In this year, which is drawing to a close, we are celebrating 100 years of the Air Force, a century of glories, firsts and defeats, experienced by outstanding personalities who have remained engraved in the collective memory and military history of the country. Italy pioneered the use of the medium of air, occupying a leading position in the development of military aviation, an epic where exhilarating chapters alternate with bitter pages, in which the skill and inventiveness of Italian pilots did not fail.
Brief history of the Arma Azzurra.
The vocation for flight manifested itself very early in Italy, partly a cultural legacy of the studies and experiments carried out by Leonardo da Vinci, partly the fact that Italy, being a newly formed country, needed in the early 1900s industrial and military prospects that were in step with the times. The first use of an airplane in the military field was recorded in 1911: Captain Carlo Maria Piazza took to the air in the Blériot XI aircraft, on which he performed precisely the first air warfare action ever recorded. The experiences gained in the Libyan War led, in 1912, to the incorporation of airships, aerostats and a newly formed aviator battalion into a single formation, reverting to the original name of the Aeronautical Service.
From 1916 more high-performance aircraft were used, such as the Nieuport 11, of French origin but produced under Italian license, on which the Ace of Aces, Count Francesco Baracca scored the first of 34 victories. The story of Captain Baracca is one like one of those marvelous Chinese boxes, opening it one discovers that it contains other stories; he drew a prancing horse on the right fuselage of his airplane, in reference to the heraldry of the regiment in which he trained. He died during a fight, probably killed by an enemy infantryman on the ground. In 1923, Enzo Ferrari met the aviator's mother, Paolina Baracca, who allowed him to use her son's coat of arms because it would bring him luck. And we feel to say that this prophecy definitely came true.
On March 28, 1923, the Regia Aeronautica was officially born, whose first minister was Italo Balbo, the man of the Atlantic crossing who made hundreds of Italian emigrants in the United States dream, giving them the hope of one day returning to their homeland aboard an airplane. In this period the theme of flight also conquered the Futurist movement, with the current of aeropittura, an expression of dynamism and movement, whose greatest exponent was Tullio Crali.
World War II marked a turning point for the Italian Air Force, whose trained pilots and engineers sought to counter the dominance of the British RAF, which could count on the support of the immense U.S. apparatus.
In the decisive First Battle of El Alamein, fought in July 1942, the British inflicted a definitive setback on Rommel and the Axis troops partly due to their clear air superiority: 1,500 aircraft of various types, many of them American-made, against the approximately 500 deployed by the Italians and Germans in total. The exigencies of the Cold War allowed Italy - having emerged defeated from World War II with and with heavy limitations -, to reconstitute an efficient and competitive air weapon, to the point of recovering past prestige. Now the question arises as to what the future holds, what challenges await military aviation, and how these relate to the security of the nation and the country system.
New scenarios
During the Machiavelli Study Center's second Defense-themed conference, held recently in Rome, speakers touched on several topics, the common thread of which was the lessons that Italian defense and politics can learn from the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. General Michele Oballa, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Logistics Command, spoke about the new challenges facing the Air Force and what tables it must play on in order to fit in from the front in the NATO and international arena. If until the Cold War the domains of clashes between nations were land, sea, air and space, like the faces of a cube, today the games are also played on a fifth strategic dimension that interpenetrates the others: cyber, whose threats are "virtual missiles," perpetrated in the most sophisticated computer systems, including those of aircraft.
The capabilities required by pilots will be increasing, and the Italian Air Force is preparing for this task by becoming an international training hub through IFTS schools, training centers for military pilots of different nationalities, the first of which was inaugurated at in the base of Decimomannu (CA). In these training schools, which have arisen thanks to the collaboration between the Air Force and Leonardo, the world's best pilots will be perfected, with important repercussions on the prestige of the Blue Arma itself and reflections on the economies of the territories.
A graduate in Psychology, a political activist, she cultivates in parallel a passion for the topics of political communication, the relationship between the sexes and military history.
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