page_title: Aviazione Legionaria
section_title: Bombing operations
hierarchical_section_title: Aviazione Legionaria / History / Bombing operations
caption_attribution_description: English: Aerial bombing of Barcelona, 17 March 1938, by the Italian air force.
context_page_description: The Legionary Air Force was an expeditionary corps from the Italian Royal Air Force. It was set up in 1936 and sent to provide logistical and tactical support to the Nationalist faction after the Spanish coup of July 1936 marked the onset of the Spanish Civil War.
  The corps and its Nazi German allies—the Condor Legion—fought against the Spanish Republic and provided support for the Italian ground troops of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie. They served from August 1936 to the end of the conflict in March 1939. Their main base of operations was on Mallorca in the Balearic Islands.
context_section_description: Besides military targets, the Aviazione Legionaria carried out a great number of strategic bombings of cities in the Spanish Republican rear area, intended to terrify the civilian population into surrender. The most significant of these was the 1936 bombing of Madrid ordered by General Franco, in which the city's residential areas were subject to heavy bombardment – with the exception of the upper class Salamanca district, which was assumed to contain many Nationalist supporters. Three Italian bombers attacked the Renteria bridge on the outskirts of Guernica, prior to the Condor Legion's bombing of Guernica itself on 26 April 1937, followed by an attack on Almeria.
  It would be in 1938 that Italian planes carried out most of their large-scale bombing operations, striking the cities of Barcelona, Alicante, Granollers, and Valencia, as well as the railway stations of Sant Vicenç de Calders in 1938 and Xàtiva in 1939. With a total of 728 raids on Spanish Mediterranean cities, the Aviazione Legionaria dropped 16,558 bombs and inflicted numerous casualties.
  On 12 May 1939, the last Italian aircrew embarked for Italy on the ship Duilio at Cadiz. By the end of the conflict the Aviazione Legionaria had logged a total of 135,265 hours' flying time on 5,318 operations, dropping 11,524 tons of bombs and destroying 943 enemy air units and 224 ships. Hundred and seventy-one Italian personnel had been killed and 192 wounded, with 74 fighters, eight bombers, two ground-attack planes, and two reconnaissance aircraft shot down or destroyed.
  The ratio of results to men and machines lost was positive, but also confirmed the Regia Aeronautica's commanders in their mistaken belief that biplanes and triplanes were still valid in modern combat. In fact the age of air warfare dominated by these aircraft was waning and it was becoming evident that radio needed to be mounted on all aircraft and that bomb-aiming needed to be done with special instruments rather than by sight These errors of judgement would prove decisive when Italy entered the Second World War in 1940.
caption: Aerial bombardement of Barcelona, March 1938
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