[Stig Jarlevik]

Hallo Adriano

I think the reason our Italian friends stay silent is that this is a very badly researched area in Italy. I have found a two-part article in Aerofan no 57 and 58 and we can immediately see that Italy in 1939/40 did have very few pilots capable of flying at night and even fewer capable of fighting at night. In spite of spending long time debating the problem very little came out of the Italian effort. No true night fighter was ever developed beyond prototype stage and as late as 1943 Fiat CR 42 was still being used, but also many other single engined fighter aeroplanes made obsolete for day fighting. The conclusion drawn by the author is that only two night fighter claims were valid during the whole war although a lot of probable claims were made in good faith by pilots. IF this Fiat pilot from the night of 14/15th Feb survived he may have put in a claim which then must have been treated as a probable by the Italian authorities since it seems there had to be found a wreckage to get a confirmed victory.

Unfortunately Italian aviation is sadly under researched and I have yet to see anything resembling good loss lists with serial numbers given for WW 2. Possibly such records are not in existance any more (destroyed perhaps) or they are yet to be found in Italian archives. Since lately at least SOME lists have been produced (see the Ali Straniere in Italia books) there might still be some surprises yet to come from Italy. I at least I truly hope so, since Italian aviation certainly belongs to the great nations.

Cheers
Stig