Adriano Visconti

[Flak Magnet]

Hello all,
Not having much luck in finding information on Italian ace Adriano Visconti. Does anyone have a listing of his victories?

Thanks,

Billy

[kaki3152]

I have a book publiahed in Italy which is a biography of Adriano Visconti.
The book title is Adriano Visconti by Giuseppe Pesce(1697). It has a listing of all his victories in the back. Accoding to the book's author, he only scored 10 individual victories instead of the 26 he was reported to have scored.

[veltro]

Originally Posted by kaki3152

Accoding to the book's author, he only scored 10 individual victories instead of the 26 he was reported to have scored.

I can confirm completely the author ('s - the book was co-authored with excellent historian Giovanni Massimello) statements. In general most of the "victories" should always be assumed as "claims" whatever the nation involved. For the Italian ones, this is unfortunately even more true due to various circumstances that it would be too long to detail here.

Furthermore, of the ten victories attributed after a close revision, one more is to be subtracted, as the one claimed by Visconti on 14 March 1945 in a frontal attack against the P-47 of Lt. Eddy of 346th FS, 350th FG (ended with Visconti bailing out wounded of his damaged Bf 109 G-10) cannot be confirmed as Lt. Eddy completed the mission successfully and his unit lost no other plane on that day in the engagement that brought to the downing in combat of three Italian (ANR) Bf 109s of 1° Gruppo.

Concerning the other ANR claims of Visconti, those of which I am aware of are:
3 Jan 44 - P-38 claimed in Turin area (not confirmed by the Germans)
11 mar 44 - P-47 claimed in Padua area (confirmed by the Germans)
25 apr 44 - P-47 claimed in Pl.Qu. TA4 (not confirmed by the Germans)
30 apr 44 - P-38 claimed in Forlì area (confirmed by the Germans)

Hope this helps.

[Flak Magnet]

Thanks......this really helps. I came across between 9-10 claims and then I started coming across figures crediting him with 26, but could not find verification. For a minute I thought he might have had his own personal sidewar going on

Once again thanks to you both!

Billy

[veltro]

Glad to be of help.

However, please don't get me wrong, but do not fall into the misbelief that a not confirmed series of kills had anything to do with the valour and ability of the man, commander and pilot.

This would be simply untrue. Visconti was one of the finest leaders of the Regia Aeronautica and one of the main figures of the ANR. His figure cannot be disminished by a a recount effected fifty or sixty years later.

This would lead us to debate about the systems of claims and confirmations used by the Regia Aeronautica before and by the ANR later, a system which had many faults and that shifted from privileging "collective" claims until late 1942 to enchanching individual ones from then onwards.

The system was far from perfect before and was even more faulty after, due to the convergence of a series of factor from the Italian air combat philosophy to the obsolete training system, from the lack of a true air combat strategy to the inferior conditions of numbers and planes usually employed.

All this said, the fact that Visconti was credited with 26 victories didn't mean a thing to him, maybe a lot more to those who love numbers as a way to classify things. Luckily, this isn't often applicable to men.