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This is part three of our video series focused on the involvement of Italian
Air Force against British soil in World War II. Watch the first two parts if you missed them.
And yes, I know that the period in which Italians operated is outside of what's considered to
be the Battle of Britain in Britain itself. There are however different views and if that
bothers you so much, just watch something else. After flying initial air raids unopposed by
the RAF, the Corpo Aereo Italiano, or the Italian Air Corps faced opposition by mostly Hurricanes
on 11 November 1940. Italians lost three bombers and three fighters while many other airplanes were
damaged. That put an end to daylight bombing raids and the bomber component equipped with Fiat BR.20
switched to night raids only. A small scale raid by six BR.20s against Harwich was launched on
18 November. No losses were suffered. A lone bomber attack on 20th November was aborted
due to bad weather. Next attack came on the night of 21st of November. 12 BR.20s successfully
dropped their bombs but one of them failed to return. The crew reported over the radio that
they were being attacked by a night fighter. RAF night fighting capabilities were still quite
modest at the time. After Luftwaffe switched to night raids, RAF first assigned some Hurricane
squadrons to operate at night. No special equipment was used, they relied on moonlight
to spot their targets. Other types such as Blenheim light bomber and Paul Defiant, a fighter
with no forward firing weapons were assigned as well. I even found information that the single
remaining home-based Gladiator unit, 247 Squadron was used in this role, although without any
success. As for this particular case, the Italian bomber was certainly lost and bodies of
two crew members washed ashore in Netherlands. However, there is no RAF night
fighter claim to match the Italian report. The next major encounter between
the Italians and RAF took place on 23rd of November when two Italian groups were
sent on a fighter sweep over England. There were two formations. One of them included 29
Fiat CR.42 biplanes from the 18th Gruppo and its planned course was Dunkirk-Margate-
Eastchurch-Folkstone-Calais. This flight was led by Maggiore Ferruccio Vosilla, a veteran of the
Spanish Civil War and the French Campaign. His wingman was a future Italian 18 victory
ace, Franco Bordoni-Bisleri. The second Italian formation consisted of 24 Fiat G.50 monoplanes
from 20th Gruppo which followed a little further inland. RAF scrambled twelve Spitfire
Mark IIs from 603 Squadron in response. They took off from Hornchurch
at 11:30 and headed south. The flight was led by the unit CO,
Squadron leader George Denholm. The Spitfire unit was given the
vector towards the enemy formation and they eventually spotted CR.42s at 6,000m
of altitude some 16 km southwest of Dover. The Fiats were flying west and they
seemed to form two separate groups flying one behind the other. Their formations were a
bit random with the first group having four aircraft in a tight Vic formation with a
single aircraft flying right of them, and several CR 42s to their left. The second Italian
formation consisted of Vics, pairs and single aircraft in no particular order. At the end there were
two biplanes flying straight without any weaving. The Spitfires attacked from the rear. RAF pilots reported that initially Italian fighters took no evasive action and the
attack resembled attacking bomber formations. Two CR .2s were shot down as
the Italian formation was bounced. Both airplanes dived into the sea
with their pilots reported missing. The pilots were tenente Guido Mazza and sergente
maggiore Giacomo Grillo. The latter was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and the brief French
campaign in which he claimed three shared kills. After the initial surprise, the Italian pilots
engaged the Spitfires and a large dogfight developed. Tenente Giulio Cesare Giuntella was hit several
times but he claimed achieving hits on a Spitfire. Giuntella's experience was similar to Grillo's as
he also had three shared kills in the French Campaign. Maresciallo Felice Sozzi, yet another pilot
with similar combat experience managed to chase off a Spitfire of the tail of sergente maggiore
Luigi Gorrini. Gorrini in turn was chasing other Spirfires. But Sozzi ended up being hit by two other
Spitfires which attacked him from behind. Sozzi was seriously wounded
with three bullets in his lungs. Despite his condition he was able to make it back to
Belgium and perform an emergency landing on a beach Pilot Officer Gilroy was able to make
three head-on attacks on Fiat biplanes. All three fired back at him and
one bullet hit the Spitfire spinner. Pilot Officer Ronald Berry claimed one
CR.42 destroyed and another probably destroyed. He had a five minute dogfight
with two CR.42s in which he was trying to get on their tails but the
Italian pilots turned inside him every time. Berry eventually dived out of range. One CR.42 was claimed by Pilot
Officer Brian McNamara who reported seeing smoke and fire from the biplane he attacked. Pilot Officer Archie Winskill
claimed two CR.42s destroyed but he found himself with four CR.42s on his
tail and their gunfire splintered his canopy. Squadron Leader Denholm
chased one Fiat halfway across the Channel but then turned back
as his engine developed problems. Altogether, 603 Squadron claimed seven fighters
destroyed, two probably destroyed and two damaged. Italian pilots claimed five enemy fighters. Once
again, both sides overclaimed very heavily. No Spitfires were shot down, only two of them
were damaged. As for the Italian losses, two CR.42s were shot down, those of Mazza and Grillo
as mentioned earlier. But others were damaged. And besides the already mentioned Felice
Sozzi, two Italian pilots were injured. One of them, sergente maggiore Campanile was saved by his parachute pack which stopped several machine gun bullets. And if you're wondering what happened to
the G.50 flight during this combat, another Spitfire unit reported seeing what they
identified as BF-109s in the area. They were almost certainly the Fiat monoplanes which
also reported seeing a formation of British fighters but not engaging them. Lack of radio
seems to have been a great disadvantage for the Italians as the biplane pilots had no way
of calling their monoplane friends to help them. Italian biplanes attempted another
fighter sweep on 25th of November. They turned back over
Eastchurch due to bad weather. 23 Fiat G.50s, 24 Fiat CR.42s and
a small number of German Bf-109s flew another sweep on 28th of November
but they were not engaged by RAF fighters. Italian bombers launched a night raid
on 29th of November. They encountered heavy AAA and one aircraft crashed on
landing probably as the result of damage. It hit some workers houses and the
entire crew died along with several civilians. After several uneventful
raids in the first half of December, one BR.20 bomber returned from a raid on
December 22nd with damage attributed to a night fighter. Again, there are no
British night fighter claims to match this. The last raid of 1940 was flown by a
single BR.20 with a squadron commander as the pilot. The target was London but the crew
became lost and eventually bailed out over France. There was was one night raid
launched on 2 January 1941 but out of four airplanes, two aborted due to
their landing gears not retracting properly, and the other two didn't drop their bombs due
to search lights, AAA and night fighter presence. In January, all the BR.20 bombers
and CR.42 fighter units pulled back to Italy and they later participated in the
Balkans and North African campaigns. Only G.50s remained in Belgium until April
1941 but they mostly just patrolled over Belgium, Netherlands and France. The last Italian
operational loss in this campaign occurred on 13th of April when tenente Mario Roncalli was scrambled
from his home airfield at Ursel to intercept an enemy aircraft. He aborted the interception and
lost control over his airplane for unknown reasons. His aircraft crashed killing him in the
process. It's interesting to mention that G.50s flew 662 sorties during their
6-month deployment to Belgium without ever engaging enemy aircraft. They only sighted
the enemy twice. History judges the Italian involvement against Britain as a big mistake
by Mussolini which wasted precious resources that could have been used more effectively in
other theaters. It's hard to argue against that. Italian pilots were certainly given
a very difficult task which they probably performed as well as possible under the
circumstances. Overall results however were modest at best. Thank you for your time.
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