[SIZE=3]Summary[/SIZE]
January 2
Task Force Montilla, conducting the annual naval visit to Southeast Asian waters, departed Manila today in the company of the Filipino cruiser Sarangani. Following several stops, the task force will return to Talcahuano, where the Sarangani will conduct port calls. This marks the first time a Filipino naval vessel will pay a port call in Chile, and the Armada is reportedly preparing to roll out the red carpet.
January 11
The Comisión Nacional de Energía presented a 3,200-page report to the Chilean Congress today on the opening day of a short parliamentary season. Commission president Alejando Elfenbein spoke for two hours before Congress, providing an overview of the report's findings. Among the recommendations, Elfenbein's commission suggested the construction of three new hydroelectric plants before 1953.
January 18
Task Force Montilla, accompanied by the Philippine cruiser Sarangani, arrived at Suva, the capital and main port of French Fidji today, where they were greeted by the French Pacific Fleet's flagship Nouvelle-Calédonie. The ships will remain three days before traveling onward to Talcahuano.
January 21
Task Force Montilla has departed Fidji.
February 3
Tugs moved the new battlecruiser Blanco Encalada out of the ASMAR Talcahuano shipyards to her new berth today. The ship, armed with the American 12"/L50 gun, is the first capital ship designed and built in Chile. She will soon join the destroyers Casma and Papudo conducting at-sea working up training. Blanco Encalada's completion is indicative of the great success of the Chilean industrial capability, with ASMAR now at the forefront of South American shipbuilders.
February 5
Task Force Montila has arrived in Talcahuano. They were greeted by salutes from the coast defense guns at Isla Quiraquina and the Armada flagship Capitan Prat. Almirante Foxley, the Armada's commander-in-chief, invited Captain Alejandro Borromeo of the Sarangani to dine with the senior officers of the Armada in the exclusive Club Naval de Campo Tumbes. Foxley also presented Borromeo and his senior officers with a presentation corvo atacameño, the curved Chilean knife.
February 10
The Filipino cruiser Sarangani departed Valparaiso today after a series of port visits to Chile.
March 3
The Chilean congress voted today to adopt a series of six major recommendations advanced by the Comisión Nacional de Energía relating to the state of the national electric grid. One of the new policies adopted will make it easier for electric companies to build new hydroelectric power plants.
March 18
The recently-promoted Comodoro Pieter van Rijn has been assigned to the Naval Engineering Systems Directorate. Comodoro van Rijn, the son of emigrant parents, is a highly-decorated sea officer with a longtime interest in engineeering systems. In conjunction with partner Alvaro Hillyer, van Rijn designed a portable marine salvage pump which saved the cruiser Nevado Ojos del Salado from sinking during the 1937 conflict, and has since been sold successfully on the international market. Over the past year, van Rijn has also served as the Armada's technical liaison with suppliers for naval construction projects, including the new battlecruiser Blanco Encalada.
April 6
An earthquake strikes at 12:07 local time (16: 07 UTC). Its epicenter was located in the commune of Ovalle, Coquimbo Region, with a magnitude of 8.2 on the Richter scale. There were 12 fatalities, 49 injured and 23,250 total displaced victims.
April 14
Presidente Vizcarra visited earthquake-damaged Ovalle and the surrounding regions today, observing the cleanup from the April 6 tremor.
April 19
The new battlecruiser Blanco Encalada departed today for the Gulf of Paria, where she will complete her working-up exercises in the secured anchorage.
May 3
The Fuerza Aerea de Chile announced an order for twenty-four Breguet-Nord N.1510 Normandies, concluding a runoff between the Normandie and the Arado Ar-232. The FACh was reportedly quite impressed with the Arado, but selected the N.1510 because the Normandie had superior rough-field and short takeoff and landing characteristics. The FACh also had more extensive exposure to the N.1510's rugged performance, as a French-owned N.1510 has been actively employed out of Punta Arenas flying supplies to ARC airstrips in Antarctica.
