Gretel gaffoglio
08/09/2020 - 7:01
- Clarín.com
- Society
Nothing foreshadowed doom. It was a clear and sunny morning, unusually mild in Villa Reynolds, San Luis, headquarters of the V Brigade of the Argentine Air Force (FAA). At 9.15am last Wednesday, the flight conditions were shaping up to be optimal for the daily training of fighter-bomber pilots .
At 10,000 feet (3,048 m), the drone of two A4 Fightinghawks, engaged in simulated air-to-air combat exercises , escorted the rural tasks of the locals. Accustomed to the aerial frenzy, the baqueanos, however, found it difficult to ignore the vertigo projected by the sky.
The training of the two falcons had begun on military timeliness. Captain Gonzalo Fabián Britos Venturini (34) presided over the squad and his immediate subordinate, number 2, whose identity the FAA keeps in reserve as the only direct witness to the tragedy, played the role of enemy fighter. The two were braided in a dog fight, according to aeronautical jargon, about 50 km from the take-off point.
On Wednesday morning, Britos Venturini and another pilot were doing air-to-air combat simulation exercises.
They had decoded within seconds, at 9.30. During the first 30 minutes, the training maneuvers at 1000 k / h followed one another normally.
A few minutes later, in an untimely manner and for reasons that are being investigated, the ship of "El Bicho" - flight signal from Captain Britos Venturini - stalled. His A4 license plate C-295 was rushing inexorably to the ground. He drew descending spirals in the air, abrupt corkscrews, according to the preliminary reconstruction that Clarín was able to make based on military sources.
The training maneuvers followed one another normally. But then, unexpectedly, the plane began to rush to the ground.
Upon reaching the dangerous limit altitude, his numeral ordered the ejection by radio . In combat exercises these directives are given outside the hierarchies.
According to the same sources, the numeral observed that Britos Venturini's parachute, correctly deployed, began to fall , without incident.
Although an Expert Committee made up of four experts from the FAA investigates the events, Clarín was able to reconstruct the dialogue with the control tower .
- “Bug 1” was ejected -informed number 2 in flight.
-Confirm open parachute -retrucado in the control tower.
-Affirmative. Parachute open -completed the military pilot.
"Pass the coordinates," the controllers demanded.
-34 ° 12'15.7 "South. 64 ° 58'22.1" West -he specified.
"Okay, number 2, proceed to the landing," he was ordered.
They immediately sent another plane to the scene. A rescuer parachuted into the reported position. Upon arriving and checking the body, he found that the pilot was dead . The ambulances took hours to arrive due to the roadblocks arranged between San Luis and the south of Córdoba due to the pandemic.
The aviator's autopsy, carried out that same night in Río Cuarto by the forensic doctor Ana Laura Peiovich, revealed that "Britos Venturini died as a result of a dislocation and a complete section of the spinal cord of the cervical spine ."
As explained in his surroundings, “The Bug died in the air, in his law, doing what he loved the most . After a violent ejection, when he touched down in an open field in the Cordovan town of Villa Valeria, he was already dead ”.
The remains of the plane that Britos Venturini was piloting.
The autopsy also revealed that the aviator "also suffered an arterial hemorrhage in the neck , produced before the spinal section." Now the experts are trying to determine what happened at the moment of ejection . They investigate what role the combination between the force of gravity and the acceleration effect of the ejection played. That is why they try to determine how fast the ship was falling and in what position, "since the death was almost instantaneous after the abrupt ejection" while the ship stalled at high speed.
The results of the autopsy also coincide with the testimonies of the baqueanos, who assure that the pilot's parachute fall was accompanied by a deathly silence when the usual thing in these circumstances is to scream after the shock of the ejection.
Only a piece from the wing tip, another from the fuel tank, and two cans remained on the surface; the rest of the plane was buried 6 meters underground , qualified sources from the Force informed Clarín.
The experts will now carry out archaeological work to recover every part of the ship, including the mission computer's data recorder; a kind of black box but more flimsy and incomplete that they hope is not damaged.
