The Argentine Navy (ARA; ) is the navy of Argentina. It is one of the three branches of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, together with the Army and the Air Force.
The Argentine Navy day is celebrated on May 17, anniversary of the victory in 1814 at the Battle of Montevideo over the Spanish fleet during the war of Independence.
History
1810-1909
The Argentine Navy was created in the aftermath of the May Revolution of May 25, 1810, which started the war for independence from Spain. The navy was first created to support Manuel Belgrano in the Paraguay campaign, but those ships were sunk by ships from Montevideo, and did not take part in that conflict. Renewed conflicts with Montevideo led to the creation of a second fleet, which participated in the capture of the city. As Buenos Aires had little maritime history, most men in the navy were from other nations, such as the Irish-born admiral William Brown, who directed the operation. As the cost of maintaining a navy was too high, most of the Argentine naval forces were composed of privateers.
Brown led the Argentine navy in further naval conflicts at the War with Brazil and the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata.
In the 1870s the Argentine Navy began modernizing itself. At the close of the century, the force included:
5 armoured cruisers
4 coastal defence ironclads
3 second-class, high-speed, British-built cruisers
7 modern small cruisers and gunboats
4 destroyers
22 torpedo boats
The most powerful ships at this time included the Italian-built and her sister ships: , , and , each at over 6,000 tons. Three older ironclads, , , and dated from the 1880s and early 1890s.
The navy's ships were built primarily in Italy, Britain, France, and Spain, and were operated by over 600 officers and 7,760 seamen. These were supported by a battalion of marines and an artillery battery.
1910-1982
A naval arms race between Argentina, Brazil and Chile, the most powerful and wealthy countries in South America, began when the Brazilian government ordered three dreadnoughts, battleships. The first, Minas Geraes, was commissioned into the Brazilian navy 1910.
For most of both world wars, Argentina was neutral, only declaring war on the Axis in March 1945. In 1940 Argentina's navy was ranked the eighth most powerful in the world (after the European powers, Japan, and the United States) and the largest in Latin America. A ten-year building programme costing $60 million had produced a force of 14,500 sailors and over a thousand officers. The fleet included two First World War-era (but modernized) American-built s, three modern cruisers, a dozen British-built destroyers, and three submarines, plus minelayers, minesweepers, coastal defence ships, and gunboats. A naval air force was also in operation.
In the postwar period, Naval Aviation and Marine units were put under direct Navy command. With Brazil, Argentina is one of two South American countries to have operated two aircraft carriers: the and .
The Argentine Navy has been traditionally heavily involved in fishery protection, helping the Coast Guard: most notably in 1966 a destroyer fired on and holed a Soviet trawler that had refused to be escorted to Mar del Plata, in the 1970s there were four more incidents with Soviet and Bulgarian ships followed by other incidents such as the sinking of the Chian-der 3.
The Navy also took part in all military coups in Argentina through the 20th century. During the 1976 to 1983 dictatorship, Navy personnel were involved in the Dirty War in which thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the forces of the military junta. The Navy School of Mechanics, known as ESMA, was a notorious centre for torture. Among their more well-known victims were the Swedish teenager Dagmar Hagelin, and French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet (In October 2007 the Argentine Navy formally handed possession of the school to human rights groups to turn it into a memorial museum).
During this regime, the Navy was also the main supporter of a military solution for the country's two longest-standing disputes: the Beagle Conflict with Chile and the Falkland Islands () with the United Kingdom.
Falklands War, 1982
During the 1982 conflict the main Argentine naval fleet consisted of modernised World War II era ships (one GUPPY-type submarine, one British-built carrier, a cruiser, and four destroyers), and newer vessels: two Type 42 destroyers, three French-built corvettes, and one German-built Type 209 submarine. This fleet was supported by several ELMA tankers and transports, as well an ice breaker and a polar transport ship.