Aeritalia G.222
The Aeritalia G.222 is a medium-sized STOL military transport aircraft. It was developed to meet a NATO specification, but Italy was the only NATO member to adopt the type; the United States purchased a small number of G. 222s. A modernised variant, the Alenia C-27J Spartan, has been developed. While it retains many aspects of the original aircraft, the C-27J adopts the same engines and many of the systems used on the larger Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules. In 1962, NATO issued a specification for a V/STOL transport aircraft, capable of supporting dispersed V/STOL fighters. Fiat's design team, led by Giuseppe Gabrielli, produced a design to meet this requirement, designated G.222. According to Aeritalia, the G.222 designation is derived from the first letter of the aircraft's chief designer. None of the submissions resulted in a production contract; the G.222 was redeveloped from the NATO submission, the V/STOL lift engines having been omitted and the conventional Dart engines replaced by a pair of General Electric T64s.
On 18 July 1970, the first prototype performed the aircraft's maiden flight with test pilot Vittorio Sanseverino at the controls. By late April 1971, the prototype had conducted a total of 22 flights and accumulated 50 hours of flight time, during which its performance was claimed to have been close to predictions. In December 1971, the Italian Air Force, who had placed a provisional order for the developing type, formally began evaluating the G.222 and the performance of the two prototypes in service. Following a successful testing period, the AMI contract for 44 aircraft was issued to Aeritalia. In December 1975, the first production aircraft conducted its first flight. In April 1978, this same aircraft formally entered service with the AMI. Following on from its introduction by the AMI, the G.222 was procured as a tactical transport aircraft by various international customers, including Argentina, Somalia and Thailand. In December 1978, Aeritalia elected to transfer final assembly of the G.222 from Turin to Naples, at which point a total of 44 firm orders had been obtained for the type and one aircraft per month was being manufactured.
Manufacturing of the G.222 was broken down into various companies. In 1977, Libya sought the purchase of 20 G.222s. S. Government, who had imposed an embargo on military arms and equipment to Libya, which included the G.222's T64 engines. To get around this restriction, Aeritalia developed a version of the G.222 powered by the Rolls-Royce Tyne engine and other US supplied equipment was replaced by European equivalents. The provision of alternative powerplants was viewed by Aeritalia as a measure to widen the overall appeal of the G.222. In May 1980, the first G.222 equipped with the Tyne engine performed its maiden flight. Libya placed an order for 20 Tyne-powered aircraft instead, with deliveries commencing from 1980. In order to extend the effective operational lifespan of the type, some operators have carried out extensive upgrade programs of the G.222. In the aftermath of Italian humanitarian missions in Bosnia and Somalia, in 1996 the AMI began undertaking a major update program on their G.222 fleet.
In July 2005, the Nigerian Air Force signed a $74.5 million contract with Alenia Aeronautica for the refurbishment of a total of five G.222s, as well as the purchase of a retired AMI G.222. In 1990, the United States Air Force selected the G.222 as the basis of a "Rapid-Response Intra-Theater Airlifter". Operated under the designation C-27A Spartan, ten G.222s were purchased and underwent avionics upgrades by Chrysler Aerospace. These aircraft were stationed at Panama; the USAF would dispose of their C-27A fleet due to shifting priorities between the Army and the Air Force and because of the impending introduction of a newer variant, the Alenia C-27J Spartan. The G.222 is a twin turboprop-engine tactical military transport aircraft, is designed to be capable of transporting equipment or troops in combat zones and operating with minimal ground support. Early production aircraft were fitted with
Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm
Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm was a German aerospace manufacturer formed as the result of several mergers in the late 1960s. Among its best-known products was the MBB Bo 105 light twin-engine helicopter; the company was bought by DASA in 1989, now part of Airbus. On 6 June 1968, Messerschmitt AG merged with the small civil engineering and civil aviation firm Bölkow, becoming Messerschmitt-Bölkow; the following May, the firm acquired Hamburger Flugzeugbau, which had originated as a branch of Blohm+Voss. The company changed its name to Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm. 51% of MBB was owned by the Blohm family, Willy Messerschmitt and Ludwig Bölkow. 22.07% was owned by the German State of Hamburg, 17.05% by the state of Bavaria, 7.16% by Thyssen AG, 7.16% by Siemens AG, 7.13% by Allianz Versicherungs-AG, 7.13% by Robert Bosch GmbH and 6.15% by Friedrich Krupp GmbH. In 1981, MBB acquired the Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke, which itself had been formed by merging Focke-Wulf, Focke-Achgelis, Weserflug. In the following year, MBB acquired the astronautics company Entwicklungsring Nord and became MBB-ERNO.
