Bombing of Plaza de Mayo


The Bombing of Plaza de Mayo was a massacre which took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 16 June 1955. On that day, 30 aircraft from the Argentine Navy and Air Force strafed and bombed Plaza de Mayo square in Buenos Aires, in what remains to this day the largest aerial bombing ever on the Argentine mainland. The attack targeted the adjacent Casa Rosada, the official seat of government, as a large crowd was expressing support for president Juan Perón. The strike took place during a day of official public demonstrations to condemn the burning of a national flag allegedly carried out by detractors of Perón during the recent procession of Corpus Christi. The action was to be the first step in an eventually aborted coup d'état. The number of identified bodies was put at 308, including six children; an unknown number of victims could not be identified.
The absolute disregard for civilian lives and the violence with which the act was carried out has prompted comparisons with the wave of state terrorism during the dictatorship of 1976-1983.

The attack

Bombing, strafing and ground fighting

At 12:40, a force of thirty Argentine Naval Aviation airplanes, consisting of 22 North American AT-6, five Beechcraft AT-11 and three Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats, took off from Morón Air Base. Perón had been warned of the movements beforehand by his Minister of War, Franklin Lucero, who advised him to retreat to a bunker under the Libertador Building.
The attack was carried out in the crowded city centre on a weekday with no warning during working hours, hence the many civilian casualties. Occupants of public transport vehicles were among the first recorded victims. The first bomb to be dropped fell upon a trolleybus packed with children, killing everyone on board.
Meanwhile, two companies of the rebel 4th Marine Infantry Battalion marched towards the Casa Rosada with the intention of capturing it. One of them was deployed 40 m from its northern façade while the other took position in the Automóvil Club Argentino parking lot, between Colón Park and the Central Post Office, and 100 m from the rear. However, they were repelled from the inside by members of the Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers and from the outside by Army troops marching from the sector of the Ministry of Finance, under the command of General Lucero. The defense of the Casa Rosada consisted of a mere two 12.7 mm Browning M2 machine guns placed on the roof, while defenders in the lower floors used various small arms, including bolt-action Mauser 1909 rifles. Loyalist troops were accompanied by Peronist civilians who took up arms.
At 13:12, union leader Héctor Hugo Di Pietro, acting head of the CGT due the absence of its Secretary-General, spoke on national broadcasting calling all workers in the Federal District and Greater Buenos Aires to concentrate immediately around the CGT building to defend the constitutional government. Moreover, union officials were already mobilizing workers from factories around Buenos Aires towards the city center.
Perón ordered his adjutant, major Jose Ignacio Cialceta, to inform Di Pietro that a clash strictly between soldiers was taking place and therefore no civilian was to gather in Plaza de Mayo. Historian Joseph Page claimed, citing a report originating from the US Embassy as his source, that this order was not given until 16:00.
Consequently the bulk of the civilian casualties occurred when the mobilized workers arrived in Plaza de Mayo in huge numbers to defend the presidency of Juan Perón when Gloster Meteor fighters suddenly arrived to bomb and straf the large crowds of peronist supporters reported to be exiting the central subway entrances, and gathering in nearby streets and immediate vicinity of the presidential palace, killing and wounded hundreds in the process.
According to Police Commissioner Rafael C. Pugliese, a police observation post reported at 14:00 large numbers of civilians arriving in trucks to defend the Presidential Palace and gathering in and around the Paseo Colón and Belgrano pedestrian walkways, before being caught out in the open when the main air attacks took place at 15:00, with the Gloster Meteors strafing the survivors as they pulled up from their final dive bombing attacks and headed back to base.

The rebel ground offensive started to lose steam by 15:00. The marines surrounding the Casa Rosada's northern façade came under fire from army artillery units positioned in a building located at the intersection of Leandro N. Alem and Viamonte streets. Olivieri contacted the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy in the hope of gaining reinforcements. However, it was already surrounded by elements of the 1st Infantry Regiment.
The marines retreated in disarray towards the Ministry of the Navy, where they would remain besieged by loyal Army units until the end of hostilities. Lucero ordered the use of heavy machine guns against the rebels, and 81 mm mortars were brought in to reinforce the assault. At 15:17, after two telephone conversations between Olivieri and Lucero, the rebels waved a white flag from the Ministry of the Navy, but when generals Carlos Wirth and Juan José Valle arrived to communicate with the rebels, a second wave of bombings began. The attack destroyed two floors of the south wing of the building, killing a soldier and a general. At the same time, a Sherman tank fired on the second floor, causing a fire in the admirals' room.
Simultaneously, civilian commandos under Zavala Ortiz's orders began clashing with the police and sniping from the roofs of various buildings. During the afternoon, rebel reinforcements coming from the Central Post building repeatedly tried to break the siege on the Ministry of the Navy, without success.

