The Spanish Republican Air Force was the air arm of the Armed Forces of the Second Spanish Republic, the legally established government of Spain between 1931 and 1939.
Initially divided into two branches: Military Aeronautics (Aeronáutica Militar) and Naval Aeronautics (Aeronáutica Naval), the Republican Air Force became the Air Forces of the Spanish Republic, Fuerzas Aéreas de la República Española (FARE), also known as Arma de Aviación, after it was reorganized following the restructuring of the Republican Armed Forces in September 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. This defunct Air Force is largely known for the intense action it saw during the Civil War, from July 1936 till its disbandment in 1939.
The Spanish Republican Air Force was popularly known as "La Gloriosa" (The Glorious One). But, according to some historians, the command structure of the Spanish loyalist forces was marred by ineptitude and lack of decision-making throughout the Civil War. Starting from the crucial first weeks of the conflict in July 1936, the rebel side was able to undertake a massive airlift of troops from Spanish Morocco using mostly the slow Ju 52, without any Spanish Republican interference. This was the world's first long-range combat airlift and the military planes on the Spanish Republican side failed to check it.
The Battle of Guadalajara and the defence of the skies over Madrid against Nationalist bombing raids during the capital's long siege would be the only scenarios where the loyalist air force took part in an effective manner. In other important republican military actions, like the Battle of Teruel and the decisive Battle of the Ebro, where the Aviación Nacional was relentlessly strafing the loyalist positions with accurate low-level attacks, the republican military airplanes were practically absent from the skies. Moreover, when they appeared and attacked, they did so in an unorganized and inadequate manner that mostly failed to achieve positive effects.
Most of the Spanish Republican planes that survived the conflict were repainted with the markings of the Aviación Nacional after the defeat of the Spanish Republic in the Iberian battlefields.
Read more about Spanish Republican Air Force: History, The Escuadrilla España, Soviet Pilots in Spain, Distinguished Air Aces, Gallery, See Also, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words air force, spanish, republican and/or force:
“I remember when I was first assigned to jets. I said to the colonel, “Colonel, I joined this man’s air force to fly an airplane. But nobody’s gonna hitch me to no Roman candle.””
—Kurt Neumann (1906–1958)
“How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“[The Republican Party] consists of those who, believing in the doctrine that mankind are capable of governing themselves and hating hereditary power as an insult to the reason and an outrage to the rights of men, are naturally offended at every public measure that does not appeal to the understanding and to the general interest of the community.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)