[GroucherMarx]

Thank you for a wonderful site

Could anyone tell me:-

1 ) Operational Pilots the Italian Airforce had at the Outbreak of War in Sept 1939, and by how many more had they grown by June 1940?
2 ) How many operational Aircraft by type The Italian Airforce had at the Outbreak of War in Sept 1939, and how much it had grown by June 1940?

[arturolorioli]

GroucherMarx, on 06 February 2012 - 04:26 PM, said:

Could anyone tell me:-
1 ) Operational Pilots the Italian Airforce had at the Outbreak of War in Sept 1939, and by how many more had they grown by June 1940?
2 ) How many operational Aircraft by type The Italian Airforce had at the Outbreak of War in Sept 1939, and how much it had grown by June 1940?

As nobody else is providing any answer, here is what I can contribute, but I'm afraid it will not be of much use for you.

The Regia Aeronautica had two sources of pilots, namely the NCO pilots courses and the Air Academy (officers) pilots courses.

Unfortunately I do not have clue about the NCO courses.

About the Air Academy, from 1937 the number of students in each course was sharply increased and the courses shortened to three years (instead of the previous four), with one new course entering the Academy each year, as before.

So the relevant courses were :
Course "Rex", started 1936, pilots graduated approx march 1939 and commissioned approx august 1939
Course "Sparviero", started 1937, pilots graduated in 1940 but I do not know the month (probably approx same as above).

The following course ("Turbine") was the first of the even shorter "wartime" course, but it held its "MAC P 100" celebration (100 days to graduation) in december 1940, so it graduated in 1941.

If the infos I have are correct, the 303 pilots of the "Rex" course were already in service in September 1939, and the 266 pilots of the "Sparviero" course were *possibly* not graduated yet on June 1940. If so the number of Air Academy graduated pilots wouldn't have changed between Sept.1939 and June 1940, or in the most favourable cases would have increased by 266.

To that should be added the NCO pilots (*if* they are not not already included in the Air Academy total as "Corsi di Integrazione" or something similar, and I have no clue about that), and in case possibly any "Rex" course "late graduation" pilot (students of good standing that had been unable to attend the final graduation examinations due to injuries or illnes, and were admitted to the graduation examinations the following years - but even if there were any, it's unikely they were more than an handfull).

And from the total should be obviously subtracted any pilot that died or was invalided in training, that retired for medical or age limits, and possibly any "Sparviero" course student that failed to graduate.

I'm sorry to have contributed so little, but that's all I have.

[arturolorioli]

A further minor contributions, still far from being risolutive but ... better than nothing!

On June 1940 the Regia Aeronautica reportedly had :
* 3040 pilots (officers)
* 3300 pilots (NCOs)
* 1830 pilots in training.

The officers-NCOs ratio could give some hint that - possibly! - it was standard practice to have roughly the same number of NCOs and Officers graduating as pilots each years. That should means that at most roughly two or three hundreds NCO *could* had been graduated between Sept.39 and June 1940 (but that's entirely educated guessing!)

About the pilots in training, considering the three courses certainly at the Air Academy in June 1940 (Sparviero, Turbine and Urano) we have a total of 735 offiers in training there, rising to 982 if course "Vulcano" had already started training by june 1940 (and I have some doubt about that). That leaves from 848 to 1095 non-academy pilots in training, with probably a large part of them having started after Sept.39 . Considering that (IIRC!) the non-academy courses were about 12 to 15 monthes long (including the specialization schools), I doubt if any of the post Sept.39 intake would have finished their pilot training by June 1940.

So, resuming, we could *very roughly* extimate from 0 to 266 Academy-trained officers pilots and up to two or three hundred NCOs pilot trained within the time frame you are researching.

I'll continue to look around, and if I find anything of any use will let you know.

[Dili]

I only peeked to the Santoro book and it has some stuff about pilots. You can get it here: http://www.avia-it.c...libri/libri.asp accept the disclaimer and click in "by Avia"

Aeronautica Italiana nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale G.Santoro Volume 1 and 2. Note that each volume is around 170 megs.

[arturolorioli]

Third and last batch of sparse data, And with that I guess I've nothing more to contribute.

By June 1939 the "Sparviero" course had just 206 students left of the original batch of 266. Probably by the time of the 1940 graudation they were even less, so it looks like I over-extimated the number of Academy-trained pilots.

On the other side, it looks like I *hugely* under-extimated the number of non-Academy trained pilots. Including both NCOs and Officers, a remarkable 1535 non-Academy pilots were graduated as military pilots during 1939. So probably about 500 in the Sept-Dec period.

[arturolorioli]

After the sadly incomplete data about the pilots, here is some reasonably complete ones about aircrafts.

MODEL NOV.39 JUN.40
S.81 272 293
Ca.135 25 0
S.79 388 612
BR,20 143 219
CZ.1007 32 87
S.85 27 32
CZ.506 82 96
MC.200 29 156
G.50 19 118
CR.42 143 332
CR.32 378 328
BA.88 78 113
BA-65 161 154
RO.44 31 25
Ca.311 46 145
Ro.37 318 296
Ghibli 70 69
CZ.501 174 202
Hydro 112 105
Ca.111 46 0
Ca.133 183 176
Ca.310 0 71

The 1939 situation is at November 1st, as I have found no data for September. A total of 405 airplanes had been built in Sept.and Oct, (including basic training models, see below)

To the 1939 number listed should be added about 218 operational model assigned to schools.
For "Hydro" are intended all the assorted shipborne models assigned to Royal Navy use.

Basic training and transport models are not included (and they were a lot, over 2000 airplanes for training/liaison!!!)