The Corpo Aereo Italiano

On 10 September 1940 the Italian air force, the Regia Aeronautica, formed the Corpo Aereo Italiano (CAI), the Italian Air Corps. It was an expeditionary corps that was to fly to occupied Belgium and fight Britain alongside the Luftwaffe. Formally it came under the 1st Air Fleet (1ª Squadra Aerea) in Milan, and its commander was Rino Corso Fougier, a general of air fleet rank (generale di squadra aerea). The decision was above all political: Benito Mussolini wanted Italy to take part in what he believed would be the final reckoning of the war with England. By the time the Italian aircraft were at last ready for action, the daylight Battle of Britain was already drawing to a close.

Mussolini wants to share in victory

When Italy declared war on France and Britain on 10 June 1940, Mussolini was counting on a short war and a seat at the peace table. France capitulated within two weeks, but Britain had no intention of suing for peace. In the summer the Germans began preparing a landing in the British Isles: on 16 July Adolf Hitler signed Directive No. 16 on Operation Sea Lion. In Rome there were fears that if England fell without Italian participation, Italy would be treated as a junior partner of little use.

As early as the summer, therefore, the Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, offered the Germans on the Duce’s behalf land and air support for the invasion; according to post-war studies there was talk of as many as ten divisions and thirty air squadrons. In mid-July Hitler politely but firmly declined the offer of an expeditionary corps. The German plans made no provision for Italian troops, and the German commanders doubted the value of Italian equipment; they would have preferred to see the Italians attacking the British in the Mediterranean and in Africa – where they had bases and could tie down the British fleet and air force. Mussolini would not let it go. In the end Hitler agreed to the participation of the Italian air force, seeing a propaganda advantage in it: a joint attack on England would demonstrate the unity of the Axis. At the beginning of August Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander of Luftflotte 2, was instructed to prepare to receive the Italians. According to accounts cited in the literature, both Göring and Kesselring regarded this more as a nuisance than as a real reinforcement.

For Mussolini one more argument counted. From the first days of the war British bombers flying from England had been attacking Turin, Milan and Genoa. Italian bombers over England were to be the answer and the proof that Italy was taking part in the main contest of the war, and not merely in a “parallel war” in the Mediterranean. Many Italian historians judge the decision harshly: the aircraft and experienced crews sent to Belgium would have been of more use in North Africa, over Malta and, soon, in Greece.

The composition of the corps

The choice of commander was carefully considered. Rino Corso Fougier, born in 1894 in Bastia in Corsica, had been a fighter pilot in the First World War, and in the 1930s commanded the 1st Fighter Wing, with which he organised the first Italian school of aerobatics. He had also commanded the air forces in Libya under Italo Balbo and in Italian East Africa. He had a reputation as a superb airman, but little experience of commanding large forces in modern war.

According to Italian figures the CAI consisted of two bomber wings (stormi), the 13th and 43rd, equipped with a total of some 75–80 twin-engined Fiat BR.20M Cicogna bombers; the 56th Fighter Wing with the 18th Group (50 Fiat CR.42 Falco biplanes) and the 20th Group (some 45 Fiat G.50 Freccia monoplanes); and a reconnaissance squadron with five or six CANT Z.1007bis aircraft and a few Caproni transports. Altogether this came to some 170–200 aircraft, depending on how they are counted. The bombers were to be based at Melsbroek (PL) near Brussels and at Chièvres, the fighters at Ursel and Maldegem in Flanders. The corps headquarters was in Brussels.

The weaknesses were apparent even on paper. The BR.20 had been a successful bomber in the mid-1930s, but by 1940 its defensive armament was weak and it carried fewer bombs than the German Heinkel He 111 or Junkers Ju 88. The CR.42 was agile and fast for a biplane, but it had an open cockpit and only two machine guns, and it was markedly slower than the Hurricane and the Spitfire. Most of the Italian fighters had no radio, and the bomber crews were poorly trained in night and instrument flying – exactly what autumn weather over the North Sea demanded.

The flight to Belgium

The transfer began on 22 September but took more than a month. The bombers took off from northern Italy at the end of September and flew over the Alps via Munich and Frankfurt am Main. Bad weather and inexperience in blind flying meant that a dozen or so aircraft lost their way and made forced landings, and several crashed, killing their crews. The G.50 fighters were held up by the weather at Treviso for almost two weeks and reached Belgium only on 19 October. Italian sources consider the corps to have been complete on 22 October. Operationally it was placed under Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2, which assigned the Italians a sector of their own.

A short and unsuccessful campaign

The CAI’s first raid took place on the night of 24–25 October: a dozen or so BR.20s were to bomb the port of Harwich and the seaplane base at Felixstowe. Hardly any damage was done, and the Italians lost several machines in accidents. On 29 October bombers escorted by fighters attacked Ramsgate in daylight; British observers described with surprise the neat formation of the Italian aircraft and their desert camouflage.

The corps’ worst day was 11 November 1940. Ten BR.20s escorted by some forty CR.42s flew over Harwich in daylight and were intercepted by Hurricanes of several RAF squadrons. According to British and Italian figures, which in this case agree, the Italians lost three bombers and two fighters in combat. Another CR.42, its engine overheating, landed on the beach at Orford Ness in Suffolk; Sergeant Pietro Salvadori’s aircraft was captured almost undamaged and can be seen today at the RAF Museum in London. Several more bombers and a dozen or so fighters made forced landings after returning to the Continent. The RAF lost no aircraft. One of the BR.20s was shot down, partly shared with another pilot, by a Polish airman of No. 257 Squadron RAF, Pilot Officer Karol Pniak. The following night British torpedo bombers attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto, which underlined still more clearly where the fate of Italy’s war was really being decided.

After another unsuccessful fighter action on 23 November the corps confined itself mainly to night raids on the ports of eastern England and to patrols over the Belgian and French coast. As early as November Marshal Pietro Badoglio was pressing the Germans to agree to the withdrawal of the aircraft, which were needed in view of the setbacks in Greece and the impending British offensive in Libya. From January 1941 the bombers and CR.42s returned to Italy; the last two squadrons of G.50s left Belgium on 15 April 1941.

Balance and significance

According to official Italian figures the CAI’s bombers flew some 140 sorties and its fighters some 600; the corps lost a total of 38 aircraft, most of them in accidents, through mechanical failure and to the weather. British sources give lower numbers of sorties, and the RAF Museum puts the losses at about 24 machines. The Italian fighters scored no confirmed victory, and the bombs they dropped did no serious damage. The participation of the Corpo Aereo Italiano in the Battle of Britain was almost entirely a political and propaganda gesture.

In the history of the war the episode shows how Mussolini understood his alliance with Hitler: Italy was to be present wherever decisions were being made, even at the expense of its own limited forces. In the autumn of 1940 those same forces proved too weak on the front that mattered most to Italy. As the Italian airmen returned from Belgium, the Italian army was suffering defeats in Libya and Albania, and the Germans had to send their own aircraft and troops to the Mediterranean. From the autumn of 1941 to the summer of 1943 Rino Corso Fougier headed the Regia Aeronautica as its chief of staff.