In 1989 MBB was taken over by Deutsche Aerospace AG, renamed "Daimler-Benz Aerospace" in 1995. With the 1998 merger of Daimler Benz and Chrysler Corporation, the aerospace division was renamed DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG on 7 November 1998. European defense consolidation led to DASA's being merged with Aerospatiale-Matra of France and Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA of Spain to form the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company in 2000; the former DaimlerChrysler Aerospace now operates as "EADS Germany". MBB-Liftsystems AG, which produces lifting systems for trucks and vans MBB-Sondertechnik, developed wind rotors in the 1980s and 1990s, lifting systems for military use. MBB Gelma GmbH, produces timekeeping units and machine control units MBB Group AG MBB Lampyridae MBB Bo 102 MBB Bo 103 MBB Bo 105 MBB Bo 106 MBB Bo 108 - became the Eurocopter EC 135 MBB Bo 115 MBB Bo 209 MBB/Kawasaki BK 117 MBB 223 Flamingo MBB/Hamburger Flugzeugbau HFB-320 Hansa Jet MBB F-104G/CCV Airbus A300 Airbus A310 Airbus A320 family Eurofighter Typhoon Panavia Tornado Rockwell-MBB X-31 Transall C-160 MPC 75 AS.34 Kormoran Cobra HOT MILAN Roland Helios Symphonie Spacelab Saenger MBTA BTC-3 and CTC-3 Gunston, Bill.
World Encyclopedia of Aircraft Manufacturers, 2nd Edition. Phoenix Mill, England, UK: Sutton Publishing Limited. P. 164. ISBN 0-7509-3981-8. Airbus Group MBB Industries AG MBB Group AG MBB Projects GmbH MBB and Eurocopter history MBB Palfinger GmbH About Daimler-Benz Aerospace MBB KOMET, the first high-speed maglev Airbus Group: Aerospace pioneer Ludwig Bölkow
Italo-Turkish War
The Italo-Turkish or Turco-Italian War was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from September 29, 1911, to October 18, 1912. As a result of this conflict, Italy captured the Ottoman Tripolitania Vilayet, of which the main sub-provinces were Fezzan and Tripoli itself; these territories together formed. During the conflict, Italian forces occupied the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea. Italy had agreed to return the Dodecanese to the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912. However, the vagueness of the text allowed a provisional Italian administration of the islands, Turkey renounced all claims on these islands in Article 15 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Although minor, the war was a significant precursor of the First World War as it sparked nationalism in the Balkan states. Seeing how the Italians had defeated the weakened Ottomans, the members of the Balkan League attacked the Ottoman Empire starting the First Balkan War before the war with Italy had ended; the Italo-Turkish War saw numerous technological changes, notably the airplane.
