Through the brooding noonday fog, a navy plane swooped down toward Buenos Aires' spreading Plaza de Mayo. Watchers in the busy plaza felt no alarm; air force planes were scheduled to drop flowers at midday on the plaza's Roman Catholic cathedral in honor of Argentine Liberator José de San Martin, whose tomb is in the church. But instead of dropping flowers, the plane loosed two dark objects that hurtled downward toward President Juan Perón's headquarters, the block-long Casa Rosada (Pink House) standing at the other end of the plaza.
An eardrum-rupturing explosion, then another, sent blinding clouds of smoke and dust billowing into the air. Jagged pieces of steel ripped into scores of bodies. Cries of pain and terror rang out. A young woman stared in silent dismay at her Weeding leg stump. As survivors scattered in panic, a few more navy planes roared in low over the plaza. Two more bombs burst. From upper windows of the nearby Navy Ministry, machine guns sprayed the Pink House.
A White Flag. The most serious attempt in nine years to dislodge Strongman Perón had begun—on the very day that he was excommunicated by the Pope for his bitter fight with the Roman Catholic Church. Ten minutes earlier, Perón, warned by intelligence agents that a military revolt was about to break out, had hustled out of the Pink House. Within minutes after the first bomb exploded, truckloads of soldiers raced to defend the Pink House from an advancing skirmish line of rebel marines. A government radio station shrilly called upon members of the Perón-controlled General Labor Confederation (C.G.T.) to seize automobiles, trucks and buses—killing the drivers if necessary—and hasten to the Plaza de Mayo.
Perón needed no help from the C.G.T.; he had a lopsided preponderance of military power: the army, most of the air force, part of the navy. Tanks and infantry beat back the attacking marines.
Troops with tanks and light artillery be sieged the Navy Ministry, the rebel head quarters. The revolutionaries inside ran up a white surrender flag within two hours, abruptly lowered it when a new wave of rebel planes swept in and strafed the be siegers, then raised the flag again. Among the rebels captured was the revolt's leader, Rear Admiral Anibal O. Olivieri, 48, Juan Perón's Navy Minister since 1951.
Planes Across the River. By 3 p.m. the battle of Buenos Aires seemed over. Gawkers gathered in the battered plaza. Between announcements that Perón was victorious and the nation tranquil, a radio station inanely played a record of an old George Gershwin song. Somebody Loves Me, I Wonder Who? Suddenly, rebel airmen struck again. Planes swept across the plaza, dropping bombs and raking soldiers and civilians with machine-gun fire. Hundreds more were killed or wounded.