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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
Beginning in the 1940s, United States military missions
have
imparted certain tactical doctrinal concepts. However,
they diluted
the original German influence to a markedly lesser degree
than
elsewhere in the region. In 1941, following the entry of
the United
States into World War II, a United States air mission was
established in Chile and charged with reorganizing the
FACh. In
1944 significant quantities of equipment for the army and
air
force, including 230 aircraft procured under the
Lend-Lease
Agreement, the legal apparatus for military equipment
transfers
during World War II, began to arrive in exchange for the
availability of Chilean bases to the United States.
However, Chile
received no matériel assistance from the United States
during the
war period because the Chilean Navy had refused to sell
the 28,000-
ton battleship Latorre, the six destroyers of the
Serrano
class, and the submarine depot ship Araucano to the
United
States Navy following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Chile
received only some coastal artillery equipment for the
defense of
the copper-mining zone, whose products were considered
vital to the
Allied war effort.
Following the conclusion of World War II, and with the
signing
of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance of
1947 (
Rio Treaty--see Glossary),
additional United States matériel
was also
acquired by the army and air force. This time,
acquisitions were
also made by the navy. The formation of an amphibious
warfare force
equipped with United States war-surplus gear stimulated
expansion
and reorganization of the Coast Artillery (Artillería de
Costas),
which had been subordinate to the navy since 1904. The
name of the
organization was changed from Coast Artillery to the Navy
Infantry
Corps (Cuerpo de Infantería de la Marina--CIM), a
reflection of the
newly dominant role of the CIM's marine mission. Naval
aviation was
revived in 1953. Initially equipped with a few light
transports and
helicopters, the naval air force operated from a new naval
air base
at El Belloto, Valparaíso. In 1958 a group of frogmen
commandos,
modeled after the United States Navy SEALs (sea-air-land
team), was
also formed.
Postwar expansion of the army also brought some
organizational
changes. The Magallanes military district was raised to
the status
of a full Military Area (área militar--AM); its
garrison was
expanded into the army's Fifth Division. The Sixth
Division was
later established in the region adjoining the Bolivian and
Peruvian
borders; it also acquired the status of an AM. In 1965 the
army
formed a paratroop/special forces battalion, and in 1970
it
regained its own aviation arm with the establishment of
the Army
Aviation Command (Comando de Aviación del Ejército--CAE).
The CAE
was initially equipped with a few light communications and
observation aircraft transferred from the air force. The
Seventh
Brigade, raised in the southern part of AM 4 during the
tension
with Argentina over the Beagle Channel in the late 1970s
and early
1980s, was raised to divisional status in 1990. This
brought the
total number of AMs and divisions to seven.
Data as of March 1994
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