As Europe grew increasingly unstable after the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, Mussolini greatly expanded military spending, both to defend against the German menace and to take advantage of opportunities for Italian expansion. During Valle’s tenure, air force funding soared both arithmetically and in proportion to the other services. From mid- 1936 onward, the air force received more money than the navy, with the gap widening thereafter. The seven annual air budgets of 1933–1940 averaged 24.5 percent of all military spending. (In comparison, the Luftwaffe received 36 percent of German military spending in 1934; the Royal Air Force received 38 percent of the British military budget for 1938 and 41 percent the following year.) But as an indication of growing Regia Aeronautica strength, the 1933–1940 figures are deceptive. Roughly two thirds of those funds were abortively applied to bolster the Austrian and Hungarian air forces; to support the conquest of Ethiopia and the subsequent protracted counterinsurgency in East Africa; to back the Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War and help the Nationalist air force; and to facilitate the invasion of Albania. Mussolini’s acquiescence in the Anschluss in March 1938, Hungary’s submission to German dominance, the strategic irrelevance of Spain and Italian East Africa in World War II, and Mussolini’s May 1939 alliance with Hitler meant that most of the 1933–1940 air force spending had been squandered.

Such fruitless resource allocation and intense Regia Aeronautica involvement in the Italian–Ethiopian and Spanish civil wars proved highly injurious to the air force. Funds that might have purchased large numbers of technologically advanced aircraft and equipment were used to pay for these operations instead. Combat success against inferior opponents in East Africa and Spain led to overly optimistic conclusions. Bellicose Fascist propaganda made objective analysis difficult. Legislation that had created totally separate testing and purchasing offices within the air staff encouraged mistakes based on these activities.

In August 1936, three months after the official end of the Ethiopian war and shortly before major Italian participation in the Spanish Civil War began, the air force General Staff undertook studies for a major expansion and modernization of its air fleet. Program R was to be completed by the spring of 1938. The goal was a force of some 3,170 aircraft, almost all to be ready in the second half of 1940, except for 18 four-engine heavy bombers that would not come on line until February 1941. Some 278 would be stationed in Italian East Africa and 426 assigned to the navy. Of the remaining 2,448 aircraft, 966 would be medium bombers, 911 fighters, 338 reconnaissance planes, 132 ground attack and dive-bombers, 65 colonial, and 36 long-range transports. Many of these aircraft types were already in series production or available as prototypes. But some 750 of the fighters were to be of totally new design and constituted the most ambitious segment of Program R.

Aircraft Design and Selection

Shortly after this decision, the Air Ministry announced a competition for a modern interceptor, and the air force held trials for six entrants in early 1938. Based on results, Valle instructed the Office of Engineering and Aeronautical Construction to acquire the Fiat G.50 and the Macchi- Castoldi MC.200. Both all-steel warplanes enjoyed high maneuverability, sturdiness, and good handling; the MC.200 also provided extraordinary visibility from its hump-mounted cockpit, as well as superb climbing and diving ability. But the weak 840-horsepower Fiat A74 engine powering both allowed a top speed of only 293 and 314 miles per hour, respectively, and an armament of just two 12.7 mm machine guns. Furthermore, to save weight, the two fighters carried radio receivers but no transmitters. Still, many pilots and their patrons on the air staff preferred slower but even more maneuverable lightweight biplanes capable of agile aerobatics in dogfights. Ongoing successes in Spain with such an aircraft, the Fiat CR.32 (the Italians eventually downed about 500 Republican warplanes, including many Soviet Polikarpov I-16s, while incurring aerial losses of only 86), provided strong arguments for the proponents of such fighters. However, others on the air staff and a good many pilots realized that the fabric-covered biplane had reached the apogee of its potential. Meanwhile, all-metal monoplanes with powerful engines and armed with multiple machine guns or cannon had already surpassed them in performance. More advanced models promised far greater capabilities. The Germans had introduced the Bf 109B into combat over Spain in April 1937, and it proved remarkably successful over the next six months. Valle’s staff soon became cognizant of the German fighter and its technical advantages, but their hearts and those of most fighter pilots lay elsewhere.

By mid-1938, Italian and German fighter pilots in Spain, flying CR.32s and Bf 109Bs and Cs, respectively, had fought together in a number of operations. The relative merits of these two types of aircraft had already provoked a lively debate in the pages of the official air force journal Rivista Aeronautica, reflecting similar arguments within the air staff. As a result, Valle issued requirements for a more advanced fighter than the G.50 and MC.200, but trials of six new interceptors were all disappointing. The Testing Office report stressed the superiority of the Bf 109 to all the Italian prototypes and urged the development of better ones from which to select a single Regia Aeronautica fighter for the mid-1940s. Valle agreed. However, the manufacture of both the G.50 and the MC.200 series had proceeded very slowly, especially that of the latter. As a stopgap, the chief of staff insisted that the Aeronautical Construction Office order 200 of the Fiat CR.42, a mixed steel and fabric covered biplane with fixed undercarriage that had not been entered in the second fighter competition. The Construction Office falsely described the CR.42 as only an improved model of the CR.32. The major loser in the fighter trials, the Caproni group, was appeased by a few orders for its new aluminum monoplane, the Re.2000. Based on the Seversky P-35 (its American manufacturer needed cash and apparently sold the plans without obtaining an export license), the Re.2000 had been developed for the export market. When tested by the Swedes and Hungarians who purchased it, the Re.2000 proved superior to the Bf 109E in close combat, although inferior in armament and thirty miles per hour slower.

Until mid-1939, the air force continued to buy the CR.32 to supply both Italian fighter units and the Nationalists in Spain. The limited production capacity of the Italian aviation industry was divided among four fighters, one of which was already obsolete, another obsolescent, and two of rapidly fading modernity. The ugly duckling of the lot, the Re.2000, proved superior in combat to the G.50 and especially to the CR.42. Thanks to its elliptical wing, the Re.2000 did not spin when subjected to the aerobatics favored by Italian pilots, a tendency that proved fatal to many who flew the G.50 and MC.200 for the first time. Moreover, unlike the spruce and special steel required to build those two warplanes—materials that were in short supply in Italy even before World War II—the aluminum required to construct the Re.2000, as well as hydroelectric power to extract it from bauxite ore, was relatively abundant in Italy. Finally, thanks to its American-inspired design, the Re.2000 easily lent itself to mass production.