Wings Over South America

Long a nightmare to the U.S. State Department has been the Nazi airline web in South America (TIME, Jan. 27). German pilots fly regularly over 18,850 route miles, most of them in highly strategic territory, some of them just a short jump from the Panama Canal. But last week the web was weakening, looked as if it might, some day disappear.

In Peru, one strand was swept out completely: Lufthansa Peru. Tiny L.P. operated only two old Junkers over a 1,210-mile route, had a total investment of scarcely more than $50,000. But it pegged the German luftweb on the West Coast, connected with a route reaching straight across South America from Rio de Janeiro, thus was important out of all proportion to its size. When two German freighters were scuttled in the Peruvian harbor of Callao last week (see p. 41), troops rushed to the L.P. airport at Limatambo. There they found Ernest Eilers, L.P. manager, and Ernest Krefft, manager of Kosmos-Hapag Steamship Agency, preparing to flee from Peru in the L.P. Junkers. The troops took over.

L.P. was the third important German loss since outbreak of World War II. Start of the war forced abandonment of the Nazi transatlantic service to South America. Last summer Colombia (with U.S. urging) nationalized the 5,175-mile, German-affiliated Scadta line. Chief lines still operating in South America with direct or indirect German connections: Brazil's Condor (10,000 miles extending into Argentina and Chile), Vasp (1,200 miles) and Varig (940 miles); Bolivia's Lloyd Aero Boliviano (3,000 miles); Ecuador's Sedta (900 miles).

The German luftweb, richly subsidized from Berlin, had its beginnings about 20 years ago. German pilots set up small lines (often in interior regions where there could be no hope of making a profit), became naturalized citizens, married South American women. The lines grew by hauling mail at big losses, carrying South American officials free. Even after the Scadta line was nationalized, about half of the line's 22 pilots remained in Colombia. Two of them bought land ostensibly for farming, used it instead to start an unscheduled line with two old planes.

Chief U.S. hope for driving the German lines out is Pan American Airways. Although the Germans got there first, Pan Am has built up 40,000 miles of route, much of it paralleling the German lines. Now, with financial and diplomatic help from Washington, Pan Am is in a fine position to break what is left of the Nazi web. In Washington last week it was reported that Pan Am soon would get an $8,000,000 subsidy, use it to increase its South American schedules 50% beginning in July.

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