The Last A-4Q Skyhawk

Argentina’s unilateral disarmament

On 25 February 1988, the last flight of an A-4Q Skyhawk of the 3rd Naval Air Fighter and Attack Squadron of the COAN took place. Argentina’s unilateral disarmament is set in motion to create a state of absolute national defencelessness for the Argentine nation! The end begins…

The last flight of a Douglas A-4Q Skyhawk of the 3rd Naval Air Fighter and Attack Squadron of the COAN (Naval Aviation Command) of the Argentine Navy was carried out by aircraft 0655/3-A-302, flown by Lieutenant Arturo Médici. On 25 February 1988 he flew from Comandante Espora Naval Air Base to Jorge Newbery Airfield (Aeroparque) in the City of Buenos Aires, and from there it was taken to the illustrious Navy Mechanics School to be used as teaching material for officer cadets in the aeronautical branch.

This act—the withdrawal from service without replacement of the A-4Q Skyhawk system and the 3rd Squadron of the Argentine Navy—was the practical beginning of Argentina’s unilateral disarmament, since at the same time the aircraft carrier ARA “25 de Mayo” had also stopped sailing in order to undergo modernisation at AFNE (State Naval Shipyards and Factories; today ARS), with assistance from the Italian shipyard Fincantieri Cantieri Reuniti S.p.A. Neither Alfonsín’s left-leaning Radicalism nor, later, Peronism (which years later would give rise to the anti-nationalist, leftist Kirchnerism—the era of greatest degeneration, political corruption and legal unconstitutionality in Argentina) ever carried this out. It became the first major and unnecessary loss of Argentine defensive power after the 50% defence budget cut introduced from 1984 onwards, and the criminal application of the unconstitutional Decrees 157/83 and 158/83 by the PEN (National Executive Branch), which initiated a criminal political persecution of Argentine military personnel, civilians and police who, in war, saved the country by fighting and defeating the Castro–Guevarist subversion that was the nation’s enemy, through the legal unconstitutionality that gave rise to the illegal, circus-like “crimes against humanity” cases and trials.

Argentina’s unilateral disarmament, symbolised by the image of the last flight of an A-4Q fighter-bomber in Argentina, began to become reality at that moment, as the first naval aviation squadron and Argentina’s most powerful and important combat system (the aircraft carrier) were unnecessarily withdrawn from service by the political authority of the day. That authority did not cut a superfluous and even greater expense—what was and still is political spending—vastly greater than military, police and judicial spending combined. From that point, political posts began to grow and multiply until today the political apparatus is 1,000% oversized.

The immense majority of Argentines—whether through naivety and ignorance, or through the resentful hatred of those who waged war against Argentina and could not destroy us by force of arms (subversion and Great Britain), and who justified this “apparent” setback of lost capability—never perceived not only that it was the beginning of the end of Argentina as a sovereign state, but also that it did not even serve to save a single peso, build a single school or hospital, or pave the streets of a city. Instead, it meant the loss of military and industrial jobs, the closure of units and factories, the creation of unemployment, and the beginning of the end of reinvestment in the country through National Defence and the National Military Industry and all the branches derived from it—from industrial and service subcontracting to the social support networks of all those Argentines who began to be left out on the street with the loss of Argentine defensive capability—at the same time as the Argentine political apparatus began to grow, not only devouring those resources but also swallowing many more as it grew and continues to grow at the expense of the honest effort of only those Argentines who work, at the cost of destroying the nation’s defence, security and justice.

It looks like the last flight of a single warplane—something that some callow youths dreamed that, at some incredible moment, the same shameless, unpatriotic, fraudulent, thieving and traitorous politicians who withdrew it from service would somehow replace. But in truth it was the first blind flight into the abyss into which the Argentine nation is still falling today, in the same proportion as the criminal party-political apparatus of “the same people as always” continues to rise. For, as politicians sarcastically laugh in our faces with their famous slogan, we are “Argentina, a country with good people”…

Sean Eternos los Laureles