The MC.72 was never ready to compete in the Cup Races before the Cup was claimed by England. The next year, it set a world speed record of over 440 mph which it held for many years. It was the ultimate machine to be produced in pursuit of the Cup.
This painting won first place in the 2005 Aviation Week and Space Technology Magazine Aviation Art Competition in the General category. It was published in the Magazine in December of 2005.
Mussolini’s period was marked by many military innovations. As Fascism touted a military spirit, it possessed an accentuated military look. The first issue was the Fascist Militia. The Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale—Voluntary Militia for National Security—established itself halfway between a party-owned police and an army. They organized the former Squadre d’Azione into a disciplined new armed force. Its military effectiveness was rather poor and it could only act as light infantry. It disappeared in July 1943 and soon reappeared a few months later as “M”—Mussolini—Battalions of the Fascist Social Republic.
The issue was the air force. After the Great War, it had been established as a part of the army, but on March 28, 1923, a royal decree established the Regia Aeronautica as an independent armed force.7 Regia Aeronautica personnel established a number of important flying records. In 1919, Lieutenant Antonio Locatelli, a Great War ace, was the first to fly across the Andes. The next year Arturo Ferrarin and Masiero reached Japan from Italy. In 1925, Francesco de Pinedo made a 34,200-mile flight from Europe to Asia and Oceania and back. In 1928, Ferrarin and Carlo del Prete made the longest nonstop flight, from Rome to Touros, in Brazil. In 1926, the airship Norge—designed and built in Italy as N. 1 by General Umberto Nobile—flew from Europe to Alaska, passing above the North Pole. The next airship flight made by Nobile ended with the Italia airship crashing as it returned from the Pole in 1928. This was the end of airships. Previous military exercises demonstrated that they had an increasingly scarce military relevance; and they were abandoned.
The real organization of the Regia Aeronautica began after 1926, when Italo Balbo—one of the quadrumviri, the four highest-ranked Fascists—was appointed undersecretary of state for the air force. The Regia Aeronautica, however, established its first operational doctrines in 1929. General Giulio Dohuet’s air warfare theories on the strategic importance of massive air bombing surely influenced these doctrines, but a further examination shows an influence by General Amedeo Mecozzi, who had unquestionably been influenced by American general Mitchell’s theories, too. Italian operational doctrine sought to employ a small number of aircraft. Anyway, the first combined exercise, made in the summer of 1929 with the army and navy, demonstrated it was impossible to act without an air force in a modern war.
De Pinedo and Balbo experimented with various flying formations. The results were the transoceanic flights. After a first flight to Brazil, in 1933, Italo Balbo’s twenty-four amphibious planes flew from Orbetello through Chicago to New York City. It was considered one of the greatest aviation successes of that period. Balbo paraded triumphally in New York, and a street in Chicago was named after him.
This kind of response helped bolster the Fascist regime—“the Regime”—making it appear modern and technologically advanced. Technology, however, required money for research and development. The country was still poor, and the Regime preferred to concentrate its resources on results everyone could understand. Research on radar was put aside, as well as radio-piloted remote-controlled aircraft and jet propulsion.
Other achievements came quickly. For the first time, an Italian transatlantic ship—the Rex—won the blue ribbon, in 1934. That same year electric locomotives in Italy ran at 93 miles per hour, and in 1939 they established the world record— 126.138 miles per hour—during a trip from Florence to Milan, with an average speed of 102.526 miles per hour. Railroads in Italy consisted of ten thousand miles of track, of which 25 percent was electrified. Few lessons, though, were learned from all of this technological hype. For instance, Italy participated in the Schneider Cup, a prize to the fastest seaplane flight. In 1934 military pilot Francesco Agello reached 440.678 miles per hour. This is still the world record for a seaplane. It was achieved using an inline engine, but in the following years and until 1942, the Regia Aeronautica asked only for radial engined aircraft. Protectionism played a major role, but industrialists preferred to exploit their old production chains instead of invest money in new systems for better products, and decision makers at the top seemed unaware of technological improvements.
The next war is normally prepared for by studying the previous one. This happened to the Italian armed forces. According to the best Italian expert on weapons, Lieutenant Colonel Filippo Cappellano, the impact of the Great War on the generals in the interwar period led them to pursue weapons, from hand grenades to tanks, capable of fighting in the mountains, because the last war had been fought primarily in the mountains. As the air force had not been relevant in the Great War, it was possible that, in spite of what the Regia Aeronautica said, the Regio Esercito and the Regia Marina chiefs of staff did not listen. Moreover, the Direttive, the air operational doctrine, if accepted, would give the Regia Aeronautica strategic management of the war, and both the army and navy did not like it.
Anyway, the Regia Aeronautica soon demonstrated its tactical and strategic importance. Since 1923, Mussolini had wanted to secure colonies. Somali Colonial Infantry quickly secured Somalia in 1926–27. Italian control of Libya needed to be expanded. During the Great War, Italy had lost positions in Libya, and its rule was reduced to some coastal towns like Tripoli, Homs, and Benghazi. Operations began in 1922 and ended ten years later, when all the territory was conquered and local resistance destroyed. The Regia Aeronautica effectively supported these land operations. Reconnaissance, supply, and medical evacuations were conducted by air with good results. Bombing proved to be basic for winning. It is still unclear exactly if poison gas was used. What is clear is that in 1929, Regia Aeronautica’s poison gas was over but the reason for this is still obscure.
Colonial operations in Libya succeeded largely because of a young general, Rodolfo Graziani. A former grenadier officer, he had substantial colonial experience. He was promoted numerous times for his distinguished service on the Carso during the Great War and, when back in Libya in the early twenties, he immediately appeared as the best colonial operations officer. He used air reconnaissance to direct his fast-moving columns composed of trucks, armored cars, and even camels. He gained such fame that, when asked about the best generals of his time, French marshal Lyautey included him. Of course, Graziani was not gentle and kind. His operations were rough and his behavior brutal, but he succeeded despite the cost in human lives. This was the contemporary European way of acting in the colonies, and this was the policy in Ethiopia when war exploded there in 1935.
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