Spanish Nationalist Air Force’s Savoia-Marchetti S.79 bombers in flight over the clouds. Photo taken during the Spanish Civil War. Victor Sierra

Over the clouds

Victor Emmanuel III King of Italy and also, from April 1939, King of the Albanians on Tirana Airfield during a visit to Albanian front on May 1941 shortly after the surrender of Greece and Yugoslavia. The planes are fighter aircrafts Macchi MC.200s of 150th Gruppo. In foreground the aircraft of Gruppo’s commander with the rank’s emblem on the fuselage’s white band and an unusual Gruppo’s number in Roman numeral (usually the Italian Regia Aeronautica’s airplanes had the Squadriglia numeral plus the aircraft’s individual number, black the first, red the second, all in Arabic numeral). Victor Sierra

Royal visit in Albania

An Italian CV 3/33 light tank in Ethiopia. This version was armed with a single machine gun and had a crew of two. The tank shown here has the name 'Adua' on the side, probably as a call for vengeance for the catastrophic Italian defeat by the Ethiopians at Adwa in 1896.