City bug
During his training as a fighter pilot at the Punta Indio school, he was baptized "El Bicho" , since at the end of each flight, he used to walk around the base singing the Los Piojos song , "Bicho de ciudad". He himself chose that nickname as a flight sign.
At the end of each flight, Britos Venturini used to walk around the base singing "Bicho de Ciudad". That's why they called him "El Bicho".
He inherited his passion for aeronautics from his father, an FAA NCO. Although for a long time he had been estranged from him.
Instead, he felt devotion to his mother Celia, to his maternal grandfather, Don Venturini, and he was a strong protector of his sister Andrea. His passion for flying and his professional commitment delayed putting together his own family. He was dating Mercedes Rodríguez from Cordoba , daughter of a retired commodore, also an A4 pilot like him. Three weeks ago he had spent his full leave confined to a hotel in Villa María, after traveling to Córdoba for a long weekend to meet up with his girlfriend. The imposition to return to San Luis was to remain isolated for 15 days in quarantine.
Originally from Paraná, Entre Ríos, Gonzalo Britos Venturini attended high school at a technical school that operates in the hangars of the II Air Brigade of that city. There he graduated as an Aeronautical Technician .
Britos Venturini graduated as an Aeronautical Technician in high school and continued his career in the Argentine Air Force.
He was an outstanding military man and stood out among his peers. During his military training, he stood out with the best general graduation average, best study average and best average in air training. At that time the young pilot was flying in the B-45 Mentor and the T34C Turbomentor.
His comrades remember him as a passionate man in his task with an undeniable desire to excel. " His enemy was the error and listlessness. And as a squad leader, I believed that by correcting others, I was able to get the best out of them ”.
"He was not afraid to say things, even to his superiors when he detected a mistake," Clarín was confided by his relatives in Villa Reynolds, who asked for an identity reservation "so that Messi is only remembered that it was for the FAA ."
His colleagues remember Britos Venturini as "the Messi of the Air Force."
Responso and silence in a hangar
In the executor's envelope (military document with post-mortem directives) Britos Venturini appointed “Flecha”, his peer, head of another squadron, as the person in charge of processing his burial. He instructed to be buried in the Colonia Crespo cemetery with his maternal grandfather , Don Venturini.
A resounding silence invaded Hercules as he moved his coffin from Río Cuarto to Paraná, where yesterday the response and subsequent burial took place . In a huge hangar, Celia, her mother, her sister Andrea and her girlfriend Mercedes were waiting in dismay.
In that intimacy, her mother told with integrity that he had always prepared her in case one day she did not arrive. "What I never imagined," he said, "was that that day would come so quickly ." With the same temperance Andrea remembered it like this: "The only peace I have is knowing that what he loved was doing ."
"The only peace I have is knowing that he was doing what he loved," says Andrea, the sister of "El Bicho."
It is known that the vocation is priceless. But paying Britos Venturini in the line of duty was too expensive compared to his meager salary as a captain in the Air Force. As Clarín was able to find out, he received a remuneration of $ 46,000 plus a supplement per flight of $ 9,000 .
The national flag, his saber and his white cap covered his coffin.
It had been a long time since the burial of a fallen person brought together the top leaders of the Armed Forces and the Minister of Defense in the same place. Agustín Rossi; the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Juan Martín Paleo; for the Navy, Rear Admiral Julio Guardia; for the Army, General Agustín Cejas and for the FAA, Brigadier Xavier Isaac.
Farewell to one of the Air Force Falcons.
“It was a heartbreaking goodbye. A moment of total support for the family and for the pilots, since Britos Venturini was a very important man in the life of the Falcons ”, they added.
After the prayer for the eternal rest of the pilot's soul, pronounced by Chaplain Luis Hetze, the chief of the V Brigade described him as the embodiment of “the highest expression of service. The Bug - he added - is still among us only now it flies higher ”.
NS