RSI ANR Aerial victories

[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.