The Italian Experience: Pivotal and Underestimated

In 1911–1912, the Italian Army’s fledgling air component, reinforced by a handful of naval aviators and civilian volunteer pilots, pioneered in Libya the applications of airpower in real operations. Flying a single-seat, 50-horsepower Blériot XI monoplane, on October 23, 1911, Capitano Carlo M. Piazza carried out the world’s first operational sortie by a heavier-than-air aircraft, a 61-minute reconnaissance over territory at once unknown, inhospitable, and unfriendly.¹ Piazza flew his Blériot for other notable flights, including the first naval artillery ranging (October 28), the first photoreconnaissance (February 23, 1912), and the first operational night flight (March 4, 1912); his colleague,