Marón, Gustavo Flashes in the Dark. Band 1: Nuclear espionage in Argentina, 1946-1957

A volume from the series Latin America @ War. Flashes in the Dark focuses on one of the most unknown and interesting aspects of contemporary military history: the air activities of the US Air Force in Argentina in the context of the Cold War the period of bipolar tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that began in 1945 and ended in 1989-1991 when one of the two rival giants collapsed for social, political and economic reasons. The title of the book is due to the fact that its original foundations were merely flashes: small sparks of information that came to light during more than 20 years of research in huge documents, photographs and witness statements that the author had collected about the North American air operations and space activities under the strictest conditions of secrecy from Argentine territory or in Argentine airspace. The book describes both these missions and the context and circumstances that led to them being kept secret even from the Argentine political and military authorities. The aim of the book is to lift the veil of silence and obfuscation that has surrounded US military activities in Latin America in general and in Argentina in particular for decades, and to reveal aspects that were previously unknown to the public. The facts and circumstances described in the book are virtually contemporaneous with the establishment of the USAF as an independent defence institution in 1947. A few months later, in August 1948, the Air Force Office of Atomic Energy (AFOAT-1) was established and tasked with administering the so-called Atomic Energy Detection System (AEDS). The top-secret purpose of AFOAT-1 was to detect foreign nuclear tests and other activities related to nuclear weapons, such as the collection of gases and radioactive microparticles that would make it possible to reverse engineer the industrial capabilities, technological status and size of the nuclear weapons arsenal of the countries being spied on, initially the Soviet Union and later France and China. AFOAT-1, later renamed the Air Force Technical Applications Centre (AFTAC), had early success with the discovery of the first Soviet nuclear test, which was secretly conducted on 29 August 1949 in the Semipalatinsk steppe in the Kazakh SSR. The radioactive residues released into the atmosphere were detected by a specially modified Boeing WB-29 Superfortress flying between the US Air Force bases at Misawa in Japan and Eielson in Alaska under the guise of a weather survey. This enabled the Tracerlab Incorporated laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to quickly confirm that the Soviet Union had achieved nuclear weapons capability. Armed with this information, US President Harry S. Truman made the discovery public on 23 September 1949, suddenly lifting the veil of Soviet secrecy and forcing his rival, Prime Minister Joseph Stalin, to admit that his country had indeed conducted its first successful nuclear test. This intelligence game was repeated countless times, providing the highest levels of the US government with accurate information another reason to keep secret the operations of the supposedly meteorological aircraft, which, as was publicly stated, were only conducting atmospheric research. The intelligence potential of AFOAT-1/AFTAC and its importance to the national security of the United States were so great that both agencies always operated in absolute secrecy, so that their existence was not acknowledged until 1975, a year after the USAF gave up its permanent base on Argentine territory. Nuclear espionage in Argentina began in 1946 with the secret deployment of Douglas C-47 Skytrain and C-54 Skymaster aircraft to detect uranium deposits, the raw material for the construction of atomic and thermonuclear weapons. The flights were then continued with a Boeing WB-29 Superfortress to spy on the nuclear project that Argentina was secretly carrying out on Huemul Island in Lake Nahuel Huapi. The air operations carried out from Argentina were classified as top secret (Top Secret and Top Secret Umbra), so the officers were careful not to leave any traces, clues or records behind. The secrecy was so strict that not even the Argentine Air Force knew exactly what was going on in Ezeiza and Mendoza, the two airports from which the secret air operations were permanently carried out and which were both under its jurisdiction. Given the unprecedented and sensitive nature of the topics covered in this book, the author provides numerous bibliographical and documentary references so that other researchers can use them in their future work.