May 21
Petrochile announced that construction on the second stage of the Antofagasta Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel plant had been completed successfully. The new addition will allow the facility to process two hundred kiloliters of synthetic gasoline per day.
June 3
The Comisión Nacional de Energía approved ENDESA's designs for the proposed Pilmaiquén Hydroelectric Plant in the Los Ríos Region of Chile. The new hydro generation plant will begin construction in 1944, and should generate thirty-nine megawatts of electricity. A second proposed generation plant at Pullinque remains under consideration at the present time.
June 9
Compañía Chilena de Navegación Interoceánica S.A. has signed a deal with Directemar to procure three new motorships to replace the 1895-built Tarapaca and the 1922-built Angol and Arauco. These new 19,500-ton motorships will be largely similar to those in use by Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores.
July 1
The battlecruiser Blanco Encalada has completed a working-up deployment in the Gulf of Paria. The ship will leave from the east coast of South America to call on the eastern seaboard of the United States, as well as prime ports in western Europe.
July 6
The battlecruiser Blanco Encalada arrived at Fort-de-France in Martinique today, the first of many port calls in the North Atlantic before she returns to Chile. After departing Martinique, she will steam to Norfolk, America, then cross the Atlantic to visit Brest, Portsmouth, Bremerhaven, and Oslo.
July 14
The Blanco Encalada arrived today at Norfolk, where she was welcomed by the US Navy. She will stay until the 21st before departing to Europe.
July 29
The Blanco Encalada arrived today at the French city of Brest, her first European port of call. The battlecruiser will stay in Brest through August 5th. To follow will be port calls in Southampton (August 6th-10th), Bremerhaven (August 12th-16th), Kiel (August 17th-18th), Copenhagen (August 19th-22nd), and Petrograd (August 24th-30th). The ship will then call in mainland Atlantis on her way back to Chile in September.
August 4
In a press conference today in Valparaiso, President Edmund Vizcarra addressed supporters who want him to propose a change to the constitution allowing the president to serve more than a single six-year term. Vizcarra unequivocally declined to support such a constitutional amendment and said that he wanted to return to his home in Punta Arenas to care for his sheep and horses. Presidential elections are scheduled for December 10th, 1944. Political observers in Chile are watching closely to see how the election takes shape, and whether or not the Federalist Party of Chile can hold its Congressional majority and the presidency without the direct leadership of the highly-influential Vizcarra. After five years in office, polls indicate Vizcarra still holds an approval rating of over sixty-five percent of the country.
August 19
In a report to the League of Nations, Chilean ambassador Jorge Castro reported that the efforts of governments and militaries to combat the dangerous drug known as 'borandis' have been largely effective.
The drug, grown primarily on plantations of rich landowners in central Bolivia, was noted for its extremely addictive qualities and potentially lethal side-effects. Castro noted that these factors, which helped mobilize international opprobrium over the last four years, worked against the drug barons who peddled borandis. Most people exposed to borandis over the last two years acquired the drug accidentally, under the impression that they were purchasing cocaine or other illicit drugs. "Like a particularly deadly disease that kills the host before it infects another," Castro said, "Borandis became self-limiting." Aggressive actions by the Chilean and Bolivian governments to limit the growth of borandis and the dismantling of the distribution chain further placed strain on the drug barons.
For those suffering from borandis addiction, the efforts to restrict the growth and distribution of the drug have raised prices to nearly-unobtainable levels. At the beginning of 1943, ten grams of powdered borandis - suitable for a single dose - cost upwards of forty British pounds. However, relief for those suffering withdrawal was available through a detoxification process and chemical treatments developed by European scientists and medical experts.
September 2
The Chilean Coast Guard stated that they were searching for a thousand-ton Nordish trawler reported to be in distress five hundred kilometers off the coast of southern Chile.
September 14
The battlecruiser Blanco Encalada arrived at the port of Illisus in Atlantean Lyra today, where she will begin a week-long port visit. The ship is homeward bound to join the Flota de Alta Mar following a long working-up period in the Gulf of Paria, followed by a tour of Europe.
