Brazilians at War: Brazilian Aviation in the Second World War

Latinamerica@war #4

by Santiago Rivas

When the Second World War erupted, Latin America - despite being initially neutral - became part of it. Brazil, with its large provision of goods to the Allied Powers, was soon a victim of German U-boat attacks - leading to the urgent development of antisubmarine aviation units.

Furthermore, as military aviation in Brazil was modernized, Brazil also sent a fighter squadron and an observation unit to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations - taking part in the operations in Northern Italy and supporting the Brazilian ground forces, as well as other Allied units, until the end of the war. This book covers the story of both the operations along the Brazilian coast and in Italy.

Genres: Brazil

88 pages, Paperback

Published February 7, 2018

Reviews

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Santiago Rivas is well on his way to becoming a significant aviation historian, and this is a good example of his work; the subtitle being truth in advertising. This work really tells two different stories. After Rivas provides an overview of the development of Brazilian military aviation up to the outbreak of World War II, the first major segment deals with Brazilian contributions to the Battle of the Atlantic, once the Axis submarines arrived off Brazilian shores. This dealing as much with the contributions of the US Navy patrol squadrons as it does with their Brazilian counterparts.

The second half of the book is also alluded to by the cover, as the focus is providing a blow-by-blow operational history of the air contingent that was deployed to Italy in conjunction with the Brazilian land force.

This is all well done so if you've ever had an interest in the Brazilian adventure I don't think that you'll be disappointed in this work.

[Josh Gidney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and well written with fascinating photos (A good modeller's reference).Enjoyed it more than I thought I might; the anti-submarine operations were very interesting; it gives you an idea of how global the Second World War was.