technology: connecting fascist Italy with South America Space and. Culture 14(3): .... between political legitimation and aviation technology (Caprotti, 2008),. British imperial civil ...... 11 Tyndall Air Force Base (Panama City, Florida, USA) still hosts the yearly. Tyndall Air Show. ..... Institute of British Geographers 32(1), 9-28.
Overcoming distance and space through technology: record aviation linking fascist Italy with South America
Citation: Caprotti F (2011) Overcoming distance and space through technology: connecting fascist Italy with South America Space and Culture 14(3): 330-348.
Note: this is a post-refereeing version of the paper (i.e. exactly as published). SAGE retains copyright of the final PDF version. Please see: http://sac.sagepub.com/content/14/3/330.abstract
Overcoming distance and space through technology: record aviation linking fascist Italy with South America
Abstract
This paper analyzes modern, discursive attempts to overcome distance and space through analyses of discourses focused on record aviation attempts in 1930s fascist Italy. Two particular flights are analyzed, both linking Italy with South America. The first analyzed flight is a 1937 seaplane distance record attempt; the second was a 1939 endeavour to establish regular, scheduled airmail services between Italy and Brazil. The flights are analyzed using institutional importance criteria, based on the preservation of archival documents concerning the record attempts by the ministry of aeronautics. The argument presented here is that the examined flights were of importance to the regime for immediate propaganda purposes, as well as for the use of aviation as a metaphor for Italian fascism. In particular, the paper employs a framework which frames Italian fascism as a modern phenomenon, rooted in the ideological and political utility of the separation between natural and social spheres. Aviation, when identified with fascism, became a technosocial discursive realm juxtaposed to the natural limits and boundaries to be overcome through aeronautical technology. The paper resultantly analyzes the discursive construction and representation of aviation, and nature, in the case of two record flights..
Keywords: aviation; fascism; nature; discourse; Brazil; South America. 2
Overcoming distance and space through technology: record aviation linking fascist Italy with South America
On the highest buildings, electromagnetic radiation will be used to dissipate clouds and mists, or to shape and elegantly colour them (Marinetti, Mazzoni and Somenzi, 1934)
Introduction: aviation and imagination1
The first four decades of the twentieth century saw aviation develop from humble beginnings at Kitty Hawk, to a technology increasingly central to the modern experience. Within twenty years of the Wright brothers’ first flight (17 December 1903), aeronautical technology and its associated networks – airports, research, navigation, knowledge, among others – became firmly embedded within the popular imaginary (Adey, 2006). At the same time, aviation grew to material importance, through the first, tentative passenger and airmail links, and through the application of this new technology to war: the use of aircraft in an offensive role was pioneered by Italian forces during the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12), but the aeroplane became further associated with military conflict from the First World War (1914-1918) onwards 3
(Gropman, 2003). By the time Mussolini’s fascist regime gained power in Italy in 1922, aeronautical technology had become a signifier for modernity (Caprotti, 2008). The Sopwith Camel, the Cant Z.506 Airone seaplane and, later, Pan Am clipper flying boats were pointers of modernity as much as the Ford Model T motor car.
Since its inception, aviation was discursively linked to risk and the breaking of boundaries: of speed, distance, and endurance. In parallel, flight became a popular subject for representation in various types of media, from print to photography, to the moving image. Aviation became a performance centred overtly on the machine and the figure of the aviator. This was especially true in the case of particular forms of aviation which gained popularity in the 1910s and 1920s, namely air racing and record aviation. These activities were constructed around the new technology, and its use by ‘daredevil’ men and women, who raced, broke records, and barnstormed their way into public consciousness (Lebow, 2003; Oakes, 1978, 1985). Air racing remains popular to this day, as evinced to the recent popularity of the Red Bull Air Races (Red Bull Air Races website, 2008). Record aviation, on the other hand, has become de-popularized as technical advances in aeronautics have created intense specialization and high barriers to entry. However, record attempts during the 1920s and 1930s are still known today, particularly Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight (20-21 May 1927), Italo Balbo’s formation flight to Chicago (1933), and Amelia Earhart’s round-the-world attempt (1937).2
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This paper examines record aviation in 1930s Italy, focusing on representations of the aeroplane as a technology which could overcome distance and nature. The two record attempts analyzed in this paper had record-breaking as well as material significance: both flights were aimed at linking fascist Italy with South America. In particular, the record attempts were supposed to show the feasibility of rapid and reliable airmail and, later, passenger transport on routes from Italy to, especially, Brazil and Argentina. The two analyzed flights are, respectively, a non-stop, long-distance seaplane record attempt by Mario Stoppani and Enrico Comani in December 1937, and the first scheduled airmail link attempt from Italy to Brazil two years later, in December 1939. The flights are examined in light of the manner in which they were discursively constructed by contemporary sources.
Context and method
The record-breaking flights studied in this paper are positioned within wider histories of aviation. These are crucial to the positing of Italian civil aviation within a 1930s historical, technological and political matrix. In a countryspecific context, Labranca (2005) has argued that histories of Italian aviation, and in particular of aviation during the fascist ventennio (the two decades of fascist rule, 1922-43), have not engaged with wider Italian history, politics and culture of the period. Commentaries in Italian focus predominantly on military aviation, and can be situated most closely within the field of military history (Ghiringhelli, 2005), although studies on Italian civil aviation in the 1920s and 1930s have been published more recently (D’Agostino and 5
Tomarchio, 2007; D’Agostino, 1996). This paper contributes to the building of connections between aviation and the specific history and cultures of fascist Italy. Aviation history is a small but active field (Hallion, 2003; Wohl, 2005, 1996), which has until recently focused on the (in many ways arbitrary) divide between civil and military aviation; recent studies have, however, gone some way towards incorporating more culturally nuanced approaches to flight and its wider significance in various spheres such as art (Goodyear, 2003). A small group of scholars in geography and cultural studies have contributed to this focus, analyzing the spaces of aviation (Adey, 2006; Lloyd, 2003), the links between political legitimation and aviation technology (Caprotti, 2008), British imperial civil aviation (Pirie, 2004) and its cinematic representation (Pirie, 2003), and the cultural and social geographies of global air travel (Adey, Budd and Hubbard, 2007). There remain, however, areas in which exploration is still required, such as the spaces of intersection between aviation and gender, although Elizabeth Bell (1994) has gone some way towards giving early female aviators a voice in aviation history, by charting their biographies.