September 16
The Chilean Coast Guard has ended its search for the Nordish trawler Bruhagen Song today, without success. The ship and its crew of fifteen were last heard from late on the evening of September 1st when they sent a radio distress call from a position roughly five hundred kilometers west of Cape Horn. According to classification society Det Norske Veritas, the Bruhagen Song was in poor condition. Heavy seas of over twenty meters were reported by civilian vessels as well as the patrol ship Ignacy Domeyko, which responded to the distress call. The Chilean Coast Guard presumes the ship sank with all hands.
October 1
The Chiefs of Staff of the Chilean Army, Navy, and Air Force met today with President Vizcarra and other military and civil leaders to discuss developing a new dradis warning system for the Chilean central regions. Up to this point, the Army and Air Force have expressed relatively little interest in the development of dradis early warning, unlike the Chilean Navy, which has heavily-emphasized its development and use. Among the concerns expressed by the Army is the difficulty of Chile's terrain: the high mountains have foiled many previous equipment tests and many Chilean Army officers believe a dradis network will encounter too many technical hurdles.
October 11
President Vizcarra met today with his counterpart, President Juan Ramon Mugnolo of Argentina, to jointly reopen the newly reconstructed Transandine Railway. The reconstruction, which Popular Mechanics dubbed "the greatest South American engineering project of all time", replaced the narrow-gauge cog railway through the Andes with a modern, 1676 mm gauge railway line that uses the world's second-longest railway tunnel. The rebuilding project was first proposed in 1935 when Argentina was under naval blockade during the South American War, and the Transandine Railway was their only reliable way to avoid the blockade. Although no longer threatened by war, it is hoped that the railway connection will continue to foster the economic cooperation between two of the leading powers of South America.
October 18
The battlecruiser Blanco Encalada arrived back in her homeport of Talcahuano today, following an extended working-up period with allied naval units in the Gulf of Paria, and a series of port calls in Europe and Atlantis. Blanco Encalada's sistership Cochrane is planned for completion in August of 1944.
October 21
The Chilean Army's 2nd Paratrooper Battalion "Pelantaru" received their colours today in a ceremony in Santiago.
November 2
Walt Disney's cartoon Pedro begins playing before full-length movies in Chilean theaters. The cartoon tells the tale of the little airplane Pedro carrying mail across the Andes between Chile and Argentina.
November 24 - Santiago Economic Times
The intendant of the Aysén region has announced that the region's population has doubled since the area became formalized in 1923, to a population of approximately 75,500 people. The growth has been driven by colonists from Europe who come to the area to work in mining, forestry, and aquaculture endeavors.
December 14
In Bolivian politics, President Felix Stiles agreed to hold elections in Bolivia on March 26th. Stiles has been president of Bolivia since early 1937 when he asserted power following the Cochabamba Earthquake and the alleged annexation attempt by the then-Peruvian government. Over the last two years, Stiles' popularity has slipped. Many Bolivians believe he has not done enough to push Chile out of the Occupied Territories, or re-assert control of the Autonomous (but Brazilian-backed) Province of Santa Cruz, instead concentrating on social issues and the war against drug lords. Among the likely candidates to oppose Stiles in a presidential election are Mauricio Zayas, the mayor of La Paz, and Rodrigo Munoz, the brother of former warlord Alfredo Munoz.
December 24
Austral Obras Mecánica has announced that they will begin manufacturing engines and conversion kits to convert automobiles to burn natural gas. AOM has already received significant orders for natural gas fueled buses for use in the city of Santiago. Subsidized by the Chilean government in order to cut down on smog within the Santiago region, natural gas is cheaper than regular gasoline, and the regional government hopes that further development and greater use of natural gas powered vehicles will continue to lower prices through economy of scale, hopefully before the government's gas subsidies run out in 1947.
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Originally posted by Brockpaine
Friday, April 26th 2024, 1:26am
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