Natale Palli

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Natale Palli

Natale Palli (born July 24, 1895 in Casale Monferrato , Italy , † March 23, 1919 in Sainte-Foy , France ) was an Italian pilot in the First World War . During the flight over Vienna on August 9, 1918, he piloted the aircraft with Gabriele D'Annunzio as an assessor.

Life

Natale Palli came from a wealthy entrepreneurial family from Casale Monferatto. He first attended the technical high school in his hometown and in 1912 went to the polytechnic in Milan .

In 1914 he signed up as a one-year volunteer . Before the Italian entry into the war , he finished his military service with the rank of non-commissioned officer, but was drafted into the 37th Infantry Regiment on May 24, 1915 immediately after the start of the war. After receiving the draft order, he asked to be trained as a pilot immediately. The following basic training he successfully completed with the promotion to lieutenant on the airfield Mirafiori near Turin . He then got his license on a gabardini monoplane on October 15, 1915 at the Cameri military airfield near Novara .

In October he was sent to the Isonzo to the 3rd Army displaced, where he served as Forward Observer his first sorties among other G-III Caudron flew. In July 1916 he was transferred to the 4th Army near Belluno on the Dolomite front.

In the following years he undertook longer and longer flights and reconnaissance missions with the 84ª Squadriglia, which in the course of the war also included Aldo Finzi , Piero Massoni, Vincenzo Contratti and Giuseppe Sarti , who later took part in the flight over Vienna with Palli in the 87ª Squadriglia “Serenissima” . Thanks to his technical skills, he contributed to the elimination of some deficiencies in his machine, meanwhile he has flown a Caudron G.IV , which earned him an official commendation.

In mid-August 1917, he left his unit to familiarize himself with the Nieuport 11 fighter pilot in Malpensa . By then, Palli, who had meanwhile been awarded a bronze and silver medal for bravery , had made over 60 enemy flights. A month later he switched to Ansaldo SVA , which he was enthusiastic about. After the successful flight test on the type, he turned down an offer as a flight instructor and preferred the service at the front. As a result, he and Bartolomeo Arrigoni formed the 1st SVA section, which was connected to the 75ª Squadriglia.

Natale Palli and Gabriele D'Annunzio

As a result of the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo , Palli was first transferred to Verona and then to Sovizzo in the province of Vicenza . In the period that followed , Palli , who had meanwhile been promoted to captain , drew attention to himself through several successful missions. So he led a squadron of four aircraft on 20 February 1918 after Innsbruck and bombed there in the low-altitude flight the main station of Innsbruck , for which he was awarded another Bronze medal for bravery. Palli was at that time one of the experts in strategic reconnaissance and was subordinated to the Regia Marina , for which he undertook several long-range reconnaissance flights on the eastern Adriatic coast . During one of these flights his aircraft was badly damaged by the Austro-Hungarian air defense over Pola at the end of May 1918 . With skill, Palli managed to land his SVA behind his own lines.

On August 9, 1918, he conducted a squadron of seven aircraft from San Pelagio near Padua to Vienna , meanwhile he had been transferred to the 87ª Squadriglia . He used a two-seater SVA 10 specially converted for the flight, in which Gabriele D'Annunzio was seated as an assessor. For the flight over Vienna he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Savoy . At the end of August 1918 he flew the new Ansaldo A.1 Balilla fighter pilot as a test pilot before taking command of the 87ª Squadriglia at the beginning of September. On September 22, 1918, Palli undertook a second mission with D'Annunzio, who referred to Palli as his little older brother, when both flew over the battlefields of the Marne on the western front , where the II. Italian Corps was in position.

Shortly before the end of the war on October 29, 1918, his younger brother Silvio Palli, also a pilot, never returned from a mission. Another brother, Italo Palli, was shot down over Libya during World War II . After the war, Natale Palli wanted to resume his interrupted engineering studies . He never got to that because he was killed on March 20, 1919 in a competition with the French pilot Jules Vèdrines while trying to reach Paris in a non-stop flight . In bad weather over the Savoy Alps , he had to make an emergency landing with his SVA on the glacier of Mont Pourri . The later investigation showed that although he managed to survive the crash landing largely unharmed and to get out of the wreck, he died of exhaustion and cold just 200 meters from a shelter near Sainte-Foy, where he died on March 22nd Was found in 1919.

The SVA 10 controlled by Palli during the flight to Vienna with D'Annunzio

reception

Palli's death sparked a great response in Italy. D'Annunzio gave the funeral oration at the funeral in Casale Monferatto. The wreck of the SVA was discovered and recovered the following summer after the snow melted at an altitude of 3,100 m. In the 1920s, a memorial plaque by the artist Leonardo Bistolfi was set in the house where he was born, and a memorial stone was erected at the place where he was found.

The stadium in Casale Monferatto, the Stadio Natale Palli , is named after him, and the military airfield in Cameri is named after him and his brother Silvio. In the Vittoriale degli italiani , D'Annunzio's domicile in Gardone Riviera on Lake Garda , the SVA 10 aircraft used to fly over Vienna is on display, while the Ansaldo A.1 Balilla, flown by Palli as a test pilot , is kept in the Gianni Caproni Aviation Museum in Trento .

literature

  • Luigino Caliaro: I raid della 1ª sezione SVA da Sovizzo in: Rivista Aeronautica n.6/2015 ( PDF )
  • Dionigi Roggero: Il ritorno di Natal Palli nella città natale in: Museo dell'Aeronautica Gianni Caproni (ed.): Gabriele D'Annunzio avviatore , Museo dell'aeronautica Gianni Caproni, Trient 2014, ISBN 978-88-96853-03-0 .
  • Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” in: Museo dell'Aeronautica Gianni Caproni (ed.): Gabriele D'Annunzio avviatore , Museo dell'aeronautica Gianni Caproni, Trento 2014, ISBN 978-88-96853-03-0 .

Web links

  • Natale Palli (Italian) on ti.ch/can/oltreconfiniti/dalle-origini-al-1900

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biography Natale Pallis (Italian) accessed on January 23, 2018
  2. ↑ Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” pp. 91–93
  3. ↑ Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” p. 93
  4. ↑ Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” pp. 94–95
  5. ↑ Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” p. 97
  6. ↑ Luigino Caliaro: I raid della sezione 1ª SVA since Sovizzo p.98
  7. ↑ Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” pp. 98-101
  8. ↑ Luigino Caliaro: I raid della 1ª sezione SVA da Sovizzo pp. 102-103
  9. ↑ Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” pp. 101-104
  10. ↑ Paolo Varriale: Natale Palli “Il piccolo grande fratello” pp. 105-106
  11. ^ The Palli family and the Liceo Palli (Italian) accessed on January 23, 2018
  12. ^ Dionigi Roggero: Il ritorno di Natal Palli nella città natale pp. 109–111
personal data
SURNAME Palli, Natale
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian aviator in World War I
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Casale Monferrato
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1919
Place of death Sainte-Foy , France