After a public government display on February 8th, 1951, the aircraft was ordered into pre-production through twelve examples. The prototype continued to be flown and, on May 31st, 1951, crashed after suffering a structural failing at the wing root. Despite ejecting, the pilot's parachute did not deploy and he was killed, the aircraft also being completely lost.
More structural changes greeted the third prototype which was forced into action due to No.2's crash. This prototype was also lost in a crash just days before another public governmental exhibition. A fourth prototype was then constructed and its wing mainplanes were revised with boundary layer fences (as in the MiG-15) and ventral strakes to combat the issue of deep stalling at a high Angle-of-Attack (AoA). For this version, the cockpit was fully-pressurized and the armament fit of 4 x 20mm cannons finally added to represent a closer working model to the expected production-quality forms. First flight of No.4 came on August 20th, 1953.
The IAe 33 suffered throughout a protracted development period - the final prototype went airborne in September of 1959 but Mr. Tank and his design team had relocated to India to work on an indigenous fighter program there while Argentina suffered through the 1953 financial crash and the fall of Argentina leader Juan Peron. With political uncertainty and financial hardship following, this stalled the IAe 33 program considerably and all steam was lost by the mid-1950s as a glut of American F-86 Sabres from the Korean War (1950-1953) became available to the global customers at decent prices.
With that, the story of the Pulqui II came to an end with retirement following during 1960. The five completed airframes (four flyable prototypes and the static test bed) were all that stood to show for the work and money invested. The sole survivor of the group went on to see a second life as a showpiece in the National Aeronautics Museum of Buenos Aires, Argentina - joining the original Pulqui I prototype.
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