General Rino Corso Fougier

Rino Corso Fougier was born on November 14, 1894 in Bastia, France. In 1912 he enlisted in the Regio Esercito (Royal Army) and showed promise. He took the reserve officer student training course and in 1914 was commissioned a second lieutenant in command of a platoon of bicycle-mounted Bersaglieri. When the Kingdom of Italy entered World War I the following year he served with the Seventh Bersaglieri Regiment and was wounded in action on June 23, 1915 by a mine explosion while carrying out a reconnaissance mission. He pushed forward and earned the Silver Medal for Military Valor for his heroism. However, his aspirations caused him to look to the skies and he began training as a combat pilot at the Battalion Airmen School of Venaria Reale in Piedmont, earning his license in 1916 and becoming a combat pilot the following year. Posted to the 113th Squadron, he saw action in numerous air battles. He earned his second Silver Medal after taking on three enemy planes on May 20, 1917 over the Austrians' Banjšice Plateau, a fight in which he was wounded again. He served in other squadrons and was promoted to the rank of captain, earning a third Silver Medal along the way. After the war he was appointed to command his own squadron.

Previously, he was still officially a Bersaglieri officer but in 1923 the Regia Aeronautica (Royal Air Force) was officially established and in 1927 Fougier was promoted to lieutenant colonel. From 1928 to 1933 he commanded the First Wing and was singled out for praise by Air Marshal Italo Balbo. In 1930 he established the first school of aerobatics which would become a famous institution and during World War II the Italian pilots would be widely known for their aerobatic skill. In 1931 he was promoted to colonel and from 1933 to 1934 commanded the 3rd Air Brigade. Subsequently he saw colonial service as commander of the air forces in Libya until 1937. He commanded Italian air forces in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and saw action again in the Spanish Civil War in which Italian air power played a critical role. Afterwards, he was made inspector of air force training schools and had a couple of other assignments before Italian entry into World War II. Despite being pioneers in air warfare, Italy entered the conflict with some considerable disadvantages. Success in previous campaigns with older aircraft meant that innovation was not given the priority it should have and most Italian aircraft were outdated when Italy entered the war. The industrial capacity of the country was also insufficient to meet the demands of a world war.

In 1940, General Rino Corso Fougier received his most famous assignment; command of the Italian air forces operating in the Battle of Britain (see Italians in the Battle of Britain). Although they are not often remembered in histories of the Battle of Britain, the Italians actually did quite well, especially considering how outmatched their maneuverable but slow CR.42 biplanes were by the British Spitfires. The Italian pilots flew numerous missions, performed very well in air-to-air combat and inflicted about as much damage on the British as they lost themselves. Italian bombing raids on coastal installations also did considerable damage and forced the British RAF to divert resources which would have been better employed in fending off attacks by the German Luftwaffe. It was a campaign that deserves to be more widely known because the Italian pilots performed very well and were not without successes. At Felixtowne, Harwich and Ramsgate, the initial Italian air attacks went very well and the daylight raid on Ramsgate resulted in only five Italian aircraft being damaged by anti-aircraft fire. In air-to-air combat with the RAF the outmatched Italians generally gave as good as they got, inflicting as much damage as they incurred. Counting fighters and bombers, the Italian forces lost 15 aircraft in the Battle of Britain but destroyed an equal number of British aircraft in the process while dropping 54 tons of ordinance on the enemy.

Eventually, however, Mussolini determined that Italy's resources had to be focused on the Mediterranean (though there was the diversion of forces to Russia) and so the Italian Air Corps in Belgian operating against England was withdrawn. After the dismissal of General Francesco Pricolo, General Rino Corso Fougier was promoted to Chief of Staff of the Regia Aeronautica and Secretary of State. In 1942 he was promoted to General of the Army (Aviation) but his military career came to an end the following year with the downfall of the Fascist state and the armistice with the Allies. Because the Regia Aeronautica had been born in the Fascist era there were those who harbored suspicions about the whole organization and General Rino Corso Fougier was stripped of his post and left the military to retire to civilian life. Nonetheless, he had finished a remarkable career of service to his King and his nation. He died in Rome on April 24, 1963.

Italian Ace Captain Franco Lucchini

The man generally considered the greatest Italian ace of World War II was Captain Franco Lucchini. Absolute precision is somewhat difficult given the way that Italy (like other countries) originally credited victories collectively rather than individually. This was an effort to encourage teamwork and esprit de corps, which is understandable, but eventually most ended up giving way to individual scoring. Although it may not sound as loftily idealistic, individual scoring encouraged a competitive spirit and also played in to the immense celebrity status that the most successful fighter pilots obtained. Ever since their emergence in the Great War, fighter pilots had been the rock stars of the military and that simply was not going to change. By most accounts, Captain Franco Lucchini scored twenty-six individual aerial victories during World War II. Yet, more than that, his tally of collective victories was fifty-two and he has the distinction of being an ace fighter pilot in both World War II and the Spanish Civil War in which he shot down five planes. Taken altogether, his score would be higher than the top American, French and other aces of World War II so there is no doubt Lucchini was one of the very best fighter pilots in the history of aerial warfare.