On October 23, 1911, an Italian pilot, Captain Carlo Piazza, flew over Turkish lines on the world's first aerial reconnaissance mission, on November 1, the first aerial bomb was dropped by Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti, on Turkish troops in Libya, from an early model of Etrich Taube aircraft. The Turks, lacking anti-aircraft weapons, were the first to shoot down an aeroplane by rifle fire; the claims of Italy over Libya dated back to Turkey's defeat by Russia in the war of 1877–1878 and subsequent discussions after the Congress of Berlin in 1878, in which France and Great Britain had agreed to the occupation of Tunisia and Cyprus both parts of the declining Ottoman Empire. When Italian diplomats hinted about possible opposition by their government, the French replied that Tripoli would have been a counterpart for Italy. Italy made a secret agreement with Great Britain in February 1887 by an exchange of notes, it provided that Italy would support Great Britain and its role in Egypt while the Italians would receive British support in Libya.
In 1902, Italy and France had signed a secret treaty which accorded freedom of intervention in Tripolitania and Morocco. The agreement negotiated by Italian foreign minister Giulio Prinetti and French ambassador Camille Barrère was an endpoint in the historical rivalry between the two nations for control of northern Africa. In 1902, Great Britain promised that "any alteration in the status of Libya would be in conformity with Italian interests." These measures were intended to loosen Italian commitment to the Triple Alliance, thereby weaken Germany, which France and Britain viewed as their main rival on the continent. Following the Anglo-Russian Convention and the establishment of the Triple Entente, Tsar Nicholas II and King Victor Emmanuel III made the 1909 Racconigi Bargain in which Russia acknowledged Italy's interest in Tripoli and Cyrenaica in return for Italian support for Russian control of the Bosphorus. However, the Italian government did little to realize the opportunity and knowledge of Libyan territory and resources remained scarce in the following years.
The removal of diplomatic obstacles coincided with increasing colonial fervor. In 1908, the Italian Colonial Office was upgraded to a Central Directorate of Colonial Affairs. Nationalist Enrico Corradini led the public call for action in Libya, joined by the nationalist newspaper L'Idea Nazionale in 1911, demanded an invasion; the Italian press began a large-scale lobbying campaign in favour of an invasion of Libya at the end of March 1911. It was fancifully depicted as rich in minerals, well-watered, defended by only 4,000 Ottoman troops; the population was described as hostile to the Ottoman Empire and friendly to the Italians: the future invasion was going to be little more than a "military walk", according to them. Italy's government remained committed into 1911 to the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire, a close friend of their German ally. Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti rejected nationalist calls for conflict over Ottoman Albania, seen as a possible colonial project, as late as the summer of 1911.
However, the Agadir Crisis, in which French military action in Morocco in April 1911 would lead to the establishment of a French protectorate, changed the political calculations. At this point, the Italian leadership decided that it could safely accede to public demands for a colonial project; the Triple Entente powers were supportive. British foreign secretary Edward Grey stated to the Italian ambassador on 28 July that they would support Italy and would not support the Turks. Meanwhile, the Russian government urged Italy to act in a "prompt and resolute manner." In contrast to their engagement with the Entente powers, Italy ignored its military allies in the Triple Alliance. Giolitti and foreign minister Antonino Paternò Castello agreed on 14 September to launch a military campaign "before the Austrian and German governments of it." At the time, Germany was attempting to mediate between Rome and Constantinople, while Austrian foreign minister Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal warned Italy that military action in Libya would threaten the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and create a crisis in the Eastern Question, thereby destabilizing the Balkan peninsula and the continent's balance of power.
Italy foresaw this result: Paternò Castello, in a July report to
Republic P-47 Thunderbolt
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was a World War II era fighter aircraft produced by the United States from 1941 through 1945. Its primary armament was eight.50-caliber machine guns and in the fighter-bomber ground-attack role it could carry five-inch rockets or a bomb load of 2,500 pounds. When loaded the P-47 weighed up to eight tons making it one of the heaviest fighters of the war; the P-47 was designed around the powerful Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine, used by two U. S. Navy/U. S. Marine Corps fighters, the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair; the Thunderbolt was effective as a short-to-medium range escort fighter in high-altitude air-to-air combat and ground attack in both the World War II European and Pacific theaters. The P-47 was one of the main United States Army Air Forces fighters of World War II, served with Allied air forces including France and Russia. Mexican and Brazilian squadrons fighting alongside the U. S. flew the P-47. The armored cockpit was roomy and comfortable and the bubble canopy introduced on the P-47D offered good visibility.
