06/30/2014. Remarks by Ed Coates: "Viação Aérea Rio-Grandense (VARIG) was established as long ago as 1927. It went on to become Brazil's premier airline. However, until 1942 it did not run any services outside of its home state of Rio Grande do Sul. Like most other early Brazilian carriers it had strong German connections. Until the early 1940s it had a motley fleet of one or two of many designs. (Dornier Do J Wal, Dornier Do B Merkur, Junkers A 50, Junkers F 13, etc.)

The ten-passenger Messerschmitt seen above was originally built for the Deutsche Luft Hansa in September 1932, registered D-2341 and named Harz. It was reregistered to the renamed Lufthansa as D-UKIP in 1933. In 1937 the aircraft was sold to VARIG and registered PP-VAK and named Aceguá, the aircraft started operations on the line to Livramento on April 30 of that year, and subsequently the line was extended to Uruguay. Due to the 'VAK' in the registration, among the crews the aircraft was nicknamed "Vaca" ("Cow"). PP-VAK was lost in a crash on March 7, 1948."