RSI ANR Aerial victories

[keith A]

Reading this article

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/0...-repubblicana/

I noticed the claim that ANR pilots shot down 265 enemy aircraft from December 1943 until April 1945.

This source

http://www.igleize.fr/aces/ww2rsi.htm

Seems to indicate a tally of around half that number. Post war research reduces the number a lot more (not unusual for any air force in WW2).

My own reading by the experts in this field would tend towards the latter tally but I am willing to be contradicted.

The article does seem to be a bit of an attempt to make the ANR more potent than evidence would suggest. This is not to decry the Italian pilots who flew in the face of trememdous odds.

best regards

Keith

[Nick Beale]

Claims are not victories; the ANR overclaimed like every other air force and seems to have had a policy (according to my late friend and colleague, Ferdinando D'Amico) of awarding a victory to a pilot who died in combat.

I never compiled a total but when Ferdinando, Gabriele Valentini and I wrote Air War Italy 1944–45 (Airlife, 1996) it became clear that many ANR claims could not be matched with Allied losses, also that the ANR operated in limited strength and on ever fewer occasions as the war progressed. Fuel shortage was an extremely serious problem in Italy from October 1944 onward, for example.