This paper draws on archival material from the Central State Archive (henceforth ACS) in Rome. Specifically, documents from the ministry of aeronautics (Ministero dell’Aeronautica), and Mussolini’s government archive (Segreteria Particolare del Duce, 1922-1943, henceforth SPDCO) are used. The materials analyzed here include personal communications between ministry officials, aviators and private individuals and companies. In addition, the paper utilizes published sources from the period, including newspaper articles and books.3 Newspaper reports, books and pamphlets referred to in 6
this paper were selected according to institutional importance criteria, that is, they were referred to and, in cases, preserved in archival records. The assumption is that these documents ‘from outside’ the institutional matrix were seen as sufficiently important and indicative to merit collection, analysis, propagation and storage. The positive outcome of this approach is a triangulation of archival data with sources considered of use by actors during the analyzed period; furthermore, data selection bias is avoided (Gaddis, 2004; Howell and Prevenier, 2001). However, two potential pitfalls of this approach are, firstly, an exclusive framing of the question in such a way that the potential for analysis of other documents and sources are discursively excluded. Secondly, selection of published media based on institutional importance criteria may lead to the (re)telling of a historical narrative for which claims of unitarity can be erroneously made (Schiellerup, 2008). The paper is resultantly acknowledged as the analysis of the partial, non-exclusive interplay between discursive sources considered noteworthy at the time. In the following, the construction of aviation as a societal means to overcome and dominate distance and nature is briefly analyzed. The discursive link between aviation and power in fascist Italy is then discussed. Building on this, the record-breaking flights of 1937 and 1939 are analyzed in detail, focusing on the discursive construction and representation of aviation, and its links with fascism.
Overcoming distance through technology
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The links between nature and society in modernity have been widely explored and debated within geography and allied disciplines. Modernity has been analysed as a deeply contested and contradictory ‘project’, composed of the dynamic interplay between political, economic, cultural and other strands which become materialized in specific historical and political moments (Berman, 1983). These concretizations, smattered through the interconnected world(s) of material experience, have been identified in diverse material arenas, such as the city (Caprotti, 2007; Gandy, 2005, 2002), infrastructure projects (Speich, 2002; Swyngedouw, 1999), and technonatural networks of water and technology (Kaika, 2006; Swyngedouw, 2007). In particular, modernity has been analyzed as a period in which knowledge formation has (through a variety of mechanisms which cannot be adequately explored here) resulted in specific tensions between the natural and the social (Latour, 1993). On a wider theoretical level, the political-ideological movements of the early twentieth century, such as National Socialism, have also been depicted as modern constructs (Bauman, 1989; Habermas, 1983). In this light, fascism has been described as a phenomenon which, in its ideological instability, is deeply modern (Antliff, 2002; Ben-Ghiat, 2001). Historically, it cannot be considered a parenthesis, but can be thought of as a continuation of a particular modern trajectory of post-unification Italian history. In particular, there has been ample debate over the connections between modernity, modernization and fascism (Gentile, 2003, 1994; Dickenson, 2004). This paper’s study of record aviation is framed within an understanding of fascism as a product of modernity (Herf, 1984).
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The modern conceit of the overcoming of distance and nature through technology is analyzed here through the discursive construction of aviation as a technology of power (Gregory, 1994). In particular, record aviation was described as a way of dominating and conquering nature, with the aim of establishing the rational, scheduled normality of airmail and passenger services where nature – signified by the physicality of the South Atlantic as much as by abstract concepts of distance and space – was previously painted as a static, impregnable and foreboding blank space. Aviation in fascist Italy was utilized both as a metaphor for the domination and overcoming of natural boundaries, limits and distance, and as an expression of fascist modernity through speed, technology and power. As a 1936 article in Sapere magazine stated, ‘The world shrinks through the magic of speed. The globe seems to contract every time humanity crosses its surface on its road to conquest, in the role of dominator’ (Prospector, 1936).4 Speed and power, therefore, were linked to conquest and the shrinking of space and distance (Simonsen, 2005). Modern humanity – embodied in the figure of the aviator – was referred to as a dominator, utilizing technology to impose control over a static natural sphere.
In the realm of geopolitical power, aviation was also clearly understood to be a key tool for the projection of power over another state’s borders. Indeed, this had arguably been common official knowledge ever since Giulio Douhet’s internationally influential elaboration of strategic bombing as a tactical war strategy in his Il Dominio dell’Aria (The Command of the Air) (Douhet, 1921). Civil aviation was, likewise, seen as a way of serving national interests during peacetime, and not only by fascist aviation authorities: McCormack (1976, 9
1989) has, for example, traced the complex links between civil aviation and British imperialism and colonialism. In another example, the Sapere article cited above displayed a route map of long-range passenger and airmail routes in 1936. The links between different states’ routes and their political and commercial influence and interests are clearly emphasized. For example, in the case of the USA, the article states that ‘PanAmerican Airways applies the Monroe Doctrine through aviation: America for Americans’ (Prospector, 1936). Civil aviation was clearly seen as an arena where states would engage in power struggles and boundary-making.