Franco Lucchini was born in Rome on July 12, 1917 to the family of a railroad official. From his boyhood he had an interest in aviation and dreamed of flying. When he was sixteen he obtained a glider pilot’s license and in 1935 he joined the Regia Aeronautica as a reserve officer. Sottotenente Pilota di Complemento Lucchini had further training and by the summer of the following year qualified as a military pilot from the Foggia flying school. He received his formal commission on August 13, 1936 and was posted to his first assignment with a squadron in Gorizia. The next year he first saw action when Italian forces were committed to aid the nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. He flew a Fiat CR.32 biplane and, during a transfer flight to Zaragoza, engaged in a battle, alongside his comrades, with four Polikarpov R-Z biplane bombers, escorted by nine Polikarpov I-16 fighters and fifteen Polikarpov I-15 biplane fighters all made in the Soviet Union. It was October 12 and Lucchini shot down one of communist planes for his first aerial victory. Early the next year he shot down an R-Z bomber and eventually gained five victories to make him an “ace”. However, he was shot down twice himself, the second time being taken prisoner by the republican forces. Fortunately, he escaped in February of 1939 and for his achievements in Spain was awarded the Silver Medal of Military Valor.

After returning to Italy, Lucchini was posted to the elite 4th Stormo based in Tobruk in the Italian colony of Libya. When the Kingdom of Italy entered World War II, Lucchini was flying a Fiat CR.42 biplane and early on participated in shooting down a Gladiator. A week later, while flying escort duty, he encountered an RAF Sunderland. It had previously been targeted by other pilots but the heavily armed British craft survived them all until Lucchini moved in with such tenacity that the craft was finally forced down near Bardia where the crew were taken prisoner. Before his first tour of duty was out Lucchini shot down a Gladiator and Hurricane before his unit was transferred to Sicily and outfitted with the new Macchi C.200 Saetta, a lightly armed but highly maneuverable fighter, for offensive operations over the British held island of Malta. Some pilots had trouble adapting to the new craft, but Lucchini showed his skill as high as it had been and growing greater, shooting down four more British Hurricanes between June and September of 1941.

Unfortunately, there was an accident that forced Lucchini to crash land on Ustica (along with several other pilots). He was badly injured and took a lengthy period of time to recover. However, once he was back in action, he proved that he had lost not of his fighting spirit. Flying the new C.202 fighter he was given command of the 84th Squadron and was posted back to Sicily to fly escort for the bombers that were attacking Malta. He shot down two British Spitfires (the most famous RAF fighter of the Battle of Britain) before 4th Stormo were transferred to north Africa for Rommel’s Italo-German offensive into Egypt in 1942. Between June 4 and September 3 Captain Lucchini shot down four Kittyhawks, two Spitfires, two Hurricanes and a Boston light bomber. He also participated in the shooting down of over a dozen other aircraft alongside other Italian pilots. On October 20, Lucchini shot down an American Curtiss P-40 Warhawk but a few days later was himself shot down and badly wounded. He was sent back to Italy to recuperate and two months later his exhausted stormo was transferred out as well.

After sufficient recovery, Lucchini was back in action again by the spring of 1943, given command of the 10th Group on Sicily where he and his men fought a hopeless campaign against insurmountable odds. There was no denying the courage and determination of the Italian pilots but they were hopelessly outnumbered and just after shooting down another Spitfire that was escorting a number of B-17 bombers, Lucchini was caught in a cross-fire from the bombers, lost control of his C.202 and crashed to his death. Only a few minutes later, another of the top Italian aces, Lieutenant Leonardo Ferrulli was shot down and killed as well. It was a dark day indeed for the Regia Aeronautica. By most counts he was the most successful Italian pilot of World War II (there are others who name Teresio Martinoli who also shot down 22 planes) and it is no wonder he was nicknamed the “Baracca of the Second World War” in reference to the top Italian ace from the First World War, Francesco Baracca who brought down 34 Austro-Hungarian planes. Lucchini was known for his keen eyesight, tenacity and aggressiveness in attacking any enemy he found. Contrary to his ferocity in the air, when on the ground he was known as a quiet, serious and rather solitary man. Over his distinguished career he was awarded the Bronze Medal for Military Valor, 3 War Crosses, the German Iron Cross second class, 5 Silver Medals and the Gold Medal for Military Valor.

Italian Air Offensive in the Middle East

Many may not be aware of this (I have an entire shelf full of books on Italian military history in my library and I was unaware of it) but in the early days of World War II, planes of the Regia Aeronautica carried out a record-breaking, long-range bombing raid on British installations on the east side of the Arabian peninsula in the Persian Gulf. Stripped down and loaded with extra fuel and launched from the Italian-held island of Rhodes in the eastern Mediterranean, on October 19, 1940 a force of four Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.82 bombers attacked the British Protectorate of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, damaging the local American-operated oil refineries. The bombers also hit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia but that had very little impact. These areas were taken by complete surprise as the British certainly never expected an attack to come so far from the front-lines. The planes made their bombing run and were able to return successfully to land in Italian East Africa, setting down in Eritrea. It was not an extremely crucial attack as there was not much damage that only four bombers could do and those stripped down to be flying fuel cans, however, in did cause a panic and sent the message to the British high command that there were no safe areas and that the armed forces of Italy could reach out over incredible distances to strike at them wherever they were. Because of this, Allied forces had to divert resources to defend areas that they never would have thought would have been in any danger -and most honestly were not, but still, because of the raid on Bahrain, the Italians had proven that they could reach the British in some of their most vulnerable areas so that action had to be taken.

General Count Pier Ruggero Piccio

One of the founding fathers of the Regia Aeronautica was Count Pier Ruggero Piccio who was also one of the most accomplished Italian fighter pilots of the First World War. He was born in Rome on September 27, 1880 and graduated from the Military Academy of Modena in 1900, assigned as a second lieutenant in the 43rd Infantry Regiment. He saw service in central Africa as part of an officer exchange program with the Kingdom of Belgium and he saw extensive service in the Italo-Turkish War as an artillery officer and the commander of a machinegun section attached to the infantry in which role he earned the Bronze Medal for Military Valor in 1912. This war saw the Kingdom of Italy become the first to use aircraft in combat, though air operations ended before Piccio arrived in Libya. Nonetheless, he had a great interest in this new branch of military service and tried repeatedly to gain the chance to train as a pilot. After being promoted to captain in 1913 he finally got the opportunity and attended Malpensa flying school. Passing with flying colors he qualified first to fly the Nieuport monoplane and later the Caproni bomber before being assigned to the fifth squadron. In 1914, after World War I had broken out but before the Italian intervention, he was awarded the Order of the Crown of Italy.

