ARGENTINA: Old Hands, New Directions

A single-seat jet fighter mounting four 20-millimeter cannon was undergoing new tests in Argentina last week, after whistling through a first trial flight clocked at a speed of 646 miles per hour. The swept-wing I.Ae. 33 Púlqui II, powered by a Rolls-Royce turbojet engine, is the second jet plane to be designed and built in Argentina. The designer: Professor Kurt Tank, former technical director of Germany’s Focke-Wulf concern and designer of the formidable FW 190.

Ex-Nazi Tank is only one of a number of German experts who escaped to Argentina after World War II. Now working as adviser on V-weapons for the Argentine Air Ministry is Werner Baumbach, onetime Luftwaffe bomber pilot who claims to have sunk 300,000 tons of British shipping. Another Air Ministry adviser is Adolf Galland, onetime Inspector General of the Luftwaffe Fighter Command. Working with Designer Tank is Hans Ulrich Rudel, a one-legged whirlwind credited with sinking the Russian battleship Marat and two cruisers, as well as knocking out a record of 532 tanks.

Designer Tank lives quietly with two daughters and a son in the western city of Córdoba, site of Argentina’s chief aircraft factory. Though known to some people as Señor Mathies, he entered Argentina legally and makes no attempt to conceal his real identity. A U.S. general officer who met him recently commented feelingly: “Thank God you are working on this side of the Iron Curtain.”