Air races and record aviation were also frequently seen as opportunities for geopolitical information-gathering by the regime. Archival sources suggest that in one case at least, participation in aeronautical events abroad was utilised to gauge Italy’s image abroad. To illustrate this point, the rest of this section focuses on a concrete example which highlights the links between air races and geopolitical, discursive imaginings of fascist Italy’s international role. The following places the spotlight on the ‘International Circuit of the Oases’ (Circuito delle Oasi) air race, which took place in February 1937. Vincenzo Biani, a lieutenant-colonel in the Italian air force, participated in the race. The two-day event took place in Egypt, and was organized in 1933 and 1937 by the Egyptian Aero Club (Almásy, 1937; The Times, 22 December 1933). The demanding circuit began in Cairo, and involved flying to Asyut, Kharga, Dahkla, Farafra and Baharya, before landing back in Cairo the following day. Several aircraft did not complete the course, due to mechanical faults, insurance issues, and crashes: in the 1937 race, only 34 aircraft out of 41 landed back in Cairo (The Times, 24 February 1937; The Times, 27 10
February 1937).5 This air race was highly publicized at the time, and aviators from several countries (including Great Britain, Egypt, Germany, and Czechoslovakia) participated. Italian aviators’ role in the race was portrayed, by contemporary sources, as an example of Italian technological progress, especially in light of the race setting in an extreme, desert environment.6 As a sign of the importance of this event at the time, the race was commemorated in an airmail stamp issue in Italy’s colony of Libya.
Following the race, Biani duly submitted a race report to the ministry of aeronautics; most of this was of a technical nature, detailing flying conditions, airfield specifications, routes taken, and the like. However, what is most interesting for the purpose of this paper is a section of the report, titled ‘Political Notes’ (Biani to Ministry of Aeronautics, 16 March 1937). In this section, Biani commented on political tensions within Egypt, and focused on the potential for Italian intervention in the area. In particular, Biani examines the potential for tapping into anti-British sentiment in Egypt. This was based on the controversial Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, which guaranteed Egypt limited autonomy, and a threat of military intervention if British interests were to be threatened.7 In his report, Biani claimed that:
‘There is in this social environment a widespread sense of hostility towards Great Britain, and a strong belief that Britain will do its utmost to not respect the clauses of the recent treaty, which allows Egypt a limited degree of autonomy’ (p. 13).
Furthermore, Biani drew on his contacts within the Egyptian aviation community to make geopolitical assessments. This link was not casually made.
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Aviators, Biani noted, were drawn from amongst the ‘best elements of the bourgeoisie, […] the elements which give a modern impetus to the life of that state. These people thirst to lead [Egypt] politically’ (Ibid). In other words, participation in an ‘innocuous’ sporting occasion was seen as a chance to interact with Britain’s colonial subjects, and to gain insight on the potential for destabilisation in the area. For example, Biani claimed that his contacts with the Egyptian bourgeoisie clearly pointed to the existence of overwhelming anti-British currents. However, his assessment of the Egyptian elite’s potential for active political revolt was scathing: he judged ‘these Egyptians’ as not having ‘the strength to conquer independence’, and ‘perhaps not even the strength to maintain it, once gained’ (p. 13). It therefore followed that, based on conversations with Egyptian aviators, Biani’s conclusions on Italy’s potential role in Egypt were far from positive.
Biani’s assessment was, rather, that in Egypt those who viewed Italy with suspicion were the majority. Indeed, he claimed that there were two main currents of thought about a potential role for Italy in the British colony: the first current of thought, that of ‘the most advanced and independent elements’, saw Italy as a potential ally in ‘throwing off the British yoke’ (p. 15), and recognised Italy’s role in facilitating the Anglo-Egyptian treaty. The second, more popular current of thought, looked with apprehension to Italy’s potential territorial ambitions in Egypt and Sudan, and preferred domination by Britain as the lesser of two evils. In the context of Italy’s recent (1935-6) invasion and annexation of Ethiopia, suspicions of Italy’s role in the Middle East and North Africa were indeed rife (Morsy, 1984):
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‘The conquest of Abyssinia has alienated many from supporting Italy, because of the disappearance of an independent African state but also because of the able posturing of British politics, which used Italy as a scarecrow, depicting it as aggressive and ready to pounce on Egypt, but held back by Britain’s defence of the country’ (p. 15).
In a prescient manner, Biani claimed to have identified what was a burgeoning nationalist sentiment in the country, and highlighted its possible regional consequences. He believed that Egyptian nationalism could ‘violently explode into a wider anti-European orientation which may even target European civilian and economic activities in general’ (p. 14).
Biani concluded his report’s ‘Political Notes’ by claiming that Mussolini enjoyed a good reputation in Egypt, and that Italian aviation had a part to play in portraying the country as modern and technologically advanced. In particular, Ala Littoria, the regime’s airline, was admired because of its apparent reliability and its use of new airframes on the airline’s North and East African route network. Aviation, air races, and record attempts were not spectacles confined to cheering crowds and affluent aviators. The regime utilised these events as showcases of fascist modernity, and as informationgathering opportunities which coincided with fascism’s geopolitical aims abroad.
The overcoming of distance and the bridging of space between Italy and areas of potential geopolitical and colonial influence can also be seen through the support given to individual record or distance-attempt aviators requiring clearance to fly through Italian airspace in Africa. The interactions between
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Italian aviation officials and female aviators in particular highlight not only aviation’s key role in imaginations of Italian colonialism, and in bridging distance and space, but a deeply gendered view of aviation both as a technology and as an activity. The gendering of aviation did not result in the stark separation of male and female spheres when it came to flight. Rather, aviation remained a gendered area with ‘grey’ boundaries. For example, the regime’s key political figures were keen to be seen to ‘support’ and ‘lend assistance to’ female aviators over-flying Italian territory and using national airports. Elizabeth Bell, for example, notes that several female British aviators were bowled over by Mussolini’s attentions (Bell, 1994, p. 42). She recounts an episode concerning Lady Heath, who was banned by British authorities from flying over the Mediterranean from Egypt to Europe, unless escorted. According to Heath’s memoirs, during a cocktail party in Cairo she sent a telegraph to Mussolini (whom she had never met), requesting assistance. His short, cabled response was: “Have put a seaplane at your disposal”. Upon meeting the dictator in Italy, she was generous in her praise: “Mussolini, that great man who is more of a national monument than an individual, was gracious enough to send for me, and I was greatly struck by his intimate knowledge of details of flying matters. He seemed interested to hear my experiences, and glad of what I was conscientiously able to say about Italian hospitality and efficiency” (Heath, 1928, in Bell, 1994, p. 43). Lady Heath was particularly impressed by Italy’s African colonies, and their aeronautical infrastructure: aviation clearly had a part to play in presenting Italy as a modern, efficient and technologically advanced state. As Bell (1994) notes,
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“Her attraction to Mussolini [..] springs from the organization she sees as se travels through Italian colonies in Africa. She comments on the communications linkages between Italian outposts and the relative ease with which she finds skilled mechanics at those official airfields […]. The Italians, she seems to be saying, know how to run a colony: the British should learn from them.” (p. 43)
Italian authorities were also keen to be seen to be supportive of record attempts by foreign aviators. Weeks before Amelia Earhart’s death in her illfated round the world flight in 1937, authorities at Aseb airport in Italian East Africa (referred to as ‘Assab’ in Italian sources of the time) were instructed to provide assistance and facilitate operations for the well-known aviator (Pellegrini to Assab airport, 9 June 1937). Gendering was common throughout the discourses about aviation which were produced in fascist Italy. This, in turn, may be attributable to the gendered nature of the representation of aviation as a set of technologies which could overcome distance and nature, as outlined above. The following focuses more closely on the links between fascism, aviation and power.
