History of the Ghedi Aerodrome

The beginning of the flying activity in Ghedi was in 1909 when in the moor on the border with Montichiari was organized an airshow of international importance which saw the participation of airmen such as Wright, Calderara, Cobianchi, Cagno, Rougier, Curtiss, Moucher, Lebland, Anzani and Blériot, who won the "Brescia Grand Prize" flying 50 Km. in 49.24" with a biplane aircraft, while Curtiss won the height race reaching 92 metres. Among the spectators were numbered the Princess Letizia Savoy Bonaparte, Franz Kafka, who acted as foreign correspondent for a newspaper, and Gabriele d'Annunzio, who flew as passenger on Wright's airplane and that would later make of aviation one of his greatest passions (very famous remained his "Flight over Vienna").
At the outbreak of the Great War, the Ghedi aerodrome became an important air defence base against the Austrian planes which, taking off from their bases in Trentino, repeatedly attacked Brescia and the nearby centres (it first happened on 25^th August 1915 when an Austrian plane dropped four bombs on the Tempini factory in Brescia killing four workers). Together with the Ganfardine (Verona) airport, it was also used as launching pad for the SVA and Pomilio aircraft that had to penetrate deeply into enemy skies and recognise the main enemy facilities (trenches, airports, marshalling yards). In particular, on 21^st May 1918, two SVA flown by Lt. Francesco Ferrarin and Lt. Antonio Locatelli (87^ Squadriglia) made a 780-kms-long raid flying over the Alps, the Lake of Constance, the Rhine Valley, Bregenz, and Lindau as far as Friedrichshafen, important aeronautical facility, for a reconnaissance mission over the Zeppelin plants.
After the fairly calm postwar period (in spite of the deployment of the Italian Armed Forces in Ethiopia and Spain) came the Second World War, when Ghedi was seat of the 2^nd Grade Bombers' Flight School, equipped with BR.20 and CANT Z.1007 aircraft, till when, due to the invasion of the Italian territory by Allied forces, it got once again to host fighter squadrons tasked with the defence of the skies over the Po Valley with the markings of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana (ANR, formed after the Armistice with the purpose of carry on the fight on Germans' side).


And it was with the ANR that the Ghedi airfield knew moments of frantic activity. In fact, not long after the Armistice several fighter squadrons (or "Squadriglie") that in the beginning were equipped with Fiat G.55 airplanes recovered from various airports in German hands or produced ex-novo (later sided by Macchi C.205 aircraft). None was formed at Ghedi, but many stationed there in later stages of war.
In the first months of 1944 the airport was subjected to a complete reorganization directed by the Organisation Todt: 65 Kms of concrete strips, lay-bys, shelters, workshops and bunkers were built. The two strips of Ghedi and Montichiari, each 1950 metres long and 60 wide, were linked by what still today is known as "German link", formed by concrete slabs. Furthermore, both light and heavy Flak were added, to improve the defence of the airfield. In the same period there were some rumours about the use of German jet fighters at Ghedi, and a concrete structure in the "Ghedi II" airfield area was pointed out as V-1 launchpad by the Allied secret service. This info reached the Germans themselves who ordered a flyover of one of their aircraft to verify what could be relieved to allow such hypoteses...it was discovered that it was an optical effect, that was left unchanged to create further confusion (as mentioned in the Headquarters diary conserved at the Bundesarchiv in Freiburg). Instead, the use of Me 262 jets in the base is purely legendary.
At the same time some Luftwaffe units reached Ghedi, such as the 1^st Staffel (Squadron) of Stabgruppe I, equipped with Junkers 88, or the Nachtschlachtgruppe 9 (9^th Night Fighting Group) equipped with Junker 87D.
The transfer, in summer 1944, of the ANR Fighter Command to Custoza (Verona), and the end of the Allied summer offensive, compelled the Command of the 2^nd German Luftflotte to move to Ghedi two German Bf109 squadrons, that remained from June to September, being later withdrawn because of the urgent necessity to defend their homeland.
And so, the Italian pilots were left alone to face the enemy raids, fighting on equal terms but in overwhelming numerical inferiority (1 to 10 in the best of cases) against Allied Air Forces.
In June '44, because of the wearing out of Italian aircraft and heavy damage suffered by Italian factories, the Squadriglie got some fifty German made Messerschmitt Bf109G fighters, while the G55s were transferred to the 1^st Fighter Group, at the time based at Reggio Emilia. On July the 2^nd, the 2^nd Group flew to its new seat, Villafranca airfield.
Their baptism of fire had taken place some days earlier, on June the 24^th, when they clashed over the Ligurian mainland with French P47s of the Groupe de Chasse II/5 "LAFAYETTE". The Italian pilots claimed two P47, but actually the French had no casualties. On 26^th July 1944 eleven Bf109 of 2° Gruppo fought against 12 P47s of 86^th FS, 79^th FG USAAF. Despite the many claims from both sides (three from Italians, even six from Americans!), only one aircraft was actually shot down, the Bf109 of F/Sgt. Rolando Ancillotti, who baled out safely.
The Group Command (composed by 80 pilots and 522 amongst officers and NCOs) chose as seat Villa Portalupi at Valeggio on the river Mincio (Verona). The renumbering of 2° Gruppo Squadrons took place in February 1945, when 1° Gruppo came back from Germany where it had been trained and re-equipped with Bf109s: the 1^st became 4^th; the 2^nd became the 5^th of the "Diavoli Rossi" (Red Devils) and the 3rd became 6^th "Gamba di Ferro" (Iron Leg). These were dispatched to Villafranca (5^th and 6^th) and to Ghedi (4^th).
In the beginning, the Group Commander was Ten. Col. Aldo Alessandrini, substituted in Jan. '45 by Maj. Carlo Miani. The Commander of the 5^th Squadriglia was Cap. Mario Bellagambi, ace with 12 kills, the last one being a Spitfire shot down over Isola della Scala (Verona) near the end of the war. Another great Italian ace was Luigi Gorrini who claimed four kills with the ANR and ended the war with 22 kills. He is the only living recipient of the Italian Golden Medal.
From Villafranca and Ghedi the Italian fighters took off every day (and often more than once every day) to face the hordes of enemy planes, later landing and disppearing under the shelters, protected and camouflaged under trees. Fuel was supplied by tankers which got to the airport at night with screened lights di notte, to allow the fighters to fly the next day. Certainly the importance of the airfield did not escape the Allies, who attacked it more than thirty times. Damage was anyway limited thanks to some tricks, some almost ridiculous, but very successful. The airplanes were parked under the trees in the decentralization zone, and camouflaged with mimetic nets or branches, or put in corners of previously bombed shelters, remaining repaired from new attacks. Near the strips and the links were put dummies made of cardboard and wood. Groups of airmen hid in nearby bunkers and when the dummies were hit, they set on fire cans filled with rags and fuel to simulate the destruction of the target.
The ANR Fighter Command was at Villa Portalupi, near Valeggio over Mincio, the "brain" of the air defence was at Villa Pignatti, Custoza. The system was constituted by a sighting net equipped with radars and aerophones, various Flak batteries and fighter units, among which the aforementioned ones.
The "electronic eyes" of the Italian pilots were the "Freya and Würzburg" radars, the former ones with a range of 130 Kms and the latter 50 Kms, all linked with the anti-aircraft artillery commands. Their use was equivalent to the adoption of a "scientific nature" of organization at that time usual in Germany but completely unknown to Italian pilots, that still relied on "free hunt" made of long and tiring flights where even the use of the onboard radio was a rare eventuality. Even a special code for common terminology was adopted: the enemy fighters were called "swallows", the bombers "eagles". "Pimpernel" was the codename of 5^th Squadriglia and "Petunia", followed by the numbers, the one of the "Red Devils".
In spite of the disproportion of forces, the ANR units soon gave serious worries to the Allies. The withdraw of the Luftwaffe from Italy brought the Allies to think that the Italian pilots were no more able to oppose resistance. In a reassuring USAAF official despatch, was underlined the impossibility for the enemy to replace lost planes; the insufficience of equipment and supplies excluded any further offensive action against Allied bombing formations in their activity over the whole Po Valley.
After the re-equipment of 2^nd October, towards the half of the months there were the first dogfights, described by the Allied information services as carried out by small formations, insulated and not excessively aggressive. But already during the following month the despatches changed tone, describing Italian interception forces as huge and fierce formations composed by 15-20 airplanes, and in spite of sound security measures, the Allied losses showed no sign of diminishing. The Italian pilots answered with 114 confirmed kills against 42 losses. At the end of the war, the Ghedi airfield was in very bad conditions, because of enemy air attacks and of the withdrawing Germans that exploded some mines, 10 8-metres-wide craters and other 25 previously filled were numbered. On 29^th April 1945 the base was occupied by the V US Army, and was reactivated only in 1951, when it became a seat of 6^th Stormo, first equipped with P51 Mustang 'planes and later with the new British "Vampire" jet fighters, that served till 1952.



