A present-day U. S. ground-attack aircraft, the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, takes its name from the P-47. The P-47 Thunderbolt was a design of Georgian immigrant Alexander Kartveli, was to replace the Seversky P-35, developed earlier by Russian immigrant Alexander P. de Seversky. Both had fled from their homeland to escape the Bolsheviks. In 1939, Republic Aviation designed the AP-4 demonstrator powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radial engine with a belly-mounted turbocharger. A small number of Republic P-43 Lancers were built but Republic had been working on an improved P-44 Rocket with a more powerful engine, as well as on the AP-10 fighter design; the latter was a lightweight aircraft powered by the Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled V-12 engine and armed with eight.50 in M2 Browning machine guns. The United States Army Air Corps backed the project and gave it the designation XP-47. In the spring of 1940, Republic and the USAAC concluded that the XP-44 and the XP-47 were inferior to Luftwaffe fighters.
Republic tried to improve the design, proposing the XP-47A but this failed. Kartveli designed a much larger fighter, offered to the USAAC in June 1940; the Air Corps ordered a prototype in September as the XP-47B. The XP-47A, which had little in common with the new design, was abandoned; the XP-47B was of all-metal construction with elliptical wings, with a straight leading edge, swept back. The air-conditioned cockpit was roomy and the pilot's seat was comfortable—"like a lounge chair", as one pilot put it; the canopy doors hinged upward. Main and auxiliary self-sealing fuel tanks were placed under the cockpit, giving a total fuel capacity of 305 U. S. gal. Power came from a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp two-row 18-cylinder radial engine producing 2,000 hp —the same engine that would power the prototype Vought XF4U-1 fighter to just over 400 mph in October 1940—with the Double Wasp on the XP-47B turning a four-bladed Curtiss Electric constant-speed propeller of 146 in in diameter; the loss of the AP-4 prototype to an engine fire ended Kartveli's experiments with tight-fitting cowlings, so the engine was placed in a broad cowling that opened at the front in a "horse collar"-shaped ellipse.
The cowling admitted cooling air for the engine and right oil coolers, the turbosupercharger intercooler system. The engine exhaust gases were routed into a pair of wastegate-equipped pipes that ran along each side of the cockpit to drive the turbosupercharger turbine at the bottom of the fuselage, about halfway between cockpit and tail. At full power, the pipes glowed red at the turbine spun at 21,300 rpm; the complicated turbosupercharger system with its ductwork gave the XP-47B a deep fuselage, the wings had to be mounted in a high position. This was difficult since long-legged main landing gear struts were needed to provide ground clearance for the enormous propeller. To reduce the size and weight of the undercarriage struts and so that wing-mounted machine guns could be fitted, each strut was fitted with a mechanism by which it telescoped out 9 in when extended; the XP-47B was heavy compared with contemporary single-engined fighters, with an empty weight of 9,900 lb, or 65 per cent more than the YP-43.
Kartveli said, "It will be a dinosaur, but it will be a dinosaur with good proportions". The armament was eight.50 caliber "light-barrel" Browning AN/M2 machine guns, four in each wing. The guns were staggered to allow feeding from side-by-side ammunition boxes, each with 350 rounds. All eight guns gave the fighter a combined rate of fire of 100 rounds per second; the XP-47B first flew on 6 May 1941 with Lowry P. Brabham at the controls. Although there were minor problems, such as some cockpit smoke that turned out to be due to an oil drip, the aircraft proved impressive in its early trials, it was lost in an accident on 8 August 1942 but before that mishap, the prototype had achieved a level speed of 412 mph at 25,800 ft altitude and had demonstrated a climb from sea level to 15,000 ft in five minutes. The XP-47B gave the newly reorganized United States Army Air Forces cause for both optimism and apprehension. While possessing good performance and firepower, the XP-47B had its share of teething problems: Its sheer size and limited ground-propeller clearance in a fuselage-level attitude made for challenging takeoffs which required long runways—the pilot had to hold the tail low until considerable speed was attained on the initial run.
