On the morning of April 2, 1982, he returned to the Base of Tandil aboard a Cessna 182. He had taken the head of the base to the city of Buenos Aires for a meeting of which he had no idea what it was. He turned on the radio and He was surprised to hear military marches But little was what could tune in to the thick clouds he was going through. when landing learned about the news: the Malvinas had recovered. Gustavo Enrique Aguirre Faget27 -year -old lieutenant, he was a combat pilot and also served as a link pilot functions. He died yesterday Sundaywhen a few days ago, 43 years of the Baptism of fire of the Air Force and their own were completed.
In his paternal family there were many soldiers, all of the army, even his father was an official of the engineers. From adolescence he knew that he wanted to be a pilot of the Air Force.
In February 1973 he entered the Aviation School from where he left with the specialty of the hunting pilot. Then he was at the base of Villa Reynolds and the war surprised him in Tandil in the group 6 of the VI Air Brigadewhich last year was distinguished as “heroic”, for what was done in Malvinas. The M5 Dagger Mirage flew.
In mid -1979, 39 Mirage had arrived in the country, four of them bipaczas and the rest monoplays. The pilots were trained to pilot these machines that They doubled the speed of sound.
That April 2 at the base was all joy, which was cut by the boss, Comodoro Tomás Rodríguez –“It was a shaking of reality”Aguirre Faget would say years later- who warned them that he entered war with Great Britain. He asked them to study the tactics and weapons used by the enemy in each free time. One of the most excited was the lieutenant Héctor VolponiGreat Air Combat Stories Reader of World War II.
With Volponi they were inseparable friends of the times of the hunting pilot course in Mendoza. Life wanted him to be demolished on May 23 -the missions were simultaneous and it was common for different squadrillas to cross- Volponi broke the radio silence to ask if it was. When he was attacked by Harrier airplanes, he fell on Bourbon island. Next to the lieutenants Pedro Beanfallen on May 21 and Juan BernhardtIt was a very close quartet.
The VI Brigade was distributed in two bases, one in San Julián and the other in Rio Grande, the two points of the continent closest to the islands. With the run of the weeks they would also settle in Río Gallegos. In each of the bases there were between 15 and 18 pilots, and between 60 and 70 missions were fulfilledlooking to make white flying at 800 kilometers per hour.
Aguirre Faget was highlighted in San Juliánand the pilots stayed in the municipal hostel on whose front today the monument can be seen with a Dagger.
There the squad was armed “La Marinette”which alludes to a woman who appears in a romantic French song, while in Rio Grande they were “The Wild Avutards”because these birds made a slow run with a constant flutter and delayed in the flight, something similar to what the pilots felt, which took off with the maximum fuel and armament.
The Dagger was a machine that could not be replenished in flight, so they carried three additional fuel tanks, each with a capacity of 1300 liters. Even so, when they landed on the return of a mission it was usual for them to do it with the red fuel indicator. The problem was that to compensate for the weight of the fuel, Armament had to be resigned.
They were not planes designed to attack naval targets, and the bombs they carried were effective if they were thrown at considerable heights and not flying almost flush with water. Therefore, the bombs used to pierce the covers or the hulls of the ships, but did not deton.
The chief of the VI Brigade was the Brigadier Teodoro Waldnerwho corrected who pronounced his last name with “W” and not with “V”, which was the appropriate form, while Comodoro Tomás Rodríguez was the head of Group 6 of Hunting.
For Aguirre Faget The war began on May 1 at noon. In the squad that integrated. He was the least graduation pilot and flew with the indicative “Gastroo”. The captain commanded her Norberto Dimeglio; The second boss was the first lieutenant César Román y Aguirre subject That group closed. They were given the mission of attacking three ships that bombarded the surroundings of Puerto Argentino. As a result, They left the Frigates Alacrity and Arrow already a type 42 destroyer.
In total, participated in seven missions. In two of them, his squad had to return due to bad weather and on May 23 they did not find whites.
On May 21, he recalled that It was flush over Gran Malvina Island And that, after spending some hills, he found a frigate, which would later know that it was the Broadswordto which he attacked with his 30 mm cannons. Almost above the ship, he realized that The bombs had not come out. It passed over the frigate dodging its masts and, in the middle of the enemy fire, it made a closed turn to the north mouth of the Strait of San Carlos. It was at that moment that he felt a strong blow under his seat. He managed to stabilize the plane and could reach San Julián, where the mechanics found that a shot The antenna had stoking himof the shark fin. That piece was hung as amulet at the entrance of the bunker they usually used.
On May 26 he participated in an attack on troops in San Carlos and on June 8 he intervened in a maneuver in a pleasant bay, which went down in history as the darker day for the English fleet.
“La Marinette” had a fallen, the lieutenant Carlos Julio Castillo, Disabled on May 24 by a Seawinder missile south of the Strait of San Carlos. Impacted on the ground without being able to eject. “The wild bustards” had four fallen, the first lieutenant José Leónidas Ardiles and Lieutenant Héctor Ricardo Volponi, Juan Domingo Bernhardt and Pedro Ignacio Bean.
There is a fallen noncommissioned officer, the mechanical corporal Héctor Hugo Varas, who died in the attack on the island of the States, while transporting rolling material for the Air Force.
In addition, they are among the dead of the brigade Captain Gustavo García Cuerva and Vicecomodoro Hugo Meisnerthat came from the VIII Mariano Moreno Air Brigade and were attached to the unit. García Cuerva was shot down by Fire Friend on May 1 and Meisner, aboard a C-130, by a Sea Harriers squad.
The Lieutenant Gustavo Aguirre the subjectwhich was awarded with the “the Argentine nation to the value in combat”, can be fired today Monday from 12.30 to 14.30 in Molds 769, CABA and the burial will be in the Pilar Paz Garden at 15.30.
The shock between his friends and gun colleagues is great. Another hero left, surely to meet those who were doing Guard in Malvinas.
