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Uruguay Development of the Navy
The Uruguayan Navy was formally established in 1860,
and its
forces saw action during the War of the Triple Alliance,
principally in a transport capacity. The modern Uruguayan
Navy,
however, owes its professional development to the
establishment
in 1885 of the Military Academy, which offered training to
naval
and other officers. By 1910 navy strength was some 1,300
in all
ranks, and vessels included gunboats (some armed with
torpedoes),
steamers, and various other small craft. The separate
Naval
Academy was established in 1916.
After World War I, many of the navy's aging vessels
were
withdrawn from service, and replacement was slow. The
Naval Air
Service was formed in 1925, but the first aircraft were
not
acquired until 1930. The only significant purchase of
vessels
between the wars was three patrol vessels and a training
ship.
Personnel declined to fewer than 1,000.
After the outbreak of World War II and the December
1939
Battle of the Río de la Plata, the government decided to
strengthen the navy and the Naval Air Service
(see Baldomir and the End of Dictatorship
, ch. 1). During the 1940s and
1950s, the
navy, and naval aviation in particular, benefited from
United
States military assistance. In 1959 Uruguay--along with
the
United States, Argentina, Brazil, and
Venezuela--participated in
the first large multinational exercise involving Latin
American
navies. Although the air arm (renamed the Naval Aviation
Service
in 1951) accounted for 50 percent of naval personnel in
1952, by
the late 1960s naval air assets had begun to be withdrawn
from
service, and few modern replacements were acquired. At the
same
time, the fleet underwent a modest expansion, and a
battalion of
marines was added. During the 1970s, the government
acquired a
small number of vessels to replace aging equipment. In
1981 three
large patrol craft were purchased new from France. The
sole
addition in the late 1980s was a frigate purchased used
from the
French Navy and commissioned in late 1988. In early 1990,
the
Uruguayan Navy received two decommissioned United States
Coast
Guard cutters for coastal patrol and antinarcotics work
under a
United States Department of State antinarcotics program.
Acquisitions were insufficient to offset the number of
retired
vessels, however, and a further reduction of the navy's
assets
seemed likely as more vessels had to be withdrawn from
service.
Data as of December 1990
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