Spanish Civil War--Fiat CR.32

Italian aircraft found their way into the Spanish Civil War, including Fiat CR.32s. Their pedigree dated to 1923, with the introduction of the CR (Caccia Rosatelli), first of a line of fighters designed by Celestino Rosatelli, featuring two wings of unequal span, braced by a girder-like set of Warren truss struts. The CR.20 of 1926 introduced an all-metal airframe, and the CR.30, introduced in 1932, featured a 600-horsepower Fiat A.30 liquid-cooled engine, streamlined spats for the main and tail wheels, and an armament of either two 7.7 or two 12.7mm Breda-SAFAT machine guns synchronized to fire above the engine. The CR.32, which first flew on April 28, 1933, was basically a scaled-down, more compact and refined CR.30. Its 592-horsepower Fiat A.30 RA engine gave it a maximum speed of 237 miles per hour at 10,000 feet. Ailerons, balanced by “park-bench” tabs, were installed in the upper wing only, and the rudder and ailerons were statically and dynamically balanced. Stable and yet phenomenally maneuverable as well as extremely sensitive on the controls, the Fiat also had an exceptional diving speed, while its robust wing structure lent confidence to the pilot.

The CR.32 was the most numerically important fighter in the Regia Aeronautica by the time hostilities broke out in Spain. Wasting little time in providing support to Franco’s cause, Mussolini dispatched twelve Savoia-Marchetti S.81 trimotor bombers to Spanish Morocco on July 31—three of which were lost en route—followed by twelve CR.32s, which arrived at Melilla aboard the freighter SS Nereid on the night of August 12. Secretly flown to Tablada, near Seville, the Fiats formed the 1a Escuadrilla de Caza de la Aviación del Tercio (1st Fighter Squadron of the Foreign Legion Air Arm) under Capt. Vincenzo Dequal on August 21.

Initially flown by Italians only, the Fiats—nicknamed Chirris by the Spaniards after the Italian pronunciation of the letters “CR”—were soon asserting themselves over the mixed bag of aircraft then available to the Fuerzas Aéreas de la República Española. Their first victim was an NiH.52 downed near Cordobá on August 21 by Sottotenente Vittor Ugo Ceccherelli. Sergente Giovanbattista Magistrini scored the next victory for the Fiats on August 27, when he shot down an NiH.52 that was escorting CASA-Breguet 19 bombers over Guadix aerodrome, killing its Spanish pilot, Capitán Antonio de Haro López.

The Italians’ first setback occurred on August 31, when three CR.32s encountered two NiH.52s and a Hawker Fury of the Republican Escuadrilla Mixta near Talavera de la Reina, resulting in two Fiats shot down and the third returning damaged. Disabled by the Nieuports flown by Cabos (Corporals) Roberto Alonso Santamaria and Rafael Peña Dugo, Sgt. Bruno Castellani force landed near Villanueva de la Serena and managed to make his way back to Nationalist territory on foot. The other Italian, Tenente (Lieutenant) Ernesto Monico, was less fortunate. Shot down in flames by Sargento (Sergeant) Andrés García Lacalle in the Fury, he bailed out and was captured by Republican militia, who claimed to have shot him as he tried to escape. The Nationalists issued a different report, saying that when Monico asked to see the Italian ambassador in Madrid, the militiamen shot him out of hand.

Meanwhile, more CR.32s were arriving in Spain, and by mid-September a second squadron had been formed, under the command of Capt. Dante Olivera. By then, the pilots of the 1a Escuadrilla were starting to refer to their unit as La Cucaracha (The Cockroach) after the popular song of the time. Three Spanish pilots—Capitán Joaquin García Morato, Capitán Ángel Salas Larrazábal, and Teniente Julio Díaz-Benjumea—had joined the unit at that point. García Morato first flew the CR.32 on September 6.

September 11 saw the Fiats in full stride, claiming two Breguet 19s and five fighters. Two of the Republican aircraft were credited to Magistrini, and García Morato was credited with an NiH.52 over Talavera for his ace-making fifth victory. By the end of the month, García Morato’s score stood at eight, making him the war’s leading ace—a status that he never relinquished. The Nationalists, with the generous assistance of the German and Italian allies, had achieved air superiority, but that situation was about to undergo an unexpected change.

The later careers of the three transitional fighters of the Spanish Civil War give insights into the conclusions drawn by the countries that built them. Having often overcome the performance handicaps of the CR.32s by skill and adaptive tactics, the Italian pilots remained hard to convince that the days of the biplane fighter, let alone that of the lone dogfighter, were on the wane. Consequently the next important Fiat fighter, the CR.42, would be another biplane with fixed landing gear and an open cockpit—even while that same company was producing a more advanced design with retractable landing gear and an enclosed canopy, the G.50.

Fiat CR 32 Chirri

The Chirri was one of the finest biplane fighters ever designed. It proved so good that Italian aviators were reluctant to abandon such craft long after they had become obsolete elsewhere.