In January of 1915 the Military Air Corps was established and later that year the Kingdom of Italy entered the conflict with a declaration of war against Austria. Piccio had his first chance at aerial service in wartime, flying reconnaissance missions. He showed great skill and courage, carrying out his missions despite heavy enemy fire and having his aircraft hit numerous times. Awarded another Bronze Medal he was posted to Malpensa for more bomber training. After finishing he took command of third squadron flying the Caproni bombers in missions against Austria from August 1916 to February 1916. After that he was given more training in air-to-air combat in France and returned home to command a fighter squadron, scoring his first success in bringing down a German observation balloon. He was supposed to wait for French pilots to join him with special anti-balloon rockets but went out on his own, doing the job and earning a Silver Medal. In the spring of 1917 Piccio shot down an Albatros, rapidly gaining more ‘kills’ and earning the status of an ace. At one point, he even managed to shoot down the great Lt. Frank Linke-Crawford, the fourth highest scoring ace of Austria-Hungary (thankfully, Linke-Crawford survived though he was later killed in combat).

After shooting down seventeen enemy aircraft he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and made Inspector of Fighter Squadrons. However, by the spring of 1918 he was back in action again, gaining more victories but also providing invaluable service by producing the first manual on air tactics for the Italian forces, devising new flying formations and generally solid regulations, based on his experience, on how to achieve victory in the air. Earning the Gold Medal for Military Valor, by the summer of 1918 the Italian air forces had gained complete dominance over Austria-Hungary in the skies, inflicting horrendous losses on the enemy and effectively breaking the air power of the Dual Monarchy for good. Italian fighters and bombers could attack Austrian ground forces at will, however, ground fire was still dangerous and in the autumn of 1918 luck ran out for Colonel Piccio. He was shot down over enemy territory and captured by the Austrians. Still, he emerged as one of the top Italian flying aces of the Great War with at least 24 victories to his name. He was never formally released by the Austrians but simply walked out in disguise as Austria-Hungary collapsed at the end of the war.

In 1921 Piccio was sent to France but came back to Italy where air power for the establishment of the Regia Aeronautica in 1923. Air power was being given a new emphasis by the new leader of Italy, Benito Mussolini. At the time, only Great Britain and Italy had chosen to develop a fully independent military aviation branch of the armed forces (and France was the only other continental power then building up forces for air combat). Piccio had the right balance of a record of success in the air as well as a reputation for organizing air forces, codifying techniques and instilling discipline that made him the ideal choice to be the military deputy to the Undersecretary of the Air Force. Piccio and his civilian counterpart streamlined the force, gained greater funding, started looking for new and better aircraft design and established a formal air force academy in Livorno. From 1923 to 1925 Piccio served as Commandant General of the Regia Aeronautica, his title later changed to Chief of Air Staff. Also in 1923 he received the prestigious appointment of an honorary aide de camp to King Vittorio Emanuele III.

As Chief of Air Staff from 1926 to 1927 Piccio did begin to have problems with his civilian counterpart and then with Air Marshal Italo Balbo. Much of this stemmed from Piccio’s lavish lifestyle in Paris. Ever since his earliest time there after joining the army, Piccio had a great attachment to the high life of Paris and he had also spent a great deal on the Paris stock market. It was still quite controversial when Marshal Balbo dismissed him but Piccio remained a national hero for his extensive service and illustrious war record. In 1932 he was promoted to lieutenant general and in 1933 the King appointed him a Senator of Italy. His government posts still did not manage to keep him away from France for long and he continued to spend much of his time in Paris, sometimes acting as a go-between for the French Premier and Mussolini. Despite being appointed to the Senate as a member of the Fascist Party, General Piccio was not fond of the direction Mussolini was taking the country. He moved to Switzerland and remarked to an old Belgian comrade from World War I that Italy had spent years trying to defeat the Germans only to have Mussolini helping to bring them back again. He stayed in Switzerland during World War II, giving up the wealth he had gained through his associations with the Fascists (having become thoroughly disgusted with them) and while there he helped Italian soldiers to safety after the armistice and aided the resistance movements in both France and Italy. General Pier Piccio died in Rome on July 31, 1965 still remembered as one of the great aces of World War I and one of the founders of the Regia Aeronautica.

Italian Air Power in Spain

During the Spanish Civil War there was no greater provider of assistance to the nationalist cause than the Kingdom of Italy and a key component of the military forces sent to aid the Spanish anti-communists was the Aviazione Legonaria. However, it must first be understood why members of the royal Italian armed forces were sent to Spain and why the nationalist cause was the right one. In February of 1936 a leftist coalition came to power in Spain but only by the most thin of margins, which was controversial enough and, if legitimate, was no doubt aided by the fact that the political “right” in Spain was (and had been) deeply divided between the feuding monarchists of the Alfonsist and Carlist factions as well as the republican nationalists of the Phalange and other minor groups. In any event, once the leftist coalition, called the “Popular Front” came to power, despite their glaring lack of a truly “popular” mandate, the radical socialists that dominated it began to call for revolution and the result was a wave of leftist, revolutionary terrorism against the very heart and soul of the Spanish nation. All political parties, organizations and newspapers that were not sufficiently leftist were outlawed, Churches were vandalized, nuns were raped, priests were beaten to death by fanatic mobs and anyone who was not a radical leftist was likely to be murdered. In the first few months of their rule in the (second) Spanish Republic, these socialist and communist radicals killed more people than had died in the several hundred years of the supposedly notorious Spanish Inquisition -just to provide a comparison.