Aviation, fascism and power
Power and aviation were discursively linked in1930s Italy, and several discourses focusing on aviation can be identified. These can be categorised into two meta-discourses, through segmentation resulting from analysis of contemporary material. On the one hand, aviation (and its attributes) was portrayed as embodying some of the key qualities which fascism’s ideologues
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had appropriated for Mussolini’s political movement. A second discursive strand can be identified around the figure of the aviator, embodied by Mussolini. The following briefly examines these discursive strands. The emphasis is on the establishment of imaginative links between flight, the aeroplane, and fascism as an ideological and embodied reality. Furthermore, the gendered aspects of discourse on aviation are briefly considered.
When examining aviation’s links to power, ideology and discourse, aesthetics cannot be ignored. Indeed, the links between representation and power have been the subject of several studies focusing on ideology (Eagleton, 1990), representative strategies (Caprotti and Kaika, 2008; Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988), and mediation (Atkinson and Cosgrove, 1998; Dovey, 1999). However, analysis of the aesthetics of aviation in 1930s Italy falls outside the scope of this paper. Indeed, this is a vast area of enquiry which arguably has its roots in excavations of Futurist thought on aviation and motorized transport, and in the Futurist celebration of speed, power, technology and war, all of which were embodied in the aeroplane (Simonsen, 2005). Furthermore, the links between art and politics in fascist Italy remain the subject of heated substantive cross-disciplinary debate (Berghaus, 1995; Gentile, 2003). Nonetheless, aviation was recognized as a subject of artistic expression in itself in fascist Italy. For example, leading Futurist artist Mario Sironi was a key organizer of the 1934 exhibition of Italian aeronautics in Milan (Fondazione Magnani Rocca, 2007).8 Another example of the links between aviation, representation and ideology can be found in the 1937 Venice Biennale art exhibition. The catalogue for the exhibition reveals that, for the first time, the Biennale included a pavilion devoted exclusively to aviation. 16
Previous exhibitions had featured other branches of the military, such as the navy or army. However, as Lieutenant-Colonel Enrico Castello claimed, just as marble was the material which epitomized the classical period, and just as the Gothic style exemplified ‘the mysticism of the Mediaeval period’, so ‘without doubt, flight is the main characteristic of our fast-flowing and metallic era, in which […] man lives, burning, in the turbulence of history’ (Castello, 1937, p. 5). The pavilion was constituted by seven exhibition spaces, and featured paintings and sculptures by five artists. It was spearheaded by Romano Romanelli’s L’Aviere, a detail of a monument in Addis Ababa, which tellingly represented an aviator standing next to an oversized bomb: the perpetrators and instruments of Italian colonial conquest.
The second strand of discourse on aviation identified here is personalized discourse centred on key aviators linked with the fascist regime. In this way, aviation was used as a signifier of fascism. Italo Balbo was, and still is, portrayed as fascist Italy’s most famous aviator. In fact, the importance of this key 1930s pilot and political figure still resonates today: so much so that the online historical portal of the Italian Ministry of Aeronautics’ website prominently features a profile of Balbo superimposed over photographs of other famous Italian aviators (Aeronautica Militare Italiana website, 2007). Balbo is thus the most celebrated, and studied, interwar Italian aviator (Alegy, 2005; Rochat, 1979), a fact no doubt aidedby the political influence inherent in Balbo’s position as minister of aviation. However, during the 1920s and 1930s Mussolini was also closely identified with the figure of the aviator. During this time, the Duce became a central figure in discourse about (mostly civil) aviation. For example, in a 1937 publication titled L’Aviazione Negli 17
Scritti e Nella Parola del Duce (‘Aviation in the Duce’s Words and Writings’, Ministry of Aeronautics, 1937), Mussolini was clearly, and causally, linked to Italy’s technological progress. The Duce was presented as a pivotal figure in modernizing Italian aviation, and in propelling it on the road to technological progress and innovation. The point is not subtly made: the opening page of the tome’s second section features a large ‘M’ superimposed upon an eagle in flight, grasping the fasces, the symbol of fascism, in its claws. In later chapters, the book also linked aviation with the realisation of Italian imperial designs in what was to become Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana). The illustrations which accompanied this were equally indicative: one of these featured a Roman standard planted into a map of Italian East Africa (Ministry of Aeronautics, 1937, p. 181). An eagle was portrayed sitting atop the standard, with fasces in its claws, signifying domination of a colonial territory. The flying eagle thus became the imperial eagle, one of the symbols of fascism.
In keeping with the discursive construction of Mussolini as Italy’s lead aviator, the Duce was also often portrayed as a keen and active pilot. This depiction was partly rooted in Mussolini’s actual flying experience. He held a private pilot’s licence, and several aeroplanes were kept ready for his exclusive use. These included a personal aeroplane, a seaplane, 3 aeroplanes for domestic flights, and an escort plane (Ministry of Aeronautics to Sebastiani, 11 December 1937). The Duce enjoyed flying in comfort: his personal aeroplane, a three-engined S.73, was especially equipped with a bar and a toilet.9 It also featured a spacious two-section cabin: one section was equipped with seats and tables for in-flight work, whilst the rear cabin featured six reclining seats. These seats, as well as the cockpit seats, were built to particular specifications 18
which apparently reflected Mussolini’s preferences in in-flight comfort. Mechanical unreliability was also minimized: a pool of 24 Alfa Romeo RC.34 engines was maintained for exclusive use on the Duce’s aircraft. Instructions were given to maintain these engines to the same standards as those used in air races by Italy’s top pilots (Moscatelli to Ministry of Aeronautics, 22 June 1937).