Aerial combat

As ground combat raged in the center of Buenos Aires, the loyal forces ordered the Morón Air Base to intercept rebel fighters. The pilots were in heated discussions over whether to join the coup or not. A squad of loyal Gloster Meteors took off and one of them shot down a rebel AT-6 over the Río de la Plata, scoring the first air-to-air kill of the Argentine Air Force. Another rebel warplane was downed by fire from hastily mounted anti-aircraft batteries.
However, Morón Air Base fell into rebel hands and the loyal pilots were captured upon landing. Their Meteors were seized and pressed into service by anti-peronist forces, participating in strafing sorties until the final surrender. At the last moment, with the coup on the verge of failure, the warplanes launched a second attack on the seat of government. Having run out of ordnance, one pilot dropped his auxiliary fuel tank as an ersatz incendiary bomb, which fell on the cars in a parking lot near the Casa Rosada.

Retreat and surrender

After heavy urban fighting, which included a false surrender incident, the besieged rebels finally opted for handing over the Ministry of the Navy to the Army units posted outside. Fire ceased at 17:20 local time. Between 9.5 and 13.8 tonnes of ordnance were dropped, killing between 150 and 364 people, mostly civilians, and injuring over 800. Nine members of the Mounted Grenadiers presidential guard and five police officers were killed in action.
Faced with the failure of the intended coup, the rebel pilots received orders to fly towards Uruguay and request asylum. Around thirty warplanes headed towards Carrasco Airport, using up their ammunition by strafing anything that moved along the way. Some pilots did not reach Uruguay, having used up all their fuel during the attack sorties, and crash-landed in the Río de la Plata or the fields of Carmelo, Uruguay.
At 03:00 on 17 June, the leaders of the ill-fated coup, Olivieri, Toranzo Calderón and Gargiulo were informed they were to be tried under martial law and were each offered a pistol to end their lives, which Olivieri and Toranzo Calderón declined. At 05:45, just before dawn, Gargiulo committed suicide in his office.

Aftermath

In the night, angry Peronist crowds burned eight churches, two basilicas and the Curia office in revenge due to the Catholic Church's support for the coup. The police and fire service did not intervene.
In September of that year, the bulk of the armed forces joined in a coup de etat known as the Revolución Libertadora, which overthrew president Perón and started a period of military dictatorship that ended with the 1958 presidential elections, won by Arturo Frondizi of the UCRI. The Peronist party was not allowed to stand for election, but Frondizi's victory was influenced by a pact between Perón and Frondizi.
One of the rebel leaders, radical Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz, went on to serve as an official during the Revolución Libertadora dictatorship and was later appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship by radical President Arturo Illia in 1963.
One of the naval pilots who took part in the bombings, Máximo Rivero Kelly was promoted and was second-in-command of the Argentine Navy during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín. He would later claim that the naval aviation's target was the presidential palace but that one aircraft missed, causing about 20 civilian deaths.
Bullet and shrapnel marks remained visible on some buildings on the south side of the square as of 2019.

Casualties

Peronist sources claimed those killed to be around 400. In 1965, a journalist from “Extra” magazine, claimed that once the fighting had ended in the immediate vicinity of Plaza de Mayo there lay two thousand killed.
On 22 June 1955, Commissioner Rafael C. Pugliese in the Official Police Report declared that the dead were 136, according to the identified and unidentified bodies being held in morgues of the various Buenos Aires hospitals. The medical centers that received the dead and injured and helped with the identification of the number of those killed were: Public Assistance with 62 dead, Argerich with 45 dead, Rawson with 3 dead, Clínicas with 7 dead, Ramos Mejía with 7 dead, Alemán with 2 dead, Fernandez with 3 dead, Policlínico del Ministerio de Hacienda with 3 dead, Policlínico Militar with 2 dead, Policlínico Rivadavia with 1 dead and Morgue Judicial with 1 dead.
Of the 136 killed in the police report, 5 were police officers: Senior Officer Alfredo Aulicino, Sub-Inspector Rodolfo Nieto, Agent José María Bacalja, Agent Ramón Alderete and a retired agent César Augusto Puchulu.In addition to the dead policemen, there were 44 rebel and loyal military killed in the clashes.
In 2003, a book was published in Argentina revealing the full names of the 156 victims that authorities maintain were the real number of killed at the time.