The Eastern Front Italy

The Italian Theatre
	The War In Italy To those people who did not fight in Italy, it was considered to be a side show to the main event in western Europe (not to mention in Russia and the middle east). It was hardly that. While the aerial fighting was not as intense or on as large a scale as it was over the Western Front, it was equally as deadly. The flights of aircraft used by each side were smaller, primarily because they had fewer aircraft with which to operate. The opponents of the British combat pilots were primarily from Austria-Hungary, who, while very proffient at their trade, were equipped with inferior aircraft to the Germans on the Western Front. Both sides in Italy developed outstanding aces, Barker and Baracca for the British and Italians and Brumowski, Linke-Crawford and Kiss for the Austro-Hungarians.
The British aircraft in Italy were arranged into one Corps Squadron of Airco RE8s doing photo-reconnaissance, bombing, artillery spotting and a multitude of other duties. The three Scout Squadrons (28th, 45th, and 66th) were to provide escorts for the RE8s, to intercept enemy aircraft from entering Allied lines, to shoot down observation balloons, and to carry out offensive patrols behind enemy lines. These were accomplished with good effect by the Camels, as they almost always flew with four 20 pound Cooper bombs under their lower wings, and their twin Vickers machine guns. They were to attack any worthwhile military target: bridges, troops, trucks, guns, trenches, ammo dumps, buildings, etc. in order to make life miserable for the Austro-Hungarians.
Italy was a far cry from the squalid desolation of France. In Italy, the trenches made hardly a mark on the landscape, and had not been in existance long enough to look like the cratered face of the moon. Their new landing field was backed by snow capped Alps, located above the Piave River. The major discomfort was that they had to live in tents. To the north lay a long range of snow-capped mountains, in front of them was the beautiful, bucolic Venetian Plain and 40 miles to the SE lay the Gulf of Venice. More than one British pilot met an untimely end while gazing at the beautiful scenery instead of keeping an eye out for Austrian aircraft. One British pilot wrote: "Flying in Italy was a holiday by comparison with that in France. It was a different type of warfare entirely. It was more of a gentleman's war. The scout pilots we encountered in Italy didn't seem to have the same viciousness that we met up with on the Western Front where it was a blood for blood affair. They were not so aggressive in Italy."
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