Italo Balbo halála

1940. június 28.

July 5, 1940. Giornale Italie.Italo Balbo (5 June 1896 - 28 June 1940) was an Italian Blackshirt (Camicie Nere, or CCNN) leader, Marshal of the Air Force (Maresciallo dell'Aria), Governor-General of Libya, Commander-in-Chief of Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI), and the "heir apparent" to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.At the time of the Italian declaration of war on 10 June 1940, Balbo was the Governor-General of Libya and Commander-in-Chief of Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI). He became responsible for planning an invasion of Egypt. After the surrender of France, Balbo was able to shift much of the men and material of the Italian Fifth Army on the Tunisian border to the Tenth Army on the Egyptian border. While he had expressed many legitimate concerns to Mussolini and to Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Chief-of-Staff in Rome, Balbo still planned to invade Egypt in early July.On 28 June 1940, while landing on the Italian airfield of Tobruk a few minutes after a British air attack, Balbo was shot down by Italian gunners and killed. The cruiser San Giorgio started firing on his Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 airplane (bearing the civil registration "I-MANU" in honor of his wife, Donna Manu), followed by the airport's anti-air guns. It is still not clear which of them shot him down. The government in Rome maintained that the incident was an accident of friendly fire, but Balbo's closest friends and his family strongly believed that it was an assassination on Mussolini's orders. This idea was supported during Mussolini's next visit to Tobruk to review the Italian forces, during which he refused to visit Balbo's place of death. A 1997 interview with the gunner who shot him down claimed that Balbo's plane was simply identified as an enemy target, as Balbo was flying low and coming in against the sun after an attack by British Bristol Blenheims. But debate continues. Italo Balbo's remains were buried outside Tripoli on 4 July 1940.