Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana

National emblem of the ANR
(on the wings from October 1943)

National emblem of the ANR
(on the sides of the fuselage from October 1943)
Machines directly subordinate to the Luftwaffe in addition to the cross on the wings, also on the cabin and tail unit

National emblem of the Luftwaffe - this appeared in part until 1944 (for the directly subordinate bombers and transporters on the Eastern Front until 1945) and most recently on fighter machines

Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana (ANR) , the official German name for the National Republican Air Force , was the name of the Italian air forces which, after Italy's surrender on September 8, 1943, waged war on Hitler's side as part of the armed forces of the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana - RSI) - Germany and the Axis powers continue to the end. This is sometimes also called Aviazione Nazionale Repubblicana or more rarely Aviazione della RSI , among the Allied opponents it was known as the National Republican Air Force (NRAF) . The ANR operated between October 10, 1943 and April 29, 1945 and achieved remarkable success against Allied bomber formations and their escorts.

Political background

Immediately after the unilateral armistice with the Allies ( Armistice of Cassibile ) was announced on September 8, 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III sat down . and in July 1943 by Marshal Pietro Badoglio as the new Prime Minister led government to Brindisi in southern Italy, and placed himself under the protection of the allies . The dictator Benito Mussolini ( Company Eiche ), freed by German soldiers from imprisonment in the Apennines , formed a new fascist state , the Repubblica Sociale Italiana - RSI , in northern Italy , which was occupied by the German Empire . The capital of this fascist republic was in Salò on Lake Garda . Mussolini's new Minister of War, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, was allowed to set up his own armed forces with Hitler's approval . These armed forces consisted of soldiers who, for moral reasons, no longer wanted to obey the orders of Pietro Badoglio's legitimate Italian government and who advocated a continuation of the war on the part of the Germans. As part of these new fascist forces, a new air force called Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana was created .

history

After September 8, 1943, Adolf Hitler gave the order to occupy Italy and to disarm his armed forces - unless they clearly committed themselves to the alliance - in order to prevent the country from completely falling away from the Axis . German troops confiscated over 4,500 Italian military aircraft, especially in the north, including 1,600 combat aircraft, of which a little more than 1,000 were brought to Germany or taken directly to the German Air Force. Around 2,500 Italian aircraft and around 10,000 aircraft engines were destroyed by German troops in Italy shortly after the armistice. The staff of the Regia Aeronautica either returned to civilian life or to a small extent continued the fight as part of the Aeronautica Cobelligerante Italiana (also Regia Aeronautica Cobelligerante) on the Allied side. A not inconsiderable part of the Italian air force personnel, however, spontaneously declared themselves ready to continue the fight on the German side, and were then integrated into German units. For example, a fighter group of the German air force was set up, equipped with Macchi MC.205 , which were flown by German and Italian pilots .

The Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana was founded in September 1943, when Lieutenant Colonel Tito Falconi called all Italian pilots willing to fight on Germany's side to Turin- Mirafiori via the RSI radio . Shortly afterwards he was appointed inspector of the Italian fighter pilot forces (Ispettore della caccia italiana) by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring and entrusted with the task of leading the fighter units of the newly established air force to full operational and combat readiness. On September 23, 1943, the day the Italian Social Republic was proclaimed with six daily orders , the Council of Ministers of the RSI met for the first time and appointed Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Botto as Undersecretary of State for the Air Force (Sottosegretario per l'Aeronautica), in which he took office on October 10, 1943 in the newly established Ministry of Aviation .

Compared to the Italian air force units, which fought from southern Italy on the Allied side as Aeronautica Cobelligerante Italiana or Aviazione Cobelligerante del Sud (English abbreviation ICAF or ICBAF), the ANR had the advantage of being able to control a large part of the previous Italian aircraft and had the support of the aircraft manufacturers, mainly located in northern Italy, who had started producing high-performance fighter aircraft of the so-called Series 5 ( Macchi MC.205 , Fiat G.55 , Reggiane Re . 2005 ) in 1943 . As a result, the industry was able to continue to supply spare parts, and so when repairing damaged aircraft was not forced to use up existing material from the depots, as the associations in the south did.

There were now two Italian air forces in Italy after the division of the country, but there were no combat missions against each other, as the Aeronautica Cobelligerante Italiana and the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana had completely different areas of operation and priorities. In addition, the pilots involved on both sides were keen not to get each other involved in fighting, so that, according to contemporary witnesses of the event, unlike the land forces, they would have avoided confrontations on their own in any case. For the allies allied with the ICAF, for whom it was also important to keep the two air forces apart, the ANR (especially the USAAF ) was known as the National Republican Air Force (NRAF) , rarely pejoratively also as the Italian Fascist Republic Air Force .

Model of a Reggiane Re.2005 Saggittario of the ANR with typical markings for fighter planes

The markings of the aircraft of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana differed considerably from those of the Regia Aeronautica before 1943 and from those of the Aeronautica Cobelligerante . These no longer consisted of round cockades , but of square badges with two fasci (lictors' bundles) on the wings and an Italian flag without a Savoy cross in the middle, but with a jagged gold rim on the fuselage, and a smaller one on the tail unit . The machines of the ANR, which were directly subordinate to units of the German Air Force , carried crosses on the fuselage and wings as well as a previously described small Italian flag with a serrated gold rim on the cabin and tail unit.