The parallels between Mussolini’s aircraft and the aircraft of Italy’s feted air racing personalities point to the role of record aviation in political legitimation. Furthermore, the discursive links between Mussolini as Italy’s leader and as its ‘first pilot’ (Caprotti, 2008) were rooted in a material basis. The following examines how discourse focused on record aviation was used to juxtapose the aeroplane, and the aviator, to a natural sphere which needed to be dominated so that rational modernity – in the guise of scheduled, predictable and (aspirationally) safe airmail and passenger services could be instituted where air and the Ocean (sic) reigned supreme.
Record attempts: overcoming space and distance
Record aviation and air races were the two main avenues through which flight reached the popular imagination during the interwar period. Record aviation included altitude, speed and distance attempts. Rapid development in aeronautical technology during the period meant that, once established, records did not last long. Indeed, they were often superseded within months or even weeks. At the same time, states became increasingly involved in 19
backing and funding record flights. This is because, on the one hand, such flights garnered constant publicity and were therefore a way of showcasing a country’s modernity and progress: flight as a metaphor of progress along the trajectories of modernity (Simonsen, 2005). On the other hand, record flights required the latest technology and experienced pilots and, therefore, record attempts increasingly came to rely on the military, its experienced pilots, and its high-performance aircraft. The biographies of pilots who attained records are, more often than not, evidence of the close links between the state and attempts to fly faster, higher, or further. Record pilots were hailed as being linked to particular state ideologies or projects. For example, aviators who became record-holders in the USSR in the 1930s were known as ‘Stalin’s falcons’. By 1938, ‘Soviet spokesmen claimed to have set some sixty-two world records, including the longest, highest, and fastest flights, the first landing at the North Pole, and the first flights between the Soviet Union and the United States by a polar route’ (Bailes, 1976, p. 60).
The celebration of record flights was not limited to the fascist period in Italy. For example, the world’s first airmail route, established between Rome and Turin in 1918, saw the release of the first airmail stamp, priced at 25 centesimi (a quarter of a lira) (Bogoni, 1997).10 The stamp commemorated not only the flight, but also the normalization of service on routes which had been seen as the preserve of adventurous aviators until then. Thus, record-breaking aviation can be seen not only through a lens which identifies the domination of distance by technology. These flights can also be understood as attempts to break down the previously unknown, vast and perilous into safe, scheduled normality. After 1922, the fascist regime’s focus on the potential role which 20
Italian aviation could play in various air races, air shows, distance flying attempts, and similar occasions with high publicity potential is evident from archival sources. For example, the ministry of aeronautics was active in identifying events in Italy and abroad in which ‘fascist’ aviation (both civil and military) could take part and excel. These included the 1937 Tyndall air race in the USA, as well as the York air meeting during the same year.11 Furthermore, adverts and details of various similar occasions which could be exploited to showcase fascist aeronautical technologies were carefully collected by the ministry (Various Aviation Projects, 1937). This focus resulted in Italian aviators being very active on the European and world stages in attempting to establish records. During the 1930s, a small but highly accomplished number of Italian aviators took part in record attempts and air races. Indeed, newspaper coverage of European air races often features Italy’s most publicised pilots, such as Mario Stoppani and Francis Lombardi, competing in the same events (see, for example, The Times, 22 August 1932).
North America was the destination of several key flights celebrated in fascist propaganda, such as Balbo’s crossing of the Atlantic en-route to Chicago in the summer of 1933. However, the crossing of the South Atlantic to South America was seen as key not only in terms of propaganda, but also for the establishment of regular airmail, and eventual passanger services to countries like Brazil and Argentina, which featured sizeable Italian-born populations. Indeed, no airmail route operated by an Italian company was established linking Italy with the USA in the 1930s. By the end of the 1930s, the fastest mail route to the Eastern seaboard of the United States was via SANA seaplanes connecting Rome to Gibraltar, where airmail would be transferred 21
to transatlantic ships for the ocean crossing. However, by the end of the decade regular airmail services had begun between Italy and Brazil: on 24 December 1939, weekly airmail services operated by Italian carrier LATI linked Rome and Rio de Janeiro. The route was significant but short-lived: it was reduced to a monthly service after Italy’s entry into the Second World War on 10 June 1940, and finally halted on 19 December 1941, after the US and Brazil entered the war. South America was, therefore, a key destination for Italian civil aviation during the fascist regime’s final decade: indeed, Italo Balbo’s first tranatlantic crossing using flying boats had not been his 1933 flight to Chicago, but a flight to Rio de Janeiro, using 12 Savoia-Marchetti S.55 aircraft, between 17 December 1930 and 15 January 1931.