From 1950 to '60 the airport hosted F84s of both the F and G versions, later substituted by F104 (the famous "flying coffins"). In 1982 came the Tornadoes that also were the only planes to be deployed at war since the end of WWII. In fact eight of them left from Ghedi bound for the Persian Gulf to take part to "Desert Storm". During their first mission, seven were obliged to fly back to their base for lack of fuel, and the aircraft flown by Capt. Maurizio Cocciolone and Maj. Gianmarco Bellini was shot down. Cocciolone was captured and tortured: the image of his bruised face was broadcast by the Iraqi TV and was seen all over the world. Bellini was posted as missing and was tracked down only after the war. He continued to serve in the Air Force and took over the base in place of Col. Nordio from the second half of September 2001. By the way, on 9^th September 1995 two Tornadoes left from Ghedi to hit Serbian artillery emplacements that were bombing Sarajevo. One was flown by W.Co. Mario Bellini (with Navigator Maj. Stefano Micheli, Gulf War veteran), the other was flown by Lt. Alessandro Soldati with Cap. Alessio Rossi (Gulf War veteran) as Navigator. I have no info about NATO units based at Ghedi during the Serbian 1999 campaign. The same is for the presence of nukes in the base that seems certain, as said by the Corriere della Sera in the issue of 27^th May 2002 and echoed by the journalist Sandro Curzi in an interview at the RAI 3 news on the late evening of 28^th May 2002. The high officers of the base tend anyway to reassure the civilians given that the bombs are under strict surveillance.
Click here to download the article of the Corriere.























Sources For the Pre-WWI period: Ugo Vaglia, Illustrious Brescian Memories Brescia 1958, Baronio and Resola Library ed. For WWI: A. Fappani, The war at the home door - Brescia and the Brescians in the First World War Brescia 1969; D'Annunzio poet airman published by the Foundation "Il Vittoriale degli Italiani", Gardone Riviera
For WWII: Flavio Mucia, The flight of the Stukas in the sky above Ghedi, article published by the Giornale di Brescia on 25^th May 2000; Flavio Mucia, "Ghosts" in the sky against Allied planes, published by the Giornale di Brescia the day after. Additions and corrections kindly pointed out by Ferdinando D'Amico

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