COURAGE ALONE – The Italian Air Force 1940-1943

Derided by Allied propaganda which made it out to be an air force equipped solely with elderly biplanes, ineffective in attack or always in retreat, the Regia Aeronautica was overshadowed by its more ruthless Axis partner, the Luftwaffe. 

Using research from a mass of original documentation, including personal accounts and combat diaries, the author takes an objective view and shows that the men who flew the Macchis, Fiats and Savoias were no less skilled or determined than their opponents, but that they were considerably handicapped by aircraft that were usually under-powered, under-gunned and in desperately short supply. 

Failed by their leadership and at the far end of an inefficient logistics system, for too often all the Italian airmen had that could match their opponents was courage alone. 

Chris Dunning has spent twelve years researching original wartime documents, unit war diaries, personal accounts and so on. 

The result is the most comprehensive and dispassionate history of the Regia Aeronautica to date, containing much new material available nowhere else.