This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday
Brazilian efforts to help out in Europe
Brazil announced on the 5th of August 1914 it would be taking a neutral stance in the war. The country had a fragile economy, it relied on coffee exports and had to import oil. As the war was progressing, ports across the world were blockaded and the United Kingdom , one of Brazil’s biggest markets had banned coffee exports in favour of more urgently needed goods.
Several Brazilian merchant ships were sunk by German submarines. In April 1917 the steamship Paraná, sunk in the English channel near Banfleur ( france) by SMUB 32,killing three Brazilian members of the crew. More ships got torpedoed. On October 26, 1917, President Venceslau Bras formally declared war on Germany , Brazil was the only South American country to do so. Only Brazil was not really ready to enter this war, it didn’t really have a navy or an army. It send a medical mission to France and pilots to England.
The arrival of Brazilian aviators in England in 1918 practically coincided with the creation of the British Royal Air Force (RAF), organized by General Hugh Trenchard, from the merger of RNAS and RFC. The RAF incorporated a concept of organization and employment, becoming the first air force in the world to become independent of army or navy control.The first few weeks were reserved for acclimatisation and learning the English language, since only the Araújo brothers were fluent in the language.
The Brazilians first destination was the city of Eastbourne, in the county of Sussex, located on the south coast of England. There was an aviation school there , with the outbreak of war in 1914, it had been requisitioned by the British Government and incorporated into the RNAS to provide primary flight instruction. ( see group photo) The naval aviators sent to England. From left to right: Lauro de Araújo, Heitor Varady, Eugênio Possolo, Virginius de Lamare, Olavo de Araújo, Manoel Pereira de Vasconcelos and Fábio Sá Earp.
Lieutenant Possolo would lose his life as a result of an accident during a training mission.
First Lieutenant Eugenio Possolo was one of thirteen volunteers to travel to England in 1918 and join the Air Force , twelve were in the Brazilian Navy and one from the Army. On the 5th of September 1918 Eugenio , Varady and De Lamare, take off from the Eastbourne Aerodrome with three English pilots for an exercise. Lieutenant Reginald Sanders failed to see Possolo’s plane (also a Sopwith Camel) and struck it. Both planes pilots died at the age of 24. Eugenio was buried at Ocklynge Cemetery, Eastbourne( on the to do list for my next holiday to visit his grave) Lt Sanders was buried at Hampstead Cemetery.
A fortnight later, Lieutenants Varady, De Lamare and Sá Earp made their way to the RAF Calshot base situated on a beach in Southampton Bay, near the town of Lee on-Solent. At this base was stationed the 209 TDS, belonging to the Patrol Bomber School, equipped with Short 184, Short 827, Norman Thompson NT2 and Felixstowe F2A. As part of the advanced training, missions were under real-world conditions, using all equipment, ammunition and combat discipline. Unfortunately, during their stay at Lee-on-Solent, Sá Earp and Varady contracted the Spanish flu, and although they managed to survive, they remained in hospital until the end of the war. With all officers already brevetted and training complete, the Brazilians were assigned to the RAF Cattewater base, located near Plymouth, in southwest England where they were incorporated into 237 and 238 Squadrons of the RAF, operational units subordinate to the 10th Coastal Defence Force, which conducted anti-submarine patrol in the English Channel. Flying armed with bombs and torpedoes, the Brazilians acted in mixed squadrons, along with British and North American aviators. In a space of three months, the 10th Force counted 9,000 hours of patrol, located 42 enemy submarines and sank three. Even after the armistice, the Cattewater-based airmen continued their patrol flights, with the aim of locating and destroying the magnetic mines laid in their thousands by the Germans during the war to block British ports.
the Eastbourne Camels were involved in two more accidents,
killing their pilots. Due to the high loss rate and the need to replenish the growing number of squadrons, pilot training in the RAF was very precarious and often resulted in accidents. By the end of the war, 14166 British pilots had died, of whom about 8000 were accident victims, more than half of the total.
Captain Lieutenant Manuel Pereira de Vasconcelos
Source : Ben Tavener
theaerodrome.com
sussexhistory.net
digital
images : group photo and Eugenio Possolo