Francisco Franco

The people of the Kingdom of Italy were shocked and horrified by all of this, particularly by the plight of their fellow Roman Catholics in Spain who were singled out for the most vicious brutality. There was also the growing concern, which would prove to be well founded, that the Soviet Union would back the republicans to effectively make Spain a Soviet satellite state in Western Europe. Given all of that, it is not surprising that when Generalissimo Francisco Franco, leader of the nationalists rising in rebellion against the republic, asked Italy for help, Mussolini was willing to provide it. This was a fight of conviction and not one of ambition or an effort to win some easy laurels. The Italian armed forces had only just emerged victorious from the hard-fought seven-month conquest of Ethiopia and aside from having a government in Madrid that would not be a stooge of Joseph Stalin, there was nothing that Italy stood to gain from intervention. Nonetheless, the intervention happened and it was undoubtedly the right thing to do. It should also be made clear that it was the Soviets who intervened first, dispatching some 2,000 “advisors” to Spain to aid the republicans in massacring their enemies as well as later sending over 240 warplanes, 700 tanks and 1,200 pieces of artillery. Given that, it is no wonder that Franco was willing to accept assistance from any quarter, be it Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany.

With Stalin demanding the entire Spanish gold reserve in return for his assistance, there can be no doubt that the republic became merely a puppet-state for Moscow and soon the government in Madrid was openly Marxist; which at least made the western liberal democracies somewhat timid about supporting the republican side too openly. The first Italian aid to the nationalists came with air power to help get the Spanish nationalist army from north Africa to Spain itself. Franco asked Rome for assistance and Mussolini answered, asking the Italian people, “Could we Fascists leave without answer that cry and remain indifferent in the face of the perpetuation of such bloody crimes committed by the so-called ‘Popular Fronts’? No. Thus our first squadron of warplanes left on 27 July 1936, and that same day we had our first dead.”

Savoia Marchetti SM.81 dropping bombs

Because the armed forces were already in need of replenishment and upgrade, the initial Italian air commitment was small; only 19 planes to bolster the 9 decrepit biplanes of the nationalist air force and the 10 German transports dispatched by Berlin. Ultimately, however, Italy would send some 720 aircraft and 6,000 air crews to aid the nationalists as well as a large contingent of ground forces (over 37,000), predominately drawn from the MVSN. These forces were almost always outnumbered by the republicans who could count on heavy support from the Soviet Union as well as the more secretive assistance of the French premier Leon Blum who smuggled arms and supplies across the Pyrenees to the Spanish Republic. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt likewise allowed thousands of American leftists to join the republican side in Spain under the name of the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade”. The League of Nations officially insisted on a policy of non-intervention but few countries paid much more than lip-service to the talking shop, Germany and the Soviet Union had never been members and Italy had withdrawn after the international finger-waving over the war in Ethiopia. In August there arrived in Spain 2 bomber squadrons of Savoia Marchetti and Caproni Ca. 135 aircraft along with original dozen Fiat fighters sent from Italy. These formed the Aviazione Legonaria which ultimately expanded to 250 planes and in the course of their service the Italian pilots would become the most successful in the world during the period between the two world wars.

There were many Italian airmen who first made their name, besting more numerous republican foes in the skies over Spain. Examples include Maresciallo Baschirotto who became an “ace” in Spain before going on to six more British planes in North Africa in World War II. There was Group Commander Ernesto Botto who earned the Gold Medal for shooting down four republican aircraft, losing a leg in the process. Nonetheless, at the outbreak of World War II he volunteered to return to the skies again to battle the British, shooting down 3 planes of the RAF over Libya where he was known by his nickname “Gamba di Ferro” or ‘Iron Leg’. It was late August 1936 when the Italian airmen launched their first attacks against the republican forces with devastating effectiveness against their strongholds in the north. Their success was so stunning that it motivated a leading French communist to take up a collection to aid the republican forces. Italy responded by sending in more squadrons to aid the nationalists. The help came just in time to play a decisive part in blunting a major republican offensive in September and by December the French-funded Escuadrilla España had lost half its aircraft and was disbanded and assimilated into the regular Spanish republican air force. But, the losses were more than made good. Stalin sent 50 Russian aircraft to aid the republicans and the French premier slipped 20 top of the line French aircraft over the border to bolster the leftist cause.

Fiat BR.20

The Russian Tupelev SB-2 bombers proved especially effective, but the nationalists found their Fiat fighters could best them if given advance warning to get above the lower flying Russian planes. The I-15 Chata fighter was also particularly dangerous and soon proved quite popular with the Spanish republicans who used them to decimate the nationalist Aviacion del Tercio. The Italian pilots quickly found themselves outnumbered and outmatched in the sky by aircraft much faster than their own, nonetheless, their superior piloting skills were still able to sometimes best the superior republican aircraft. Unfortunately, the superior number of the enemy meant that the hard-pressed Italian planes could not be everywhere at once and republican planes took a terrible toll on the nationalist ground forces at Guadalajara. This stopped a major offensive Franco had initiated and sufficiently alarmed Mussolini for him to dispatch additional squadrons of Meridonali aircraft to Spain. Although his offensive against Madrid had been stopped, the nationalists still had a ‘ring of fire’ around the Spanish capital and the republicans were determined to break it. The result was the largest air battle of the civil war

The Spanish republicans committed 150 fighters and bombers to the battle, with planes and pilots drawn from as far away as Mexico to Russia. To counter them the nationalists had little more than the Italian Aviazione Legonaria and the German ‘Kondor Legion’. Nonetheless, between them, they decimated the republican air armada, destroying 100 aircraft compared to only 23 losses for the nationalist side. Still, international leftist support for the republicans meant that even after this horrific defeat they still outnumbered the nationalists in the air by at least 122 aircraft. The victory certainly helped though and soon Franco was on the attack again, taking Bilboa in June with the help of the newly arrived Fiat BR.20 Cicogna (Stork) medium bombers and their Breda Ba.65 escorts. Bilboa and Santander were the keys to the massive northern stronghold of the republicans and Italian assistance was key in the massive offensive that broke this area and turned the tide of the civil war in favor of the nationalists. With the Aviazione Legonaria providing air support, Italian General Ettore Bastico launched a brilliant, well-planned and crushing offensive on the ground that saw the republicans defeated and Santander captured.

