Aviazione Legionaria - History

History

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, General Franco had about 30,000 troops and Moroccan nationals under his command, along with some artillery units, of whom the majority were on Spanish territory in Africa and in the Balearic Islands. His main problem was to get them to mainland Spain and so, on 24 July 1936, Franco turned to the Italian consul in Tangiers and then directly to major Luccardi, the military attache in the Italian consulate. Through them Franco tried to convince Benito Mussolini to send twelve transport aircraft, twelve reconnaissance planes, ten fighter aircraft, 3000 aerial bombs, antiaircraft machine guns and at least forty five transport ships. At first Mussolini was reluctant to send them, despite his sympathy for Franco, but his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano put pressure on him and he changed his mind on July 25. Ciano had in the meantime spoken with two representatives of the Spanish monarchy about thirty fighter planes and other equipment sent by the French government that would arrive on August 2.

On July 27 Mussolini ordered the under-secretary for the Regia Aeronautica, general Giuseppe Valle, to send 12 three-engined Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 bombers with crews and the relevant specialists. These would form the first unit, initially known at first as Aviación del Tercio and set out at dawn on 30 July from Cagliari-Elmas on Sardinia, where they had picked up three officials from the Scuola di Navigazione di Altura at Orbetello, the 'gerarca' Ettore Muti and the tenente-colonnello Ruggero Bonomi. The aircraft crews and the specialists were all volunteers from 7th, 10th and 13th Stormo and were provided with civilian clothes and fake documents. All the Italian symbols on the planes had been blotted out to prevent an international incident with pro-Republican European governments. Fake documents stated that the planes were being sold to the Spanish journalist Luis Bolin.

The trip to Franco's forces was very hard and not all of the planes reached Morocco - the plane commanded by Angelini crashed in the Mediterranean, that under Mattalia crashed near Saïda (in a French-controlled part of Morocco), and that commanded by Lo Forte had to make an emergency landing near Berkane (also in French Morocco) and was seized by the local authorities. The nine survivors of the Moroccan crashes were provided with nationalist papers and transferred to the airport at Tetuan, from which they helped over the following days to escort the transport ships Araujo, Ciudad de Alicante and Ciudad de Ceuta, which together carried 4,000 men, 4 artillery batteries, 2 million cartridges and 12 tons of other munitions to mainland Spain.

Encouraged by this first operation's success, Mussolini began to send a more steady stream of munitions, personnel and supplies under the name of Aviación Legionaria, Aviazione Legionaria. As well as supporting Franco's ground forces, the units of the Aviazione Legionaria repeatedly attacked Spanish cities and ports such as Barcelona, Madrid, Alicante, Granollers, Valencia and Almeria, significantly inhibiting the supply-lines for the Spanish Republican forces.

On 12 May 1939 the last Italian aircrew embarked for Italy on the ship Duilio at Cadiz. By the end of the conflict the Aviazione Legionaria had had a total of 135,265 hours' flying time on 5,318 operations, dropping 11,524 tons of bombs and destroying 943 enemy air units and 224 ships. 171 Italian personnel had been killed and 192 wounded, with 74 fighters, 8 bombers, 2 ground-attack planes and 2 reconnaissance aircraft shot down or destroyed. The ratio of results to men and machines lost was positive, but also confirmed the Regia Aeronautica's commanders in their mistaken belief that biplanes and triplanes were still valid in modern combat. In fact the age of air warfare dominated by these aircraft was waning and it was becoming evident that radio needed to be mounted on all aircraft and that bomb-aiming now had to be done with special instruments rather than by sight These errors of judgement would prove decisive when Italy entered the Second World War in 1940.