One of the two autogyro Cierva C.8L Mk III built in Great Britain by Avro and purchased in 1929 by the Italian Air Force for practice around the rotary wing. The aircraft is photographed perhaps at Littorio airfield, Rome. After some years of interruption, also following the test of the first Corradino D’Ascanio’s helicopters, the interest for the autogyro was resumed and on 1935 the Regia Aeronautica purchased two Cierva C.30, equally British-made, registered MM320 and MM321 (the latter, construction number 753, former British civil registration G-ACXA). The MM320 was provisionally switched to Italian Navy for test on board the war ship with unsatisfactory results, while the MM321 was employed for a series of tests at Guidonia and Venegono in the years immediately before the outbreak of the war and later re-registered MM30030. On May 1942 was dismissed from the military line and sold to gliding’s pioneer Vittorio Bonomi and registered as civil aircraft, I-CIER. Survived to the war the I-CIER is today exhibited in the Science and Technology Museum at Milan. In any case the Cierva C.30’s story in Italy is few known and controversial because according some sources the C.30 purchased was in reality only one, the MM30030 later I-CIER. Victor Sierra

First practice with the autogyro

An Italian Air Force’s Sottotenente (Pilot Officer/2nd Lieutenant), likely an Aeronautic Academy’s student in a fighter school on the Italian Mainland during the war years. The aircraft, completely camouflaged and with the large white bands over the wings and the fuselage adopted by the Italian school planes, is a Fiat CR.30B, tandem two seats version of the CR.30, the immediately predecessor of the well-known CR.32. The first CR.30B (B for Biposto/Two-seat) was in reality a sport aircraft built, modifying on 1933 the CR.30 NC3 (Construction Number 3), military registration MM166, for the Coppa Bibescu (Bibescu Trophy), a speed contest for Italian and Rumanian militaries crew along the route Rome-Bucharest. With the CR.30B the Capt. Baldi and the Lieut. Buffa won the Bibescu Contest on 26 September 1933: average speed over the 1,140 km of the route 356 km/h. Later when the CR.30 was superseded from 1935 by the CR.32, many of them was transformed in dual control two-seat for the fighter school airplane role. In the same time, on 1934, four CR.30B was built ex-novo from the Regia Aeronautica and delivered on 1945, plus three for Austria and ten for Hungary. The CR.30B was employed until 1943 and the Regia Aeronautica, clearly pleased by this plane, in full war asked Fiat for the construction of an additional number of CR.30B built indeed at Cameri by Fiat-CANSA between 1941 and 1943. Victor Sierra

On an Italian fighter scool

An Italian bomber CRDA Cant-Z-1007bis “Alcione” registered GC-10 at snowcapped Forlì airfield during a schoolchildren’s visit likely in Winter 1931-1942. The letters GC mean Gruppo Complementare (Complementary Group) in this case 10th Gruppo Complementare. The Gruppi Complementari (Complementary Groups) were established inside some operational units for ancillaries activities as training of the flight crew to aircraft of the Squadriglie them assigned, recurrent training of pilots not committed in war operations, in some case also towing target, etc. Often the GC’s number is the same of the Gruppo or Squadriglia inside of them was established. Victor Sierra