Breda Ba.65 

The Breda Ba.65 planes did not perform as well as had been hoped but they were refitted to serve as dive bombers and provided valuable assistance in the aftermath of the victory at Santander in the Catalonia offensive, knocking out bridges serving the republican forces. For three days in March of 1937 Italian aircraft operating out of Majorca participated in the first round-the-clock bombing campaign in history against the city of Barcelona which was sufficiently softened enough for Italian, Navarrese and Moroccan troops to capture in January of 1938. Italian victories in the air continued throughout the year with the nationalist side growing stronger and stronger as the republicans began to near defeat. By the beginning of 1939 the odds had switched and the crumbling republic could field only 100 aircraft compared to 600 for the nationalists. In March the forces of Franco finally entered Madrid and before the month was out the last republican remnants had surrendered. The nationalists were victorious and it was thanks in no small part to the assistance of the Kingdom of Italy and the hard fighting Italian pilots in the air. During the course of the conflict, the Italian air contingent flew 1,921 sorties with 59 bombing runs and 368 strafing attacks. They lost 196 men and 86 planes to enemy fire but they shot down or destroyed on the ground 903 republican aircraft and inflicted more than 2,000 casualties on the republican forces. It was a great success by any measure and a testament to the fighting abilities of the royal Italian armed forces. Perhaps the only downside was in the over-confidence these successes caused in out-of-date Italian aircraft that should have been replaced prior to World War II.                              

Marshal of the Air Italo Balbo

Italo Balbo is, in many ways, evocative of the Italian story as a whole during the final decades of the Kingdom of Italy and the Fascist era. He started his life as a restless revolutionary and a radical republican; an early and rough Blackshirt beloved of Mussolini. At the peak of his career he became a zealous and talented empire-builder, a bringer of civilization and finally he became an ardent royalist, disillusioned with the Fascist regime and often at odds with Mussolini. Italo Balbo was born on June 6, 1896 in Ferrara and starting at a very young age was drawn to radical politics, nationalism and a life of adventure. He was only fourteen he went to Albania with a group of volunteers led by Ricciotti Garibaldi (son of Giuseppe Garibaldi) to fight in a rebellion against the rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. As a young man he supported Italian participation in World War I on the side of the Allies and when Italy did enter the war he enlisted in the Royal Army. Balbo first served as an officer candidate in the Alpini Battalion “Val Fella” before beginning training with the air service.

After the disastrous battle of Caporetto, Balbo returned to the front, serving in another Alpini Battalion where he took command of the assault platoon. He courage in the face of the enemy eventually earned him one bronze and two silver medals for military valor as well as promotion to captain before the war ended. He studied in Florence after the war and he wrote a paper on “the economic and social thought of Giuseppe Mazzini”. He was, obviously, a republican at this stage but came to detest the socialists and the labor and trade unions they controlled because of their disorder and disrupting of the Italian economy and society. He was working as a bank clerk back in his home town when, in 1921, he became one of the first members of the National Fascist Party. He rose to be secretary of the Ferrara branch of the Fascist party and soon organized his own squad of Blackshirts which he led in raids on local socialist and communist groups as well as helping to break up strikes and protests organized by Marxists in the area. Balbo soon became known as one of the most active and forceful leaders in the Fascist movement.

Balbo, second from left, with Fascist leaders

Like many of the early squadristi, Balbo had been a republican, saw himself as a revolutionary and envisioned a Fascist state in which local bosses like himself would hold more power rather than a central dictator. Obviously, this was not the vision of Mussolini who had started to move his party more to the right as the socialists and communists began to drive more support in their direction. This was also part of a deliberate effort by Mussolini to broaden his base of support beyond the radical fringe and become more than just republican revolutionaries who disagreed with the socialists almost only on their attachment to internationalism and denigration of patriotism. Unity was particularly sought with the older nationalists who were right-wing and staunchly monarchist. Yet, because Balbo had become such a star in the Fascist Party, he was chosen for a prominent leadership position. When Mussolini (from the safety of his office in Milan) planned the Blackshirt march on Rome in 1922, Italo Balbo was one of the “Quadrumvirs” chosen to lead it. However, he would serve alongside more conservative Fascists such as Cesare De Vecchi and General Emilio De Bono. The presence of Michele Bianchi, a socialist turned syndicalist, helped balance out the leadership and, Mussolini hoped, appeal to the widest array of Italians possible.

