As the national colors fluttered aloft last week on Brazil's first aircraft carrier, the 17,000-ton Minas Gerais*, her new skipper, Captain Helio Leoncio Martins, called the ship "a powerful arm for the defense of Brazil and the Americas." While he spoke, the first of 58 pilots who will fly from the carrier's canted deck were arriving at Key West, Fla., Naval Air Station for six months' training on the twelve Grumman 52F tracker planes and six Sikorsky 555 helicopters donated by the U.S. as the Minas Gerais' air group. By May, the flattop and her accompanying destroyers will be on...
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