The sideways-opening can
Kingdom of Italy
The Kingdom of Italy was a state which existed from 1861—when King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy—until 1946—when civil discontent led a constitutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and form the modern Italian Republic. The state was founded as a result of the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which can be considered its legal predecessor state. Italy declared war on Austria in alliance with Prussia in 1866 and received the region of Veneto following their victory. Italian troops entered Rome in 1870, thereby ending more than one thousand years of Papal temporal power. Italy entered into a Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1882, following strong disagreements with France about the respective colonial expansions; however if relations with Berlin became friendly, the alliance with Vienna remained purely formal as the Italians were keen to acquire Trentino and Trieste, corners of Austria-Hungary populated by Italians.
So in 1915, Italy accepted the British invitation to join the Allied Powers, as the western powers promised territorial compensation for participation, more generous than Vienna's offer in exchange for Italian neutrality. Victory in the war gave Italy a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations. "Fascist Italy" is the era of National Fascist Party government from 1922 to 1943 with Benito Mussolini as head of government. The fascists imposed totalitarian rule and crushed the political and intellectual opposition, while promoting economic modernization, traditional social values and a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church. According to Payne, " Fascist government passed through several distinct phases"; the first phase was nominally a continuation of the parliamentary system, albeit with a "legally-organized executive dictatorship". Came the second phase, "the construction of the Fascist dictatorship proper, from 1925 to 1929"; the third phase, with less activism, was 1929 to 1934.
The fourth phase, 1935–1940, was characterized by an aggressive foreign policy: war against Ethiopia, launched from Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, which resulted in its annexation. The war itself was the fifth phase with its disasters and defeats, while the rump Salò Government under German control was the final stage. Italy was an important member of the Axis powers in World War II, battling on several fronts with initial success. However, after the German-Italian defeat in Africa and Soviet Union and the subsequent Allied landings in Sicily, King Victor Emmanuel III placed Mussolini under arrest, the Fascist Party in areas controlled by the Allied invaders was shut down; the new government signed an armistice on September 1943. German forces occupied northern Italy with Fascists' help, setting up the Italian Social Republic, a collaborationist puppet state still led by Mussolini and his Fascist loyalists; as conseguence, the country descended into civil war, with the Italian Co-belligerent Army and the resistance movement contended the Social Republic's forces and its German allies.
Shortly after the war and the liberation of the country, civil discontent led to the constitutional referendum of 1946 on whether Italy would remain a monarchy or become a republic. Italians decided to abandon the monarchy and form the Italian Republic, the present-day Italian state; the Kingdom of Italy claimed all of the territory which covers present-day Italy and more. The development of the Kingdom's territory progressed under Italian re-unification until 1870; the state for a long period of time did not include Trieste or Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, which were annexed in 1919 and remain Italian territories today. The Triple Entente promised to grant to Italy – if the state joined the Allies in World War I – several territories including former Austrian Littoral, western parts of former Duchy of Carniola, Northern Dalmazia and notably Zara and most of the Dalmatian islands, according to the secret London Pact of 1915. After the compromise was nullified under pressure of President Woodrow Wilson with the Treaty of Versailles, Italian claims on Northern Dalmazia were voided.