The ANR was after the return of the incorporated first in the German Air Force personnel a strength of about 34,000 men and decreed in 1943 more than 700 operational aircraft. Of the 1,800 pilots initially available, some flew the new Fiat G.55 , Macchi MC.205 and Reggiane Re. 2005 fighter aircraft , the rest flew support aircraft or were retrained to German models, in particular to the Messerschmitt Bf 109 (at that time in versions G-6 and later also G-10). The Macchi MC.202 , the excellently proven predecessor of the MC.205, was initially used almost exclusively for hunting training after a short period of use, as it could no longer keep up with the newer Allied machines in terms of speed and armament. Most of the ANR bombers and transport planes were assigned to German air force units and mostly flew transport missions on the Eastern Front , but in some cases also bombed attacks. There were also the torpedo pilots who attacked the allied naval units in the Mediterranean with their Savoia Marchetti SM.79 , some times they flew as far as Gibraltar .

The ANR units, which often operated independently from the German Air Force , achieved remarkable successes against Allied bomber formations and their escorts by the end of April 1945. Around mid-1944, due to the constant attacks by the ANR in northern Italy , the Allied bomber groups were forced to stop the approaches to Germany from North Africa (as well as the return flights), so that northern Italy was no longer a hub for Allied bombing attacks in the direction of the German Reich. In response, the USAAF repeatedly attacked the ANR airfields in Friuli, e.g. B. Campoformido near Udine , but without seriously affecting the ANR, as they increasingly hid their hunting machines in the surrounding forest areas, as elsewhere.

On July 25, 1944, the only known use of ANR fighters outside of northern Italy took place when some machines, mainly Bf 109G-6 and G-10, along with some Fiat G.55 and Macchi MC.205, went to Tulln near Linz in Austria were relocated. Here, together with fighters from the German Air Force, they attacked " Boeing B-17 " formations that had been smashed by intense anti-aircraft fire and had chosen their new route into the German Reich over the city. This mission, in which numerous US bombers and escort fighters (including several P-51 Mustangs ) were shot down, ended in mid-January 1945 with the relocation of the ANR aircraft to their home bases.

However, as the war progressed, the losses of aircraft also increased, which did not leave the crews unaffected. Both material and personnel were exposed to heavy loads due to the high level of deployment. Since the Macchi aircraft works were badly damaged in several USAAF air raids in 1944, production here, as with other affected manufacturers, was temporarily canceled, so that more and more new and used Messerschmitt Bf 109s in the G- 10 and G-14 to the ANR, especially since the further developments of the Italian manufacturers such as the Reggiane Re. 2006 Saggittario II , Fiat G.56 Centauro II and Macchi MC.206 were no longer in series production due to the war-related circumstances on site could become.

Towards the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the ANR received its most powerful fighters , a total of 19 of the Messerschmitt Bf 109K-4 , with a top speed of 727 km / h the last and fastest version of the Bf 109. These machines, from the Pilots called Centonove Kappa (One Hundred Nine K) or Kappa Quattro (K Vier) proved to be valuable reinforcements, but were too few to be able to influence the course of the war. The ANR received its last aircraft on April 28, 1945, the day on which Mussolini was shot by partisans . There were five Bf 109K-4s that arrived at Orio al Serio airfield near Bergamo , and during an operation in the early afternoon of the same day - most likely the last aerial combat of the ANR - some B-26 bombers were shot down without loss .

ANR fighters shot down a total of 257 Allied aircraft, the ANR's anti-aircraft defense recorded a further 156 kills, whereby the information in both cases only relates to the numbers of kills that were correctly confirmed in writing. In fact, these are much higher because they are not exactly recorded and kills were combined with the participation of several pilots or anti- aircraft guns. As was the case with the Regia Aeronautica until September 1943, the ANR also placed more emphasis on counting the number of kills by the association than on the number of individual pilots killed.

In addition, the ANR Paratrooper Association Nembo (later renamed Folgore ) fought as infantry alongside German units. The most important deployment of this association was at Anzio / Nettuno ( Operation Shingle or Battle of Anzio-Nettuno), with the paratrooper units newly established by the Italian Social Republic alongside units of the Army of the Social Republic of Italy ( ENR ), the Wehrmacht and weapons -SS worked well, even if it ultimately failed to repel the Allied landings.

Of all the Italian armed forces, the Luftwaffe proved to be the most successful (as it did in the period before 1943). When from April 29, 1945 any further flight operations became impossible due to the advance of the Allies on the ground, the dissolution of the hunting ground control in Lonate Pozzolo not far from the Campo della Promessa airfield, and a lack of fuel, the remaining operational flying units disbanded the pilots and the ground crew in many cases destroyed their aircraft and surrendered.

After the defeat of the Axis Powers in northern Italy, which came into effect in the framework of the Caserta armistice on the night of May 2nd or 3rd, 1945, the Allies dissolved the ANR and all other military units of the fascist republic of Salò. Parts of the material were taken over by Aeronautica Cobelligerante Italiana , which operated under the name Aeronautica Militare Italiana - AMI from June 1946 . The AMI took over z. Partly also former staff of the ANR.