The march, of course, turned out to be little more than a parade as political maneuvering had already secured the premiership for Mussolini before his Blackshirts ever entered Rome, however, Italo Balbo had secured his place as one the leading members of the Fascist hierarchy and was appointed one of the first members of the Fascist Grand Council in 1923. The following year he was named commander of the Blackshirt militia and in 1925 was made Undersecretary for National Economy. His real significance, however, came in 1926 when he was made Secretary of State for Air. Mussolini wanted to put a renewed emphasis on Italian aviation and Balbo was the man who would be in charge of this project. Balbo learned how to fly himself and set to work organizing what became the Regia Aeronautica. By 1928 he had been promoted to General of the Air Force, later Minister of the Air Force and, eventually, Marshal of the Air. Aside from organizing the military air branch, Balbo also encouraged exploration and endurance flights that would generate publicity for the air force, encourage more Italians to take an interest in aviation and raise the profile of Italy in the skies. As part of this campaign, Balbo himself led a trans-Atlantic flight in 1930 from Italy to Brazil and in 1933 all the way to Chicago where he was received with great fanfare and media attention. President Roosevelt even decorated him with the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Italo Balbo had risen to become an international celebrity and many in the Fascist ranks began to speak of him as the future successor of Benito Mussolini. However, Balbo and Mussolini did not always agree on everything and the issues they disagreed on seemed to be growing more numerous. When, in 1933, Balbo was appointed Governor-General of Libya many viewed it as an effort to “exile” him from Rome. It was also a formidable mission he was tasked with. Balbo came to Libya with the expectation that he would make it a model colony, demonstrating Fascist efficiency and truly turning the place into the “fourth shore” of Italy. Although many today would not like to admit it, Balbo did essentially that. Expansion and development increased to such an extent that Balbo became known as the “Father of Libya” and this was largely true inasmuch that Libya became modern and up-to-date for the first time in history. Mussolini, for a time, hoped that Italy might gain the remains of the former German colony of Cameroon for an Italian Cameroon that would be linked by a land bride to Libya and give Italy an Atlantic port. With the frenzy of new roads, buildings, settlements and harbor facilities going up in Libya, anything seemed possible.

When international tensions began growing over the threat of renewing the war in Abyssinia, Marshal Balbo began making plans for an invasion from his colony into Egypt-Sudan. If Britain decided to go to war with Italy over Abyssinia, or close the Suez Canal to Italian troop transports, Balbo wanted to lead the attack to force the vital chokepoint open. Ultimately, Britain did not intervene on behalf of Ethiopia but they did reinforce their military presence in the Mediterranean, however, there is reason to believe that had such a conflict occurred, Italy would have had a legitimate chance of success. At the height of the crisis, Balbo deployed his troops along the Egyptian border and due to the poor state of British military intelligence, they had no idea it happened and Balbo would have been in a perfect position to have launched an attack on Egypt and take the British forces completely by surprise. Britain only became aware of it all via Rome itself when Mussolini rejected the planned operation, which turned out to be unnecessary in any event.

Although it was hardly seen as a promotion, by being posted to Libya, Marshal Balbo actually had far greater autonomy than he would have otherwise enjoyed and used his position to circumvent the normal military bureaucracy to create his own elite unit of Libyan paratroopers. Balbo himself, along with his pilots, undertook reconnaissance flights over Egypt and the Sudan to familiarize themselves with the area in the event of war between Britain and Italy in north Africa. He was determined to be prepared for any eventuality. However, Balbo was also aware enough of the true state of affairs to oppose Italian involvement in World War II. In fact, he had come a long way from his days as a blackshirt leader and was increasingly conservative, realistic and even royalist. Balbo was the only leading member of the Fascist Party to openly oppose the racial laws aimed against the Jewish community and the only one to publicly denounce the Axis alliance with Adolf Hitler. As Italy moved closer and closer toward the prospect of world war alongside Nazi Germany, Balbo reversed his earlier republicanism and was grateful the monarchy had been preserved and hoped that the King would intervene to stop Mussolini from taking the country to war.

Unfortunately, while the increased attachment to the monarchy was laudable, this was an all too common response of many in the Fascist hierarchy; men who had previously opposed the King and helped Mussolini gain dictatorial power suddenly demanding that the King reassert himself, taking all the political risk, to bail them out of a situation of their own making and to take actions against Mussolini that they were unwilling to take themselves. Air Marshal Balbo, to his credit, did more than most in the Fascist ranks to express his displeasure (saying that the alliance would result in the Italians being totally subservient to the Germans) but nonetheless, acceded to the policies of the government and determined to do his duty as best he could. Part of this included an intricate plan for the elimination of British armored forces in Egypt through the use of diversionary attacks from the air and a fast moving motorized column. However, Balbo would not live to see any of his plans carried out. When Italy joined the war in 1940, Balbo became supreme military commander of Italian north African forces and began planning the invasion of Egypt. Unfortunately, while flying into Tobruk on June 28, just after a British air raid, his plane was mistakenly shot down by Italian anti-aircraft batteries.

Some, then and now, believe that Mussolini set up the whole thing to get rid of Air Marshal Balbo because of his opposition to Fascist policies. However, there is no evidence to back that up and it certainly would not have looked good for Mussolini as such an action would have contradicted his boast that “Mussolini is always right” considering that he had earlier considered Balbo to be his successor as Duce. Balbo was buried near Tripoli but his body was moved to Italy in 1970 after the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi threatened to desecrate the bodies of all Italians buried in Libyan soil.

Italians in the Battle of Britain

The Kingdom of Italy was a pioneer in aerial warfare, the first to use aircraft in combat and the first to theorize on the strategic use of aircraft for large-scale bombing. However, a lack of industrial development as compared to other powers and a shortage of resources meant that the Kingdom of Italy lagged behind some of the other European powers in the deployment of modern aircraft. When Mussolini and his Fascist Party came to power he made many promises about devoting greater attention to the Regia Aeronautica but delivered very little. When the Duce entered World War II by declaring war on France and Britain, most Italian aircraft were still out of date. Nonetheless, Italy had the experience, the talent and the determination to make a respectable fight for the air over the battlefields and soon after war began, received a new incentive to take to the skies. Only days after Italy entered the conflict a group of British Wellington bombers attacked Turin, intending on striking the headquarters of Fiat and the manufacturing center. They missed, however, in spite of encountering absolutely no resistance. There were no air raid alarms, no ground fire and no Italian planes to intercept them. Their attack missed its intended target but killed fourteen civilian men, women and children, and wounded thirty more before returning to France.