During World War II, the Kingdom gained additional territory: it gained Corsica and Savoia from France after its surrender in 1940, territory in Slovenia and Dalmazia from Yugoslavia after its breakup in 1941 and Monaco in 1942. After World War II, the borders of present-day Italy were founded and the Kingdom abandoned its land claims; the Italian Empire gained territory until the end of World War II through colonies, military occupations and puppet states. These included Eritrea, Italian Somaliland, Ethiopia, British Somaliland, Tunisia, Kosovo, Montenegro and a 46-hectare concession from China in Tianjin; the Kingdom of Italy was theoretically a constitutional monarchy. Executive power belonged to the monarch; the legislative branch was a bicameral Parliament comprising an appointive Senate and an elective Chamber of Deputies. The kingdom's constitution was the Statuto Albertino, the former governing document of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In theory, ministers were responsible to the king. However, by this time it was impossible for a king to appoint a government of his ow
Italian Armed Forces
The Italian Armed Forces encompass the Italian Army, the Italian Navy and the Italian Air Force. A fourth branch of the armed forces, known as the Carabinieri, take on the role as the nation's military police and are involved in missions and operations abroad as a combat force. Despite not being a branch of the armed forces, the Guardia di Finanza is part of the military and operates a large fleet of ships and helicopters, enabling it to patrol Italy's waters and to participate in warfare scenarios; these five forces have military status and are all organized along military lines, comprising a total of 350,000 men and women with the official status of active military personnel. The President of the Italian Republic heads the armed forces as the President of the High Council of Defence established by article 87 of the Constitution of Italy. According to article 78, the Parliament has the authority to declare a state of war and vest the necessary powers in the Government; the Italian Armed Forces are in eighth place as best armed forces.
The office of the Chief of Defence is organised as follows: The ground force of Italy, the Regio Esercito dates back to the unification of Italy in the 1850s and 1860s. It fought in colonial engagements in China during the Boxer Rebellion, against the Ottoman Empire in Libya, on the Alps against the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I, in Abyssinia during the Interwar period, in World War II in Albania, North Africa and Russia, as well as in the Italian Civil War. During the Cold War the Army prepared itself to defend against a Warsaw Pact invasion from the east. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it has seen extensive peacekeeping service in Lebanon and Iraq. On 29 July 2004 it became a professional all-volunteer force when conscription was ended; the navy of Italy was created in 1861, following the proclamation of the formation of the Kingdom of Italy, as the Regia Marina. The new navy's baptism of fire came during the Third Italian War of Independence against the Austrian Empire.
During the First World War, it spent its major efforts in the Adriatic Sea, fighting the Austro-Hungarian Navy. In the Second World War, it engaged the Royal Navy in a two-and-a-half-year struggle for the control of the Mediterranean Sea. After the war, the new Marina Militare, being a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, has taken part in many coalition peacekeeping operations, it is a blue-water navy. The Guardia Costiera is a component of the navy; the air force of Italy was founded as an independent service arm on 28 March 1923, by King Vittorio Emanuele III as the Regia Aeronautica. During the 1930s, it was involved in its first military operations in Ethiopia in 1935, in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. Italy entered World War II alongside Germany. After the armistice of 8 September 1943, Italy was divided into two sides, the same fate befell the Regia Aeronautica; the Air Force was split into the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force in the south aligned with the Allies, the pro-Axis Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana in the north until the end of the war.
When Italy was made a republic by referendum, the air force was given its current name Aeronautica Militare. The Arma dei Carabinieri is the military police of Italy; the corps was instituted in 1814 by King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy with the aim of providing the Kingdom of Sardinia with a police corps. The new force was divided into divisions on the scale of one division for each province of Italy; the divisions were further divided into companies and subdivided into lieutenancies, which commanded and coordinated the local police stations and were distributed throughout the national territory in direct contact with the public. The Italian unification saw the number of divisions increased, in 1861 the Carabinieri were appointed the "First Force" of the new national military organization. In recent years Carabinieri units have been dispatched on peacekeeping missions, including Kosovo and Iraq. At the Sea Islands Conference of the G8 in 2004, the Carabinieri were given the mandate to establish a Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units to spearhead the development of training and doctrinal standards for civilian police units attached to international peacekeeping missions.
