Some 80 years ago this month:
German paratroopers of 1. Fallschirmjäger-Division and Italian para of the Reggimento arditi paracadutisti Folgore, the latter armed with a twin-triggered Beretta MAB Modello 38 sub gun on the front near Nettuno/Anzio, late April 1944. Note the “samurai” magazine vest of the Italian para, who still has an Italian M42-style helmet but a German Splittertarn B jump smock.
Polish NAC Archives 2-2159
Curiously, there was a Folgore unit on each side of the Italian forces at this time, one fighting with the Allies, and one fighting (above) with the Axis.
The Original Folgores
The Italians got into the paratrooper game early, with 1º Reggimento paracadutisti “Fanti dell’aria” formed 22 March 1938, a full two years before the first U.S. Army Airborne Test Platoon, and, on 15 October 1939, the Royal Air Force Parachute School was established in Tarquinia with three battalions formed by 1940 and their baptism of fire seen in a combat jump on the Greek island of Kefalonia on 30 April 1941.
The Italians ultimately fielded three paracadutisti divisions– 183ª “Ciclone”, 184ª “Nembo”, and 185ª “Folgore”– with, ironically, the Folgore unit formed earliest, in September 1941 from the nucleus of the service’s incorporated.
Sent to North Africa in 1942, these original Folgores fought at El Alamein and were ultimately destroyed in defense of the Mareth line in Tunisia in 1943.
Italian 185ª Divisione Paracadutisti italiani Folgore, at El Alamein, note the German camo smocks and Beretta 1938s. The unit would be destroyed in North Africa
The Late War Axis Folgores
By the time of the Italian armistice of 8 September 1943 that brought about what was essentially an Italalin civil war between the liberated areas in the South which fought alongside the Allies and the pro-Mussolini Repubblica Sociale Italiana in the Northern areas under German occupation, two Italian parachute units of the Nembo Division– the 12° Battaglione (Magg. Rizzatti) in Sardinia and the 3° Battaglione (Cap. Sala) in Calabria– cast their lot with the Germans.
These units, joined by a newly recruited third (Battaglione Azzurro), were sent to Spoleto to undergo jump training with German parachutes under FJD instructors and, once that was finished, were formed on 27 April 1944 as the new “Reggimento arditi paracadutisti Folgore.”
Officially part of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana-– Mussolini’s rump air force– they were in effect under the operational command of the 1st FJD, fighting at Anzio and Nettuno, then Rome, then Northern Italy.
They ultimately surrendered to American troops at Saint Vincent near the Swiss border on 4 May 1945.
The Other Folgores…
Meanwhile, in September 1943, one Capt. Captain Carlo Francesco Gay, late of the 3° Battaglione of the Nembo Division, elected to join the Allied cause and, with some 226 fellow paracadutisti– including some North African veterans of the original Folgore division sprung from Allied POW camps– formed the 1º Squadrone da ricognizione “Folgore,” a reconnaissance parachute unit of the Italian Cobelligerent Army under the operational orders the British XIII Army Corps (as “F” Recce Squadron) during the Italian campaign.
They spent 1944-45 carrying out sabotage actions and recon beyond enemy lines to precede the Allied advance including fighting in the streets of occupied Florence in civilian clothes, a big Geneva convention no-no.
They even got in a combat jump in April 1945 during Operation Herring outside of Bologna, using British equipment and jumping from American C-47s.
Talk about brother against brother!
Paracadutisti Douglas C-47 Dakota/Skytrain all’aeroporto di Rosignano per l’operazione Herring (20 April 1945)
They still carried Beretta MAB 38s as well!
Post-war, the current Italian para unit, located in Livorno, is 185º Reggimento paracadutisti Ricognizione ed Acquisizione Obiettivi “Folgore,” and carries the old “F” Squadron insignia as a beret badge, on a British-style “cherry beret.”
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