South America had been the destination of several Italian aviation projects after the end of the First World War. In 1919 Italian pilot Antonio Locatelli completed the first crossing of the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans with a routing over the Andes; in 1927 Carlo del Prete and Francesco de Pinedo flew from Italy to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and other cities before flying on to the United States and crossing the Atlantic back to Italy; in 1928 Arturo Ferrarin established a new long-distance flying record by flying from Guidonia – a city founded by Mussolini to be a centre for the Italian air force – to Touros, Brazil, a distance of 7,188 kilometres; in 1930 Italo Balbo and air force general Valle led a ‘raid’ – the contemporary term used to describe a long-distance attempt – to Rio de Janeiro from Orbetello, in Tuscany; in 1934, Francis Lombardi and Franco Mazzotti flew from Rome to Fortaleza (Soligo, 2007). Linking Italy with South America was impressive as well as arduous, given the technological limitations of range and reliability. 22
Mussolini himself hosted a dinner for transoceanic aviators at the Excelsior Hotel in central Rome for transoceanic aviators on 23 May 1932 to celebrate Italian aviators’ bridging of disctance and oceanic space between Italy and South America (Head of Cabinet, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, to Mussolini, 22 May 1932). The establishment of regular air links with South America would have placed fascist Italy at the forefront of the development of aviation on South Atlantic routes. The following examines the discourses associated with two specific attempts to explore and eventually establish regular air services between Italy and South America. Thr first examined distance attempt was the establishment of a long-distance record across the South Atlantic, and is examined in light of the depiction of aviation technology as something which could overcome the dangers and obstacles posed by the crossing of oceanic space, and in so doing, rationalize such space. The second examined flight was organised to link, for the first time, Italy and Brazil with an airmail service. This flight, and its publicisation, can be seen as an example of the link between representations of aviation as a technology aimed at dominating and crossing space; but it can also be seen as an example of the materialisation of such ideas, through the forging or airmail links, which were the first steps on the way to rationalizing the ‘space between’ Europe and South America (Agnew, 1993).
Crossing the South Atlantic
In December 1937, two Italian pilots (Mario Stoppani and Enrico Comani) set a long-distance non-stop seaplane record. They flew from Cadiz, Spain to 23
Caravelas, Brazil (7,031 kilometres) (Foreign Ministry to Ministry of Aeronautics, 1 January 1938; Bernasconi to Ilari, 25 December 1935).12 The flight, undertaken with a CANT Z.506 seaplane between 28 and 29 December 1937, was significant because its main aim was twofold: on the one hand, it was a continuation of distance record attempts, which were used to depict aviation in a heroic light. On the other hand, even though the flight left from Spain, Stoppani and Comani’s flight was the first of several flights with which Italy tried to reconnoitre regular airmail links with South American countries. As Aviation magazine noted in the same year, record-breaking attempts were seen as the precursors to regular, scheduled links:
‘Many have been the arguments that long-distance record flights are useless and do nothing to further the cause of aviation, but it has been noticeable through out the history of commercial flying that air transport has followed the record breakers and that the record times of to-day are the normal air line schedules of to-morrow. Thus the record breakers of 1937 will have added their mite to the conquest of the air.’ (Palmer, 1937).
In the case of Stoppani and Comani’s flight, The Times (4 January 1938) reported that the record-breaking attempt was to forge the route for scheduled links between Europe and South America:
‘Signor Stoppani declares that his flight formed part of the preparations for a regular Italian passenger and mail air service to South America by way of Cadiz, St. Louis (Senegal), the Cape Verde Islands, Natal (Brazil), Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires’ ( p. 11).
Regular airmail service was eventually established between Rome and Rio de Janeiro in December 1939 by LATI (Linee Aeree Transcontinentali Italiane)
24
(Soligo, 2007). However, the link was short-lived, and only around 100 transatlantic flights were operated before the route was closed down. This was due to the start of the Second World War and the incorporation of most LATI aircraft into the military air fleet (LATI had only been founded on 11 September 1939) (Riccitelli, 2004). Italy’s links with South America were subsequently re-established more than a decade later by the new flag carrier, Alitalia.
Both of the aviators who took part in the record attempt outlined here were closely linked with the Italian aeronautical establishment. Mario Stoppani had been a First World War ace before working at the Ansaldo aircraft company. He was subsequently employed by the Cantieri Riuniti Dell’Adriatico (CRDA) aircraft company as a test pilot. In the early 1930s he gained several longdistance seaplane distance and altitude records (Mencarelli, 1971; Bruschina, Mecchia and Turrini, 2000). These included a long-distance seaplane flight between Monfalcone, Italy, and Mitsiwa, Eritrea, in 1934, and Berbera, Italian Somaliland, in 1935. These attempts were flown with Enrico Corradin and Casimiro Babbi respectively (The Times, 20 October 1934; July 18 1935). Enrico Comani, his co-pilot on the flight to Brazil in 1937, was an expert in flying without external visual clues, relying only on instruments (known today as Instrument Flight Rules, or IFR). The 1937 record attempt, achieved using a seaplane imaginatively registered as I-LAMA, earned both pilots a national medal for valour. However, the two aviators’ life paths ended in tragedy in the same waters they had crossed. After the successful record attempt, on 2 February 1938, Stoppani, Comani and three other crew members were enroute back to Italy. During a flight segment of the flight between Natal, on the 25
Brazilian coast, and the island of Fernando de Noronha, in the South Atlantic, a double engine failure and fire on their three-engined seaplane led to a successful ditching attempt in stormy waters. Mario Stoppani was the only survivor (Rossi 2006): he was rescued by a Lufthansa seaplane (The Times, 3 February 1938).
As with other long-distance attempts by Italian aviators in the 1930s, Stoppani and Comani’s feat was celebrated by the regime’s highest echelons. Achille Starace, secretary of the fascist party, forwarded the following telegram to the pilots:
“The party gerarchi, meeting at the Palazzo del Littorio, have asked me to extend to the brave pilots Stoppani and Comani, and to their crew, sentiments of admiration and comradely joy for the brilliant victory which they have conquered for fascist aviation [ala fascista]. Achille Starace” (Starace to the Cabinet of the Ministry of Aeronautics, 30 December 1937).
The attainment of the record was couched in ideological terms which pitted fascism’s espousal of speed and power over the ‘compromises’ which had been made by the previous, French record holders. French pilots had achieved the record barely two months earlier, on 25-26 October 1937. Major Gianni Bordini, writing in Sapere magazine, celebrated the fact that the CANT Z.506 seaplane used by Stoppani and Comani had not been modified (as the French aircraft had been) in order to gain range at the expense of speed. Rather, the attempt had been flown ‘on a bomber aircraft which had not been modified, except for the installation of auxiliary fuel tanks’ (Bordini 1938). Regardless of the fact that two modifications which the seaplane actually underwent were
26
the construction of an apposite cockpit and, in all probability, the removal of heavy defensive armament (thus increasing range), the flight was contrasted to French use of aircraft heavily modified for record-breaking purposes. This contrast implied Italian technological superiority in flying faster, nonmodified aircraft: ‘This approach, which differs substantially from that espoused by the French, is the cause of recent conquests by Italian aviation. These conquests can be defined by the most important aeronautical concepts: speed, load, range, altitude’ (Bordini, 1938). The speed of the Italian ‘threeengined bomber seaplane’ was also noted in The Times (The Times, 30 December 1937), which similarly contrasted it to the slower French aircraft. However, in turn, Stoppani’s record attempt was superseded by German aviators in March 1938 on a route from Devon, Great Britain, to Caravelas, Brazil (The Times, 30 March 1938).
