Left wing governments and several judges in the Southern Cone have a notorious fixation with aircraft purportedly involved in human rights violations during the 1970s and 1980s.
In its most recent iteration on this fixation, Chilean government is nearly “bounty-hunting” for iconic British-built Hawker Hunter jet fighters for their involvement in the attacks on several radio stations, the government palace and the presidential residence in Santiago de Chile during the military coup against president Salvador Allende Gossens on 09/11/1973.
The documentary was funded by the ruling left-wing coalition led by president Gabriel Boric Font and his socialist minister of defense and Allende grand daughter, Maya Fernández Allende, whose active interest in reviving this traumatic piece of Chilean history was already in motion at least six month before commemorations would take place.
Fifty years mystery recycled
While some sources point out that unidentified Chilean political authorities “kindly requested” the Fuerza Aérea de Chile (FACH, Chilean Air Force) to remove all existing Hawker Hunters from monuments and museum exhibitions at institutional facilities and public locations throughout the country earlier this year, others indicate that the move was a FACH “reconciliatory gesture”…
Once the news became public in early May, however, denials were the only replies from both FACH and the Ministerio de Defensa Nacional (MDN, Ministry of National Defense): Political authorities said “no instructions [had] been given” in that direction while the service announced that removals were actually “due to a reassignment of aircraft that are in static exhibition”… but removals ceased altogether!
After the “Who sir? Me sir?” game subsided naturally, state-run television, Televisión Nacional (TVN, National Television), aired a controversial documentary, “Hawker Hunter: El ruido del silencio” (“Hawker Hunter: The noise of silence”), recapping the 1973 events on Sunday 09/03/2023.
Mixing recent-day and historic video footage and witness testimonies, the 1:23 hours documentary provided a dramatic account of the air strikes over Santiago de Chile on this dreadful date… but the video is available on YouTube only to Chilean-resident audiences!
The documentalists center their chronicle around a much arguable attempt to place Hunter FGA.71A serial number 731 on film footage recorded by German-born director, Peter “Pedro” Chaskel Benko, while it dived into the north face of Palacio de la Moneda (Mint Palace) firing SURA P4 rockets from its underwing stations.
The aircraft in question isn’t “just another” Chilean Hunter: It’s the one that FACH proudly displays in the gardens around their headquarters building at former Los Cerrillos airport…
“Fake aircraft spotting” as fake can be?
Zooming in and editing a video still from Chaskel’s footage, artist Fabio Castro Pellizzari made a cheap hat trick to purportedly “demonstrate” that the aircraft in the low resolution capture carries serial number “731”.
FACH quickly responded that the documentary’s Hunter was being sea shipped to Chile after being delivered in the United Kingdom (on 09/03/1973, according to our own references) and pointed out that Castro’s evidence lacked the “J-” prefix used in Hunter serial numbers at the time, so it could not have been the aircraft shown on video.
But, even if the “amazing discovery” doesn’t resist the lightest of fact-checkings, the documentalists hit a “political bull’s eye” by spilling fuel on Chile’s 50-year old socio-political bonfire and placing FACH once again in the uncomfortable position of explaining their participation in the 1973 events.
The hunt is obviously not aimed at the British-built fighters: Hell-bent on exposing crews flying the 9/11 attack missions, this piece of government-funded propaganda spends well over 20 minutes detailing the presumed involvement of Chilean Hunter pilots in the events.
And it somehow succeeds, because it expands the list of suspects from about five previously identified (and legally prosecuted) aviators to about fifteen, albeit providing limited evidence on their actual 1973 acts.
As long as the tug of war goes on, Chilean Hunters will remain a hostages in the middle of FACH pilots’ “silence pact” and left-wing cries for “truth and justice”, but if pilots names (and acts) are revealed, the British-built fighters may be spared of their ominous symbolism and persecution.
Meanwhile, several of the 19 surviving FACH Hunters will remain hidden away from public view and threatened with scrapping (click here for a complete Pista 18 Chilean surviving Hunters inventory)… or else be recycled into souvenirs as proposed by some of the most extreme left-wing activists!
If that happens to be the case, only one could survive prosecution and be exhibited in front of the government palace as a reflective memento of Chile XX Century’s most dramatic hour, as proposed in the documentary by self-designated “transmedial artist” Fabián Castro…
And Chilean enthusiasts will then have to fly abroad to visit the only two other FACH Hunter surviving examples: One wearing British markings and flying from Leeming air station (England) and the other one preserved at the Hatzerim air museum (Israel) posing as a Jordanian Air Force example from the Six Days War.
Bibliography: López Tobar, Mario: “El 11 en la mira de un Hawker Hunter” (Editorial Sudamericana, Chile, 1999) and Military Aviation Review’s @MAR (02/2023). Internet references: ABC Internacional, ADN Radio, Aeroflight, Airliners, Arte Informado, Aviation Corner, BBC, EDEFA Defensa, El Mostrador, El País, FACH, Google Maps, JetPhotos, Museo Nacional Aeronáutico y del Espacio, NYC Prensa, La Tercera, Pista 18, Piensa Prensa, Scramble, Thunder & Lightnings, and Wikipedia. Acknowledgements: C. Ay, F. Yantani, G. Ávalos and J. Vera provided local support in Chile for this report.
