Hakan Gustavsson - Desert Prelude: Early Clashes

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ISBN

978-83-89450-52-4

Digital Edition ISBN

978-83-61421-84-9

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

This work has used a huge number of sources, which will be recorded in the end of part 2.

However, a number of colleague, friends and historians have also kindly helped the authors with support, inspiration and additional material. Our gratitude goes especially to:

Giorgio Apostolo, Andrea Angiolino, Roberto Bassi, Nick Beale, Csaba Becze, Christer Bergstrm, Vincent Biondi, Gianni Biguzzi, Maria Teresa Bobba, Colleen Bowker, Gabriele Brancaccio, Rob Brown, Gianandrea Bussi, Jean Michel Cala, Massimo Cappone, Alberto Casirati, Matteo Cerofolini, Don Clark, Gordon Clarke, Shawn Cottingham, Alexander Crawford, Ferdinando DAmico, Francesco DAmico, Ernest Dean, Peter Dean, Luca Delle Canne, Averil DoRego, Santiago Flores, Marco Gargari, Luigi Gorrini, Chris Goss, Mike Grierson, Russell Guest, Brje Henningsson, Ian Hodkinson, Peter Holloway, Clare Gordon Jones, David LaJuett, Stefano Lazzaro, Enrico Locatelli, Alfredo Logoluso, Petr Lukes, Nicola Malizia, Antonio Maraziti, Giovanni Massimello, Fabio Marzocca, Francesco Mattesini, Ross McNeill, Carlo Minguzzi, Pierluigi Moncalvo, Patricia Molloy, Simon Muggleton, Claudio Narduzzi, Gustavo Ottolenghi, Manlio Palmieri, David Park, Michele Palermo, Antonio Poggi, Tom Polk, Ondrej Repka, Giuseppe Riccardi, Vanni Rinaldi, Roberto Scaglioni, Flavio Silvestri, Graham Buxton Smither, Gianmaria Spagnoletti, Andrew Thomas, Gabriele Valentini, Mirek Wawrzynski, Hugh Wheeler, and Paul Whelan.

All the personnel of Ufficio Storico Stato magg. Aeronautica and in particular: m. llo. Pasquale Rubertone, ten. col. Giancarlo Montinaro, ten. col. Massimiliano Barlattani and col. Euro Rossi

The personnel of Fototeca AMI and in particular ten. Gianluca Pasqualini of Troupe Azzurra.

Another special thanks goes to Ian Acworth, Fulvio Chianese, Patricia Molloy, Vanni Rinaldi and Renato Zavattini, who all provided us with unique images and information for this book, to Enrico Cernuschi for all his help and encouragement and to Many Souffan who kindly shared with us his knowledge and expertise on French Air Force and in particular the operations of FAFL.

We apologize if we have forgotten any names.

Hkan Gustavsson & Ludovico Slongo, Borlnge & Padova January 2010

Introduction

The first North African Campaign was a very interesting one for several reasons. North Africa was Italys main front in what was later called the Parallel War, i.e. the period during which Italy tried to fight the Commonwealth autonomously, without the help of the German Armed Forces, and thus a period during which achievements and defeats were due only to Italian merits or mistakes. This period is one of the very few where historians can try to assess the real effectiveness of the Italian war effort, without being confused by the presence of German forces, and this is obviously true also in the field of air warfare.

With the Battle of Britain absorbing practically all the best resources, the Commonwealth forces on the North African front had to rely mostly on second line machines, sometimes already put out of service at home. This, together with the Italian trust in the biplane formula, meant that the Western Desert was (together with Greece and East Africa) the last battlefield in the history of air warfare where biplanes confronted each other. Needless to say, pilots of these archaic aircraft were by no means inferior in determination or skill to their colleagues fighting in Spitfires or Messerschmitts over the English Channel. Many of the most important Italian and Commonwealth pilots of the conflict drew first blood during this campaign, notably amongst them the top Italian and RAF aces of WW II, Teresio Martinoli and Thomas Pattle.

Maggiore Ernesto Botto in an aircraft from the 73 a Squadriglia, leading a formation from the 9 Gruppo over North Africa during the return from a mission. Identified in the image are fighters from the 96 a Squadriglia.
[via Fulvio Chianese at Associazione Culturale 4 Stormo di Gorizia]

Despite this, the air war during this campaign has been rather neglected by historians, being treated only as a marginal sideshow overshadowed by events of the subsequent periods, after the Luftwaffe intervention. This book is an attempt to correct this negligence, and show that these eight months were a period of heavy fighting where large formations of aircraft clashed under the burning North African sun, with heavy losses suffered by both sides in the air.

1940
Before the storm

Italian forces

When Italy declared war on France and Britain on 10 June 1940, it faced forces from both countries in their North African possessions. The Regia Aeronautica forces in the region formed the Aeronautica della Libia, which was commanded by Generale Felice Porro.

At the start of the conflict there were two fighter Gruppi in North Africa; the 8and the 13Gruppi of the 2Stormo C.T., soon joined by a third one; the 10 Gr. of the 4Stormo C.T.

The 2Stormo C.T. was commanded by col. Angelo Federici. The two Gruppi (8and 13) had their headquarters in Tripoli Castel Benito at the airbase Enea Silvio Recagno, but on 1 June they received orders to move to their war bases. For the 13 Gr. it was the same Tripoli Castel Benito, while the 8 Gr. received orders to move to Tobruk T2 starting from 4 June. The 8 Gr. was waiting for the first deliveries of CR.42s, and moved to T2 with only the CR.32 quaters combat-ready. Only a very small ground echelon followed the pilots because most of the fitters and engineers (among them the best) had to remain in Tripoli to erect the crated CR.42s arriving from Italy. In this quite unsatisfactory situation, the 8 Gr. moved to war only to find that T2 was a mere deserted piece of flat land, lacking any form of accommodation for pilots and planes, not to mention the complete absence of AA defences and warning network.