Italian Forces

First contact with the Bf 109

An Italian fighter pilot, perhaps the Maresciallo (Warrant Officer), later Lieutenant, Giuseppe Ruzzin, in front to the cockpit of the “11 Schwarz” (Black 11), a Luftwaffe’s Messerchmitt Bf 109E on the Belgian Maldegem airfield, early 1941, during a brief training stage of a little number of Regia Aeronautica’s pilots with this German fighter. The first Italian tests of the Messerschmitt fighter back up to 1939 when, after the end of the Spanish Civil War, four Bf 109E was deployed to Guidonia Test Center for a series of evaluations by the Regia Aeronautica included a comparison with the Italian fighter at this moment in production and service. Obviously the performances of an airplane most modern and advanced of the Fiat biplanes and also of the Fiat G.50 as the Bf 109 excited the Italian pilots despite a critic to maneuverability (effect of the “aerobatics mania” which afflicted for many years the Italian pilots preparation and the airplanes design with fatal result). In the same time the Italians negotiated the license production of the Daimler-Bens DB601 and was suggested the license production in Italy also of the Bf 109 rather than continue the construction of a very mediocre fighter as the Fiat G.50. Naturally the industry’s lobbies, Fiat in primis for once, obstructed the operation (the same happened with the proposition of the German tanks license and when was proposed the abandon of the G.50 in favor to better Macchi 200) which ended nothing came. The second possibility of the Bf 109 in the Italian Air Force’s line turned up at the end of the unlucky participation of the Regia Aeronautica to the Battle of Britain. Some G.50’s pilots of the Squadriglie 352nd and 353nd, still in Belgium after the return in Italy of large part of the Italian Aeronautic Corps, was invited by the Germans to fly the Bf 109E from late 1940 to March 1941. At least two Messerschmitt of the JG54 and JG51 was made available with Luftwaffe’s instructor for the Italian pilots at Maldegem and also, according some sources, at the JG51’s training unit, based at Cazaux, France. The Italian pilots were very impressed by the Bf 109 and asked the Regia Aeronautica Staff to order 100 German fighters when, in turn, the Luftwaffe proposed the establishment of an Italian air unit at Group level equipped with the Messerschmitt. A proposal regularly rejected by the Italian high command (another effect of the industrial lobby?). Result: hundreds of brave Italian pilots was send to engage the modern enemies monoplane aircraft with the biplanes (say nothing of armored forces). Half 1943, when the situation were desperate in front the final Allied attack, the Italian urged the German for delivery of some Bf 109. Too late… Victor Sierra