Italy has joined in many UN, NATO and EU operations as well as with assistance to Russia and the other CIS nations, Middle East peace process and combating the illegal drug trade, human trafficking and terrorism. Italy did take part in the 1982 Multinational Force in Lebanon along with US, French and British troops. Italy participated in the 1990–91 Gulf War, with the deployment of eight Panavia Tornado IDS bomber jets; as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Italy contributed to the international operation in Afghanistan. Italian forces have contributed to ISAF, the NATO force in Afghanistan, to the Provincial reconstruction team. Italy has sent 3,800 troops, including one infantry company from the 2nd Alpini Regiment tasked to protect the ISAF HQ, one engineer company, one NBC platoon, one logistic unit, as well as liaison and staff elements integrated into the operation chain of command. Italian forces command a multinational engineer task force and have deployed a platoon of Carabinieri military police.
The Italian Army did not take part in combat operations of the 2003 Iraq War, dispatching troops only when major combat operations were declared over by the U. S. President George W. Bus
Frecce Tricolori
The Frecce Tricolori known as the 313° Gruppo Addestramento Acrobatico, is the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Aeronautica Militare, based at Rivolto Air Force Base, province of Udine, in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. They were formed in 1961 as an Air Force team, replacing unofficial teams, sponsored by various commands by the end of the 1920s; the team flies the Aermacchi MB-339-A/PAN, a two-seat fighter-trainer craft capable of 898 km/h at sea level. With ten aircraft, nine in training and a soloist, they are the world's largest acrobatics patrol, their flight schedule, comprising about twenty acrobatics and about half an hour, made them famous; the team's official name is: 313° Gruppo Addestramento Acrobatico, Pattuglia Acrobatica Nazionale Frecce Tricolori. The Frecce Tricolori were not the first AMI aerobatics team: military aerobatics as a group began in Campoformido, home of the 1st Wing, in the late 1920s under the supervision of Col. Rino Corso Fougier, a pioneer in aerobatic group flying.
Subsequently, except in the Second World War period, many fighter wings had demonstration teams such as Cavallino Rampante, Getti Tonanti, Diavoli Rossi, Tigri Bianche and Lanceri Neri. In 1961 the Air Force General Staff decided to form a single aerobatic team, the Pattuglia Acrobatica Nazionale. In 2000 they reached 50,000 flying hours on the Aermacchi MB-339. In 2005 they won the award for best exhibition at the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford, England, they were the first non-Russian unit to receive the Russian Silver Medal for Aeronautical Merit. On 8 September 2007 the Frecce Tricolori took part at the funeral of Luciano Pavarotti in Modena and honoured him with a fly-past leaving green-white-red smoke trails. In September 2013 it was announced that the team will stop using MB-339's for the 2018 season and instead will use Aermacchi M-345 HET trainers, which will replace the MB-339 in the Italian air force. On 28 August 1988, in the Ramstein air show disaster, 70 people lost their lives due to the mid-air collision of three Frecce Tricolori jets.
The burning jets crashed. The other two crashed into the rear of the flight line. One reason why there were so many burn victims and deaths was not only did they have the longest performance, they crashed during their first maneuver, "The Piercing of the Heart", their planes were full of fuel. Three of the other aircraft flew through the fire and debris and made emergency landings at a base north of Ramstein. Although damaged, the pilots elected to stay with their aircraft and flew in a "Missing Man" formation as they exited Ramstein air space; the cause of the crash was pilot error on behalf of the soloist. List of aerobatic teams Luigino, Caliaro. "Frecce Tricolori". Pattuglie acrobatiche. Mondovì: Edizioni Gribaudo. ISBN 88-8058-873-7. Official website Aermacchi MB-339 PAN for FlightGear Frecce Tricolori on Airliners.net Air14 Payerne
Italy
Italian Armed Forces
Esercito Italiano (Army) 
Marina Militare (Navy) 
Arma dei Carabinieri (Gendarmerie)