BR.20 Cicogna

The British also struck at Milan but with similar results. The Breda airplane factory, Pirelli tire factory and the steel mill were all undamaged but five bombs had hit a Catholic children’s home. Churchill had hoped that by getting in the first blow he would break the Italian will to fight but he could not have made a greater miscalculation. The Italian press labeled the raid as a “terrorist” attack since only civilians had been killed and injured and the whole public was outraged and support for the war skyrocketed as the people called out for revenge against the British. A retaliatory raid was launched on France within 24 hours but retribution against the British would have to wait until the conquest of France and the launching of the “Battle of Britain” by the German Luftwaffe. In September of 1940 the Corpo Aereo Italiano was dispatched to German-occupied Belgium for participation in the air war against Britain under the command of Air Marshal Rino Corso-Fougier. The force consisted of three Stormi of 87 fighters, 5 reconnaissance planes and 78 bombers. Later this was reinforced to include another Squadriglia of CANT Z.1007bi long-range triple-motor reconnaissance planes, a number of Caproni Ca.164 communication planes and one Savoia-Marchetti S.M.75 transport. They were based out of Melsbroek.

A great deal of nonsense has been written about the Italian participation in the Battle of Britain, mostly that it was of no consequence and that the Italians in their antique-looking planes were easily dealt with. In fact, they proved quite capable of holding their own and gave as good as they got. Of course, it was a modest contribution and no one was under any illusions as to the disadvantages Italy faced. However, because of that, their mission was a limited one and within the confines of that mission they were successful, overall, in accomplishing their goals. The aim of the Italian Air Corps was simply to bomb the harbor and port installations at Folkstone, Harwich, Foulness, Ramsgate, Margate and other areas on the south coast of England because it was clear from the start that the naval war effort was what kept Britain in the fight. In damaging these areas there was also the secondary goal of attracting British air resources away from the major cities and airfields that were under attack by the Luftwaffe.

CR.42 Falco

The Germans were initially not too impressed with their Italian allies but changed their opinion after being invited to test fly a Fiat Falco biplane which, despite its outdated appearance, they found to be quick, sturdy and extremely maneuverable. Luftwaffe Field Marshal Albert Kesselring said that the plane was a “delight” to fly and quite capable of holding its own until Italian aircraft designers could produce something more modern. Still, there was no doubt that the Italians were at a great disadvantage. Their most dangerous enemy in the air was the Hawker Hurricane which was 102kph faster than the Falcos, more heavily armed and had a higher climbing rate. The British were able to intercept all Axis radio communications, alerting them when an attack was being launched and yet the Italian forces had trouble coordinating since the vast majority of their aircraft lacked radio equipment. However, by far, the biggest handicap suffered by the Italian fighters was their range and fuel capacity which often left them with as little as ten minutes of flying time over England before they had to turn back across the Channel to reach Belgium before exhausting their fuel. Nonetheless, they put up a hard fight in southern English skies though their first operation showed the effects of being unfamiliar with the area and lacking up-to-date navigational equipment.

After being prepared for action on October 22, Air Marshal Corso-Fougier launched the first Italian air attack three days later with eighteen Cicogna (Stork) bombers being sent to raid Felixtowne and Harwich just after dark. All the planes returned without suffering any losses and Italian newspapers trumpeted the success of their aircraft over Britain. A more serious attack was launched on October 29 in a daylight raid on Ramsgate. Fifteen BR.20 Cicogna bombers with fighter escort carried out the bombing attack successfully with only five Italian planes suffering damage from anti-aircraft fire. They flew very low in a tightly packed formation that amazed observers, especially as their Mediterranean paint jobs made them stand out against the dull sky of an English autumn. Later, on November 8, 22 G.50s on a patrol between Dungeness, Folkstone, Canterbury and Margate clashed with RAF fighters, putting up a spirited fight against veteran professionals so that neither side was able to claim any victories. However, that same day a flight of Hurricanes took a heavy toll on a group of Storks they picked up on radar approaching the coast.

On November 11 forty ‘Falcons’ escorted ten Storks in a daylight bombing raid on Harwich. However, there was bad weather which caused the force to be called off but they were still intercepted by the RAF. Three Falcons and three Storks were shot down with no losses for the British who were all veterans of heavy combat against the Germans. If there was any doubt about the sturdiness and reliability of the Italian aircraft these were disproved when a Canadian rammed a CR.42 with his propeller, beheading the pilot. In spite of this, the plane continued to fly straight back to Belgium to finally land in a field not far from its home base. On November 29, ten BR.20s took off for a daring nighttime raid on two critical British seaports, loaded with bombs and without a fighter escort. They avoided detection crossing the Channel and split up at the coast with half going to hit Lowestoft and the other half Great Yarmouth. At Lowestoft they hit Richards Shipyard and at Great Yarmouth they attacked the harbor works. All were under intense anti-aircraft fire but managed to score 61 hits on both installations, fighting off the belated RAF fighters sent to intercept them and all returned to Belgium without loss.