The records gained by Italian aviation, and by Stoppani and Comani in the case examined here, were metaphorically linked to a discourse of fascist superiority over other European states. This superiority was expressed not only in technological terms – Italian modernity superseding France by establishing a record using an Italian seaplane powered by Alfa Romeo engines. It was also expressed in a moral frame, which contrasted non-fascist ‘compromise’ with an ‘all-or-nothing’ fascist approach which did not tolerate a loss of speed or power. This connects with the concept of technological legitimation through aviation, which has been applied to the metaphorical and discursive links between aviation and the Soviet Union (Bailes, 1976).
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Rationalizing space and distance
The second record attempt examined here occurred in December 1939. It was a flight orchestrated to publicise the first airmail route to Brazil. The route itself involved various stops, including Ilha do Sal, in Cape Verde, finally arriving in Pernambuco, Brazil (Pedrazzi to Il Resto del Carlino, 30 December 1939). The islands were a key stepping stone for airmail operations in the South Atlantic, and had become increasingly important to Italian operations in the South Atlantic due to tensions over the use of French and British airfields in Africa as technical stops. The route was organized with the aid of the Ministry of Aeronautics, which provided meteorological and radio communication assistance. Fascist Italy’s main airline, Ala Littoria, was also involved in providing equipment (Bernasconi to Ilari, 25 December 1935; Foreign Ministry to Ministry of Aeronautics, 1 January 1938). A previous attempt at flying the route had, however, come to a tragic end. The aeroplane involved in the attempt (registration number I-ARPA) crashed on the leg prior to reaching Cape Verde (Pedrazzi to Il Resto del Carlino, date unknown, 1939).
The December 1939 flight connected Italy to Pernambuco, Brazil. It was carried out by a flight crew comprising two pilots, a radio operator, and a flight engineer.13 Pietro Pedrazzi, a journalist for the Resto del Carlino newspaper, was also on board the Savoia Marchetti aeroplane. He chronicled the flight by transmitting reports back to Italy via en-route airfields, and from the aeroplane’s radio at key moments in the flight. This produced a stream of brief but flowery updates from the fight deck, written by the journalist’s expert 28
hand. This information was filtered by the Guidonia centre for experimental aviation, near Rome, before being passed on to the press.14 The result was an almost lyrical celebration of the record attempt, as the aircraft was making progress to South America. On the flight’s final leg, for example, Pedrazzi sent a telegram for publication by the Resto del Carlino. The journalist clearly identified with the role of explorer: this is evident in the telegram’s wording. He celebrated the start of the South Atlantic crossing by stating that, ‘The superb Savoia Marchetti pointed straight towards the south-east, towards the South American coast’ (Pedrazzi to Il Resto del Carlino, 30 December 1939). This highlighted both a reliance on technology to bridge natural limits, and the triumphal viewpoint of those who could cross a vast expanse of water in flight. A sense of control, of mastery of a risky situation through modern technology, is clear in reports sent back to Italy’s aeronautical authorities and, subsequently, to the wider public.
The crossing of the South Atlantic Ocean was of great interest for Pedrazzi during the record airmail flight. This was the last step towards Brazil, and one of the most risky due to it being a long, over-water segment. In setting out from Cape Verde, a sense of risk and reliance on aviation technology was introduced in Pedrazzi’s missives: ‘The aircraft was being jolted around, and Commander Satti, pilot-in-command, masterfully searched for openings through the clouds’. The aeroplane was compared to a mechanical being, dominating the aerial environment: ‘We […] are galloping over vast flocks of fleeing white clouds’ (Pedrazzi to Il Resto del Carlino, date unknown). Furthermore, the crossing of the Equator was highlighted in the journalist’s report: it was described as a ‘baptism’. Pedrazzi noted that the radio operator, 29
indeed his own newspaper, were crossing the Equator for the first time. In order to celebrate their ‘baptisms’, Pedrazzi claimed that radio communications were established with Italian ships below the aeroplane, and that the vessels responded with felicitations (Ibid).
Pedrazzi was also aware of the propaganda potential of depicting flight as a modern activity pitting individuals and machines against nature’s previously insurmountable obstacles. The environment of flight, and the landscapes glimpsed from above, were at times described and couched in language which evidenced a sense of fear of nature, but also a sense of distance and elevation from nature’s grasp through technology. For example, on describing clouds, Pedrazzi stated that ‘Cloud formations often take the shape of horrific voids and infernal shapes, and sometimes they look like azure, dreamy landscapes’ (Pedrazzi to Il Resto del Carlino, 30 December 1939). The aeroplane made possible the witnessing of these cloudscapes, and ensured that they could be safely traversed. Furthermore, the potential for a tragic end to the flight was a reminder of the risks inherent in pushing the boundaries of aviation. As the aeroplane flew over the crash site of I-ARPA, the journalist and his crew members reported that:
‘We turn our thoughts to our fallen comrades, and salute them in Roman fashion. It seems to us as though the three powerful engines of the Savoia-Marchetti take on a deeper roar, as if they too were providing a background for this time of sadness. However, flight is victory and we cannot serve the will of those who have fallen if we don’t follow their example’ (Pedrazzi to Il Resto del Carlino, date unknown)
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At the same time, when crossing paths with an aeroplane returning from Brazil to Italy, salutations were exchanged between the two craft, ‘with words singing hymns to fascism, and greetings to the Duce from Italian hearts’ (Ibid). The mid-air encounter was clearly described in propagandistic tones. What is interesting to note, however, is the fact that Pedrazzi chose to highlight the meeting of two Italian craft, on routes which were not devoid of traffic, however scarce. Secondly, by highlighting the fact that Italian aircraft were already plying the route – albeit probably in shorter, less publicisable legs – a subtextual reference to the increasing connections between South America and Italy was made. In other words, there existed not only a lone Savoia Marchetti crossing the South Atlantic, but other aircraft, the product of the fascist aviation industry, on other business across the South Atlantic. The flying of the route which Pedrazzi witnessed at first hand was therefore a vanguard – but was closely followed by regular, scheduled services which were already being initiated across the sea. In breaking down nature’s boundaries, Pedrazzi’s reports made a claim both for heroic flight and for the establishment of normality, for the modern subjugation of nature and for the necessity of the maintenance of a separate natural sphere which could be used to justify fascist modernity and legitimize the idea of fascist struggle and modernization.
