Service As A Fighter Pilot
On 3 November 1917, Scaroni filed his first claim for an aerial victory, but it went unconfirmed and uncredited. On 14 November, Scaroni scored his first official victory, while flying a Nieuport 17. By 19 December, he had scored six victories, and his squadron phased out the Nieuports.
For the remainder of his victories, Scaroni would fly a Hanriot HD.1. His 25 victories would make him second only to Belgium's Willy Coppens for success with this type of airplane.
His success with the Hanriot began only four days later, as he scored victory number two on the 18th. A win the following day, and one each on the 5th and 10 December made him an ace in less than a month. He scored once more on 19 December. Then, the day after Christmas, he was the leading gun in one of the most lopsided aerial battles in World War I.
As he himself described it in a magazine article he penned for Nel Cielo, his airfield was attacked by ten enemy bombers. He shot down one of the bombers in flames at 9 AM. He then dueled with another for twenty minutes before it crashed. The observer leapt from the wreckage and lit it on fire to deny its capture. Unfortunately, the observer managed to catch his own clothing on fire in the process. Still more unfortunately, the pilot was still pinned under the debris and burned to death. Meanwhile, Scaroni's squadron-mates shot down six more of the raiders. Scaroni capped off the day by downing another, even larger, bomber at 12:35. He thus ended the year with nine wins.
He accumulated another ten victories by 16 June 1918. On that day, or the next, he doubled his firepower by installing a second machine gun on his plane.
He scored four more times in June, including a double on the 25th. July saw him with two confirmed victories and two unconfirmed on the 7th, and a confirmed and an unconfirmed on the 12th. He was wounded the following day, and saw no further combat in the war.
Read more about this topic: Silvio Scaroni
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