Air Marshal Corso-Fougier

By December the RAF was stretched to the limit and the Italian Air Corps returned to bomb Harwich almost without opposition though, as always, fire from the ground remained heavy. The British tried to counter-attack the Italian air base but had little effect. On January 2, 1941 Corso-Fougier sent a quartet of Stork bombers against Harwich for a nighttime raid but they ran into snow crossing the Channel, forcing two to turn back but the other two carried on, reached Harwich, catching the British completely off guard and delivering their bomb load, causing considerable damage to the port. That was to be the end though as only a few days later Italian air forces began pulling out of Belgium due to their being sorely needed in North Africa and other areas. Two squadrons still stayed behind until April 1941 but their mission was effectively over. They had dropped 54 tons of ordinance on the enemy, with 883 missions by the fighters alone and suffered a negligible 22% damage rate. Only 2 bombers had been lost to ground fire and only 10 Falcos had been shot down. In 1,800 hours of flying time with 1,076 operations carried out with a loss of only 21 airmen. For their total loss of 15 fighters and bombers they had taken down an equal number of superior British aircraft in the fight. In short, despite great disadvantages, they had done their duty and done it well.

General Giulio Douhet, the Italian Prophet of Aerial Warfare

General Giulio Douhet, aerial warfare visionary and the prophet of strategic bombing was a military innovator and the first great airpower theorist in history. His thinking was decades ahead of his time as he foresaw the day, even at the turn of the last century, when air power would become the dominant offensive weapon of the future, capable of winning wars all on its own long before anyone else saw control of the skies as vital or, indeed, saw hardly any military value in aircraft at all. He was born in Caserta on May 30, 1869 into a family with a long tradition of military service and, in keeping with that tradition, attended the Italian military academy and graduated at the top of his class, earning a commission in the artillery in 1892. He was an innovator from the very start of his career who immediately saw the potential in making the Italian army a mechanized army. He commanded a battalion of the elite bersaglieri light infantry when these were mounted on motorcycles for the first time, giving them added speed and mobility. When Wilbur Wright visited the Kingdom of Italy in 1909 he met the American inventor-aviator and at once saw the potential for the military use of aircraft and became an early and tireless advocate for it.

His foresight was first proven in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12 when he was given command of the first ever aviation battalion in Italian military history. Under Douhet, Italy broke new ground by becoming the first power to successfully carry off air-to-ground attacks with the bombing of Turkish outposts in Libya. This was all the proof Douhet required and he immediately saw a brilliant future for military aircraft. Drawing on his wartime experiences, after the conflict he wrote and published the first manual on the doctrines of air combat entitled “Rules of the Use of Airplanes in War” in 1913. Thanks to Douhet, the Kingdom of Italy had taken an early lead as the first world power to take aerial warfare seriously. However, being a ground-breaking thinker is rarely easy. When Italy entered World War I, Douhet was first posted as chief of staff of an infantry division but given his talent and experience was soon transferred to command the army aviation division. He called for Italy to devote huge resources to the air arm and to launch a campaign of saturation bombing against Austria. However, very little was done before his criticisms of the supreme command earned him the wrath of General Luigi Cadorna who had him arrested and court-martialed.

Sadly, this was not out of the ordinary and should not at all reflect poorly on Colonel Douhet as an officer. By 1917 General Cadorna had sacked a total of 216 generals, 255 colonels and 355 battalion commanders who he blamed for one thing or another or who simply disagreed with his handling of the army, over a time when Italian losses had been heavy and territorial gains extremely modest. However, Colonel Douhet used his time well. As he sat in confinement he continued to write about his ideas for the future of war in the air and to further refine his theories on military aviation. Today many remember the bombing raids of the German and Allied armies on the western front but few realize they had only recently discovered the strategy that Douhet had been advocating for years. In 1917, after the disastrous battle of Caporetto, Douhet and the other critics of General Cadorna were proven correct and the top general was replaced and Douhet was released, restored to his rank and put back in command of the new Central Aeronautic Bureau. In 1921 he published his most famous work, “The Command of the Air”. He held a post in the government of Mussolini for a very short time before retiring from the army with the rank of major general in 1923. He died in Rome on February 15, 1930 at 60 years old.

Why, at the end of it all, was General Douhet such a visionary who we should still remember today? What were his great ideas and theories? He was the first to call for an independent air force, separate from the army and the navy (eventually realized in the Regia Aeronautica) and the first to call for versatile fighter planes, what he termed a “battle plane”, that would be capable of air-to-air combat and ground attack missions. Douhet believed that massive fleets of bombers could be used as the ultimate strategic military weapon. He envisioned ground forces being used solely in a defensive role, guarding Italian territory, while the air force was the primary offensive arm of the military and would devastate enemy countries and armies, destroying their infrastructure and forcing them to capitulate. This, he argued, he would be more cost effective, save lives that would otherwise be wasted in human-wave attacks and would make warfare more swift and decisive.

Not everyone in Italy appreciated the ideas of General Douhet or saw his work as applying to them since other countries (such as Germany, France and Britain) had such larger air forces. However, the use of air power was central to Italian victories in Libya against the rebel Islamic forces, in Abyssinia and was absolutely vital in defeating the communist forces in Spain. However, despite a greater emphasis being put on air power in Italy after his time, the country was never in a position, industrially, to fully implement his ideas. Nonetheless, all of the great aerial warfare leaders from Germany, France, Britain and America read his books and were well studied in his theories. These were, to varying degrees, adopted during World War II particularly by the U.S. Army Air Corps and the British Royal Air Force which carried out large-scale strategic bombing, which were key factors in the ultimate Allied victory. Some more recent military historians have at times downplayed the foresight of General Douhet, arguing that no country has ever won a war through the sole use of air power. However, none have fully adopted the strategies he envisioned to carry this out and even in more recent years there are examples in places such as Kosovo and most recently in Libya which prove just how far-sighted Douhet was. In any event, his influence is enormous simply by being the first to imagine a great and central role for air power in warfare. The development of air forces all over the world owe a debt of gratitude to General Giulio Douhet.