Kurt Tank left Germany to go to Argentina in 1947 at the invitation of President Juan Perón. There Tank was to build a tubojet powered fighter for the Argentine Air Force, and he decided to build the Ta 183. Tank made several changes to Multhopp's original design, mainly the wing being changed to a shoulder mounted position. The first flight of the "Pulqui II" was made on June 27, 1950. Although the flight was without mishap, test pilot Captain Edmundo Weiss did not like it's flight characteristics. Changing the wing location disturbed the wing-lift aerodynamics, and after six aircraft were completed, the Pulqui II program was canceled in 1954.
(random trivia: The Pulqui I was designed by Emile Dewoitine, the lead designer for the French Dewoitine aircraft factory; he was not up to the requirements of aircraft design for the jet age)
The fall from power in 1955 of Juan Peron as President meant the interruption in the development of new aircraft at the Cordoba Factory. Most of the engineers composing Kurt Tank’s team left Argentina, and Kurt Tank himself settled in India, working for the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) developing the HF-24 Marut supersonic fighter, which remained in service until 1990. Its first combat engagement was against Pakistan on December 4th, 1971, in retaliation for a B-57 strike against Uttaria at 20:00 hours on the 3rd. A four ship counter-air strike (Mission X-01) was flown against Hyderabad airfield some 200 miles inside Pakistani territory. As aircraft were seen at the airfields, the Maruts proceeded to attack airfield installations with 1,000 lbs. bombs. No attempts were made to intercept the Maruts, which encountered only light anti-aircraft fire and all the aircraft were recovered to base.
