Italian Forces

From the England to Italian set movies

Stato Maggiore Aeronautica

Some Italian propaganda’s short films of Istituto Luce and photographs show Regia Aeronautica’s fighter intercepting, and obviously, shooting down a British bomber Bristol Blenheim. And a Blenheim is showed also by a night sequence (a RAF airfield on the Balkans) of the “Un pilota ritorna” (A pilot return) of the film director Roberto Rossellini, one of the leader of the post-war great Italian cinema. The aircraft of the propaganda’s movies and of the Rossellini’s film (which in the same movie employed a former Yugoslav Air Force’s Hawker Hurricane) is the same, an authentic Bristol Blenheim IV failed in the Italian hands because a fortuitous event, the land on erroneous airfield, and showed in this picture still with the RAF’s markings and surrounded by Italian Air Force’s servicemen. The location is Pantelleria’s island and the plane is the Blenheim IV N3589: an aircraft built by A.V. Roe, and deployed at RAF Wyton, Cambridgeshire, England, inside the No 40 Squadron RAF, on 7 September 1940 and afterwards moved to Thorney Island with final destination Malta, as for No 40 Squadron Detachment or according other sources a RAF independent recce Flight. The story begin on the first hours of the 13 September 1940, in the dead of night, when the N3589 and its crew, three men, take off from England direct to Malta. On the morning of the same day, about 10.30 p.m. the Italian personnel of the Pantelleria airfield see an airplane, immediately identified as Bristol Blenheim, therefore an enemy aircraft, approaching at low altitude with evident intention of land. The anti-aircraft artillery avoid to open the fire and the Blenheim land successfully, but just after the engines stop is surrounded by the Italians armed guards and captured with its crew. The pilot according its declarations, had short of fuel after the long flight (7 hours), because also a led failure, and were sure of overfly Malta. The misunderstanding is easily understandable: the pilot, likely not very experienced as proved by a probable series of navigation’s errors, after 7 hours of flight conduct largely by night and in air spaces bordering hostiles zones (the Blenheim was an only one pilot plane), clearly tired and stressed out, worried by the shortage of the remaining fuel, had lost that which in modern aviation is named “situational awareness” and had easily mistaken Pantelleria for Malta, a destination for his likely not usual. The Blenheim’s failed arrival at Malta made to spring the warning in the Island and the same day a Fairey Swordfish took off for search of the aircraft at this moment thought missed in the sea, but obviously without results except a fortuitous encounter with an Italian seaplane also this without follow-up. The Blenheim’s crew, P/O G.M. Goodman, pilot, Flt. Lt. K. E. Grey and Sgt R.B.W. Shaw, was interned, as POW, into a concentration camp at Sulmona, Abruzzi, and, in September 1943, after the Italy’s armistice, seized by the Germans and moved to a Stalag Luft in Germany. The plane, the first Blenheim captured intact by the Italians received the Italian markings and on 16 September 1940 was moved to Guidonia’s Flight Test Center by the Tenente Colonnello (Wing Commander) Enrico Cigerza specially sent from Guidonia. Here the plane was tested by some Regia Aeronautica’s pilots which judged well the British bomber. Still at Guidonia the now Italian Blenheim was object of an important inspection, that of the King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III in visit to Flight Test Center on 4 October 1940. Ended the tests, the Blenheim N3589 knew a new and unusual carrier: that of movie’s actor. Victor Sierra