Ricardo Kirk

Cruz do Aviador (The Aviator's Cross), General Carneiro , PR, (2005)

The monument to Ricardo Kirk in Taubaté (1996)

Ricardo João Kirk (* 1874 in Campos dos Goytacazes , state of Rio de Janeiro , Brazil ; † March 1, 1915 in General Carneiro , near the state of Santa Catarina , Brazil) was the first Brazilian pilot in the Brazilian army .

Life

From 1891 he attended the Military Academy and was established in November 1893. Ensign appointed in March 1898. Lieutenant promoted and 1915 after his death later the captain. He is considered to be the father and patron of Brazilian military aviation.

Kirk was the first officer in the Brazilian Armed Forces to receive pilot training. He completed his training at the Ecole d'Aviation d'Etampes in France on October 22, 1912. On his return to Brazil he was one of the founders of the Brazilian Airclub, where he served as technical director.

The crash

When a guerrilla war, the Contestado War , broke out between 1912 and 1916 between settlers and landowners in southern Brazil , Lt Ricardo Kirk received the order from General Setembrino de Carvalho to carry out reconnaissance missions on the border between the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina in support of land operations of the air.

Three monoplane were used in the conflict area, which were stationed at the airfield of União da Vitória under the command of Lieutenant Ricardo Kirk. The other aviator was the Italian civilian Ernesto Darioli. These three aircraft, together with the aircraft that had already been destroyed in the conflict between Rio de Janeiro and the city of União da Vitória, formed the remainder of the fleet of the “Brazilian Aviation School”, which started operations in Rio de Janeiro in 1914 on the Afonsos airfield would have.

While completing one of these missions, a mechanical failure of Kirk's machine on March 1, 1915 in poor visibility and bad weather conditions led to a serious and fatal accident.

The monument

At the scene of the accident in the municipality of General Carneiro, a memorial called "The Aviator's Cross" was erected on the edge of the road that leads from União da Vitória to Caçador . The simple wooden cross was erected by the farmers who first looked after the injured airman. It was simply made from a sleeper of the disused Contestado railway and his name was carved into it with a knife. The memory of the disaster of the first fatal accident of a Brazilian pilot remains. On October 5, 1980, the city of General Carneiro inaugurated a monument around the cross with a reinforced concrete structure symbolizing Kirk's airplane. On March 10, 2002, the leadership of the Brazilian Air Force had a bronze bust of the aircraft placed on the same spot.

In October 1943, Lieutenant Kirk's remains were transferred to the aviator's mausoleum in the São João Batista cemetery in Rio de Janeiro and in 1996 they were buried in a memorial erected in his honor in Taubaté (SP) by order of the Air Force,

On the northeastern edge of the Alfonso airfield, one of the most important bases of the Brazilian Air Force , a mountain has been named in honor of Ricardo Kirk, the brave pioneer of Brazilian military aviation.

Web links

• Biography of Lt Ricardo Kirk (Portuguese)