In 1932 Italian aircraft designer Celestino Rosatelli unveiled his CR 30, a defining moment in biplane evolution. As a fighter, the CR 30 was breathlessly acrobatic for its day, but Rosatelli was determined to wring out even better performance with continuing refinement. The ensuing CR 32 was a slightly smaller, cleaned-up version of the earlier craft and the most significant Italian fighter plane of the 1930s. Like its predecessor, the CR 32 was a metal-framed, fabric design with a distinctive chintype radiator. The wings were strongly fastened by “W”-shaped Warren interplane struts and trusses throughout. Consequently, the CR 32 could literally be thrown about the sky and was capable of the most violent acrobatics. This rendered it superbly adapted as a dogfighter, a point well taken by Italian pilots. In 1936 CR 32s entered into service and by 1939 a total of 1,212 machines had been built in four versions.

The Chirri, as it became known, was instantly popular with fighter pilots around the world. The Chinese imported several and used them effectively against the Japanese in 1937. Hungary also bought them for its air force, but the most important customer was Spain. CR 32s were flown by both Spanish and Italians during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1938), and they proved formidable adversaries to the Russian-supplied Polikarpov I 15 biplanes and I 16 monoplanes. However, success carried a price. Because of their experience with the Chirri, Italians became so enamored of biplane dogfighters that they continued producing them long after they were obsolete. By the time Italy entered World War II in 1940, the CR 32 and CR 42 biplanes constituted nearly 70 percent of Italian fighter strength. Nevertheless, some CR 32s were successfully employed in East Africa before assuming trainer functions in 1941.

The Fiat G.50

The Fiat G.50 was built in response to specifications issued by the Ministerio dell’ Aeronautica in 1936, calling for a lightly armed interceptor, a long-range escort fighter, and a fighter-bomber. While other manufacturers submitted four designs to address each of those requirements, Fiat’s Giuseppe Gabrielli designed his G.50 to satisfy all three. Built around the new 840-horsepower Fiat A.74 twin-row fourteen-cylinder radial engine, the G.50, which first flew on February 26, 1937, became the first Italian monoplane fighter to enter production, with an initial order for forty-five machines. After the second prototype crashed in September, the G.50’s competitor, the Macchi C.200, was judged the better fighter, but G.50 production continued as insurance against any problems in getting the C.200 into operation.

During a visit to Italy, García Morato test-flew a G.50 at Guidonia in October 1937. He then returned to the Catrulla Azul and his trusy CR.32, in which he brought his tally to forty on January 19, 1939. On April 4, days after the Nationalist victory, Spain’s ace of aces performed aerial stunts for the newsreel cameras at Griñón. While flying inverted at low altitude, his Fiat’s engine suddenly cut out and Morato crashed to his death.

The first G.50s entered Regia Aeronautica service at the end of 1938, and ten were promptly shipped to Spain, where they were formed into a Gruppo Sperimentale de Caccia (Experimental Fighter Group) under the command of Maggiore (Major) Mario Bonzano. The unit was based at Escalona alongside the CR.32s of Bonzano’s old unit, the XXIII Gruppo, and consequently some of the G.50s were marked with that group’s “Asso di Bastoni” (Ace of Spades) emblem. Flying as escort to the CR.32s at an altitude of 8,000 meters, the G.50s saw some service in the last fortnight of the war but encountered no aerial opposition. The principal operational evaluation consisted of pilot complaints about inadequate visibility from the enclosed cockpit, which resulted in the adoption of a traditional open cockpit for all subsequent production batches of the G.50.

Even after World War II broke out, the Regia Aeronautica was remarkably reticent about committing its Fiat G.50s to combat. During the Battle of Britain, for example, the 20o Gruppo’s G.50s only flew discrete patrols over the English Channel, while the 18o Gruppo’s CR.42 biplanes escorted Fiat BR.20 bombers over Britain in November 1940—with predictably disastrous results when they encountered Hurricanes and Spitfires. By that time, however, another country had been less shy about blooding the G.50 in combat.

After the Soviet Union attacked Finland on November 30, 1939, Italy—which unlike Germany had not signed a nonaggression pact with Stalin—shipped some of its G.50s to the beleaguered Finns. The first Fiats were organized into a Koelentue (Test Flight) under Kapteeni (Captain) Erkki Olavi Ehrnrooth, and were soon “tested” in battle. On January 13, 1940, Ehrnrooth, appropriately flying a Fiat bearing the serial number FA-1, shot down an SB-2 bomber over Sisä-Suomi, followed by an Ilyushin DB-3 on January 29.

By February, G.50s were actively serving in a regular squadron, Lentolaivue 26, which added a number of additional Soviet aircraft to the butcher bill before Finland finally capitulated on March 13, 1940. On February 26, a Spanish Civil War match—which had not, up till that time, occurred—was finally achieved when Luutnantti (Lieutenant) Risto Olli Petter Puhakka, in Fiat FA-4, took on an I-16 and shot it down over Etelä-Suomi for his fifth victory (he had scored four earlier in Fokker D. XXIs). On February 29, Vääpeli (Sergeant Major) Lasse Erik Aaltonen, also flying FA-4, downed a DB-3, followed by an I-153 on March 2. Two days before the armistice Puhakka, in FA-21, destroyed a DB-3. The Finnish Fiats would serve on in the Continuation War as well, with considerably more distinction than they achieved in Regia Aeronautica service. Puhakka would score another eleven victories in G.50s before going on to Me 109Gs and finishing out the war as Finland’s sixth-ranking ace with a final tally of forty-two, while Aaltonen’s tally would total at least a dozen.