Republican fighter pilot’s badge

On 14 September 1936, Lt. Ramón Castañeda, a pilot and instructor at the High Velocitylocity School in El Carmolí (Murcia), and his student, Sgt. Miguel Rodríguez Iriondo, we’re flying a Polikatpov I-16 UTI when a storm caught them by surprise over the Mar Menor, the lagoon near the city of Cartagena. A dense layer of cloud severely reduced visibility and when the pilot attempted to leave the area the plane went into freefall and crashed into the sea.

Rodríguez Iriondo managed to escape from the plane before it crashed, but there was not enough time for his parachute to deploy and he died when he hit the water. Catañeda, who had waited for his student to jump out of the plane, was unable to get out and went to the bottom of the lagoon still inside it. The student’s body was found hours after the accident, but it would be three days after the tragic accident before that of the flying instructor, which was submerged in the wreck of the Polikarpov I-16, was recovered.

The body of Lt.Castañeda was delivered to his wife, Elisa Gallego. So too were his personal effects, which included his badge as a fighter pilot in the Republican Air Force and the lieutenant’s stripes he wore on his leather jacket. The features of the emblem of the Air Force had been set out in the official Gazette on 3 March 1937: “two spread wings with silver borders coming out of a red circle on top of which is a six-pointed red star.” For fighter pilots, “the centre of the red disk featured a helix with four bars, with gold borders, and a stylized bird in flight with cobalt blue silk borders.”

Despite the effects of the saltpeter and the passage of time, the badge still retains the blue, gold and red of the identification and stripes of fighter pilot Lt. Ramón Castañeda Pardo. Along with other personal effects, these were carefully kept for the rest of the war and during the postwar by Elisa Gallego, and then by her daughter, Josefina Castañeda, silent, sentimental testimony to the memory of a Republican aviator.