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

[Ludovico Slongo]

This book is a real gem.
The work of a lifetime, it represent state of art of the historical research in this field. Much more updated than the previous (and only) work on this subject published by Osprey twenty years ago.
Written in Italian (no more such a big problem in the era of Google Translator, I suppose) it contains at least one photo and nice, self-explicative tables, with the individual claims for each ace, that can be enjoyed also by readers that don't know Italian.
Published by the Italian Air Force and sold at a bargain price because part of the initiatives to celebrate its centenary, this clear, rigorous, well written book is a must have, at least until still available ( I've seen it sold out on Amazon.it at least two times since its launch in June.

Ludovico

[alessandro bray]

One of the best book on aces bio that I ever read.

Another good book on Regia Aeronautica at very low price after La Regia Aeronautica nel Dodecaneso.

Alessandro

[Håkan]

I finally managed to lay my hands on a copy of this fine book after some difficulties (perhaps due to that it had been sold out).

It’s a must for anyone interested in the Regia Aeronautica during the Second World War!
Easily understood even for us non-Italian speaking (even if an English version would have been great)!
Good price as well – to Sweden, postage was the greatest part of the price!

Best regards/Håkan