying a clandestine runway in Operation Ágata 4 on 12 March 2012; the Ágata series of joint border operations began in August 2011. The AH-2 Sabre was bought in part to complement the Super Tucano in interceptions of slow aircraft. Resultado Continuing. Decree 5,144 of 16 July 2004 allows destruction of an aircraft classified as hostile, as a last resort, on the Air Force Commander’s authority. Whether any aircraft has actually been shot down under the decree was not confirmed in the sources checked; only warning shots are documented here.
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Nada corresponde a essa pesquisa.
Cada número, verificado
- Poder Aéreo: Força Aérea Brasileira vai desativar os helicópteros de ataque Mi-35M (AH-2) (10 February 2022)12 AH-2 in four batches; a circulated (unpublished) plan put retirement between 1 March and 31 December 2022; Esquadrão Poti (2º/8º GAV) at Porto Velho to switch to the H-60.
- uboat.net: U-199Sunk 31 July 1943 at 23.54S, 42.54W by a US Mariner (VP-74) and Brazilian Catalina and Hudson; 49 dead and 12 survivors.
- Planalto: Decreto nº 5.144, de 16 de julho de 2004Regulates article 303 of the Aeronautical Code: averiguação, intervenção, persuasão (warning shots), destruição; destruction authorised by the Air Force Commander (art. 10).
Dados verificados em 01/10/2026. Back to the Brazilian Air Force.