Conclusion
This paper has analyzed the discourses produced as a result of two record aviation attempts in 1937 and 1939. These flights, connecting fascist Italy with 31
South America, with a particular focus on Brazil, left an archival record in the fascist regime’s aeronautical authorities’ archives. The record attempts themselves were successful, but short-lived: once established, distance and speed records were broken every few months. The analysed record flights were not, however, of importance solely because of distances flown, speeds attained, or oceans bridged. They reflected the fascist regime’s attempts to establish parallels – in art, the press, and other outlets – between aviation and Italian fascism.
The institutional importance afforded the examined flights, seen through the keeping of detailed archival records (including press reports, and the use of in-flight journalism) by the ministry of aeronautics, can be interpreted as indicating the wider ideological importance of aviation for the regime. Indeed, Mussolini was depicted in contemporary discourse as Italy’s ‘first pilot’. However, it could be argued that aviation, and aviators in general were depicted as embodiments of fascism. Record aviation, with the overcoming of distance and the establishment of links between Italy and distant South America, was the epitome of the embodiment of fascist ideals of speed, power, and modernization. At the same time, framing fascism and aviation within the wider lens of modernity enables the viewing of the examined record attempts as predicated on a particularly modern separation of the social from the natural. The aeroplane, and aviation technology, thus became the technosocial means through which fascism, through its aviators, could overcome nature in its drive to ‘normalize’ air routes and establish scheduled, safe, rational service where the elements had previously reigned supreme. The blank and unpredictable spaces of nature – embodied in the South Atlantic – 32
became the canvas on which fascism, through its aviators and seaplanes, could enact and perform a small part of its struggle with modernity.
Notes I am grateful for a British Academy Small Research Grant (SG-41919) which made it possible to carry out the research presented here. I am also grateful to Matthew Gandy, and to two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to the Editors and Siobhan Lynch for their editorial input. 2 The choice of Lindbergh, Balbo and Earhart is partly arbitrary. However, all three aviators accomplished record flights: for example, Earhart was the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic, in 1932. All three were honoured by US authorities for their records: Lindbergh received the Medal of Honor in 1927, and Balbo and Earhart both received the United States’ Distinguished Flying Cross (Earhart being the first woman to whom the medal was awarded). It is interesting to note that Balbo does not appear on the Association of D.F.C. 1
33
Honorees’ roster, although Earhart features in it. Communications with the Association in 2008 revealed that not all DFC holders are recorded by the Association. The reason for Balbo’s absence may be political. 3 All translations from Italian sources are mine, as are any errors. 4 The author’s given pseudonym was ‘Prospector’; no first names or clues as to the identity of the author are given. 5 The number of competitors due to start the race in 1937 is estimated by the author to have been 43. Two British competitors were unable to start the race, due to illness and insurance issues (The Times, 24 February 1937: 16). 6 There are few personal accounts of participation in this particular air race. See László Almásy’s Levegöben, Homokon (In Air, On Sand), published in 1937, for a first-person chronicle of organization of the first air race of the series, in 1933. 7 The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, signed on 26 August 1936, ended Britain’s protectorate over Egypt whilst maintaining Britain’s control of the Suez Canal for a duration of 20 years. 8 Sironi organized the pavilion dedicated to Italian aviation in the First World War. 9 The aeroplane was built by SIAI; interestingly, in communications with the ministry of aeronautics for the commissioning of Mussolini’s aeroplane, the company’s corporate symbol was an eagle with fasces grasped in its claws (SIAI to Ministry of Aeronautics, 2 August 1937) 10 A dollar equivalent is not provided, as the value of the lira fluctuated widely in the mid-1910s and especially after Italy’s entry into the First World War in 1915. Depreciation against the British pound was of the order of 15-16% per annum until 1918. In 1916 the lira was allowed to float freely. The following year saw rapid depreciation, followed by a currency crash after the events of Caporetto (Strachan 2001: 982; Fratianni and Spinelli 2005: 111). 11 Tyndall Air Force Base (Panama City, Florida, USA) still hosts the yearly Tyndall Air Show. 12 It has to be noted that Stoppani and Comani did not fly alone. Their crew also comprised radio operator Demetrio Iaria and engine mechanic Renato Pogliani (Bordini 1938). 13 The pilots were Satti and Moretti, the radio operator was Parodi, and the flight engineer was called Cattomar. The aircraft used was I-ASSO (Pedrazzi to Il Resto del Carlino, 30 December 1939). 14 There is scarce archival evidence to show that these reports were, or were not, censored. Archival records show that Pedrazzi’s communications were received in Guidonia, and the reports were classified as ‘Secret’ before they were released to the press. This was presumably so that they could be checked. Furthermore, it can be assumed that Pedrazzi was operating under selfcensorship, as he may well have been aware of the fact that his reports would be scrutinized.
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SIAI to Ministry of Aeronautics, 2 August 1937, ACS, Ministero dell’Aeronautica, Gabinetto, Archivio Generale – Affari Generali, 1937, B.5, Cl.2, S.1, Ct.2.
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The Times (1938) New Italian air routes: South America and Spain. The Times, 4 January 1938, 11.
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