How old is the Chilean Air Force?

Chile was one of the first Latin American countries to organize military aviation. The Military Aeronautics School opened in El Bosque, south of Santiago, on February 11, 1913, and its first pilots trained with Blériot and Sánchez-Besa aircraft. In December 1918, Lieutenant Dagoberto Godoy became the first to cross the Andes mountain range by plane, a flight to the outskirts of Mendoza that remains the founding milestone of Chilean aviation. Throughout the 1920s, an Army air service and a separate Navy air service coexisted, with different doctrines and equipment.

On March 21, 1930, the government of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo merged both services into a single independent branch, the National Air Force, under the command of Commodore Arturo Merino Benítez. Chile thus became one of the few countries in the world with an autonomous air force, at a time when most still kept aviation subordinate to the army. A few months later it adopted the name Fuerza Aérea de Chile (Chilean Air Force), which it retains today, and that March date is the one celebrated every year as the institution's anniversary. Santiago's international airport is named after Merino Benítez in honor of its founder.

Nearly a century later, the FACh operates F-16 fighters in the Block 50 and MLU versions, C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and KC-135 tankers, domestically built T-35 Pillán trainers and Brazilian-made A-29 Super Tucanos, as well as helicopters and a permanent base in Antarctica, the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base. The 1913 milestone is remembered as the day of Chilean military aviation, and the 1930 one as the birth of the institution.