Regia Aeronautica Aces in WW2

[Gianandrea Bussi]

As part of the celebrations of his 100 th birthday, Aeronautica Militare Italiana (Italian Air Force) is publishing some historical books.

After “A Sud del Tropico del Cancro. Esplorazioni aeroterrestri militari italiane nel deserto libico 1930-39” (aerial and terrestrian military explorations in the Lybian desert 1930-1939) and “La Regia Aeronautica nel Dodecaneso” (Regia Aeronautica in the italian Aegean islands, 1940-43), some weeks ago the Air Force has published “Gli assi italiani della Regia Aeronautica” (italian aces of the R. Aeronautica), by Giovanni Massimello.

This book, 280 pages, contains the biographies of the 126 aces of the Regia Aeronautica and A.N.R. in the World War 2 and each of them is illustrated by one picture of the pilot.

Even though the text is in italian, each biography contains the list of the claims of the pilot, with date, type of the aircraft claimed, aircraft piloted by the ace and location of the claim. In the text a mention of the number of the eventual shared claim is included. The book contains also: the list of the italian aces in the Spanish Civil War, the list of the pilot that were aces when adding claim in the Spanish Civil war and in the WW2 and the list of the pilots who were almost aces in WW2, having claimed 4 aircraft.

The book can be bought at the Aeronautica Militare store on Amazon.

Usual disclaimer….

Gianandrea Bussi