96 pages, 30 colour profiles, 15 colour drawings of unit badges, two appendices (S.79 warship kills 1940-41 and S.79 merchant ship kills 1940-41, in fact the tables also include damaged ships, the warship table down to splinter damage) and index.

Since childhood I have been interested in this sleek-looking Italian trimotor. And I was happy to see that again Mattioli has done a very good job. Again he has been trying to dig out what S.79 Sparvieri actually achieved by checking Italian claims against Allies’ records and clearly states which claims can be verified from Allies’ reports. There are still few overclaimings left but these are minor errors.

p. 11 Spanish battleship Jaime I
After S.79s bombed the ship in Almeria harbour it was according to Spanish Wikipedia able to reach the Cartagena naval base on its own power, not towed there as Mattioli writes.
Silverstone mentions the damage by bombings at Almeria in May 1937 but does not mention how she got to Cartagena. Conway does not even mention the bombings, only the explosion that wrecked Jaime I in June in Cartagena harbour. So I cannot say who is right.

s.57  While in his text Mattioli writes that 11° Stormo S.79s scored the Regia Aeronautica’s first ship ‘kill’ of the war when they damaged destroyer HMS Diamond off Malta on 17 June 1940. On the other hand, this attack is not mentioned in the book’s Appendix A S.79 warship kills 1940-41 -table. According to Naval-history.net HMS Diamond suffered only slightly damage on 11 June 1940 and it makes no mention of June 17. According to en.wikipedia, she was slightly damaged by air attacks near Malta on 11 and 17 June 1940, so its combat capabilities was unlikely to be affected by the damage, so IMHO not even a ship ‘kill’ with quotation marks. Chronik des Seekrieges 1939-1945 does not mention any damage of HMS Diamond on those days. Also, none of the books on my source list mention the possible damage on 17 June.

s. 72 The text states on July 6, 1940 that S.79s ‘were credited with having hit one of the naval vessels’. In fact,  British ships have not suffered any damage and correctly nothing is mentioned in the Appendix A.

On the Appendix A, very light damage are included into the table. E.g. battleship HMS Malaya suffered only splinter damage on 8 July 1940 – As it is written in naval-history.net: “During the day, the fleet was under air attacks from a total of 126 high level bombers. In one attack fire control cables were damaged by near misses and repaired.” So only slight damage that was repaired immediately, but the classification is ‘damaged’ in the table.

I checked the table for HMS Ark Royal and HMS Liverpool, for Liverpool it is OK, but for Ark Royal there are IMHO a few trivial matters. For 1 August 1940, Mattioli notes in the text that “shrapnel from the S.79s’ bombs inflicted modest internal damage on Ark Royal.” My other sources do not mention any damage. HMS Ark Royal could launch a planned air attack the following night as planned, so the damage she suffered had no operational impact. In the table, this is marked as “internal damage”, which tells very little about how dangerous/disabling the damage was. IMHO a better damage classification would be (insignificant)?, minor, moderate, heavy etc.

On 9 July 1940 HMS Hood, Resolution and Ark Royal suffered only splinter damage, the table and text say “minor damage”, which is practically the same thing.

On 27 November 1940 HMS Ark Royal suffered again only from near misses, but this time a few of those were very near misses indeed. On the page 157 in Apps’ book there is a sketch map showing the impact points of the misses in relation to the Ark Royal. Some bomb salvos were very close to hitting the ship and a few bombs exploded only appr. 10 yards from her hull.  Again in the table damage classification is “internal damage”. This time maybe at least partly meaning damage caused by the mining effect of so near misses.

So only few minor complains.

I was at first puzzled by the captions of two colour profiles (profiles 1, 12) which say that the planes illustrated have a large three-tone camouflage (green, brown and yellow), whereas the drawings themselves show a two-tone band camouflage (brown and yellow). Only after looking at page 46 in Sgarlato’s Italian Aircraft of World War II, which has a small colour plan view of the standard Italian large three-tone band camouflage, although the places of the green and brown are reversed to that in Mattioli’s book and at the b/w photos in this book on pages 19, 24 and 26 I understood that the Italian large three-tone band camouflage shows clearly as a three colour scheme only when viewed from the right or above. But IMHO probably even when viewed from the left,  the engine cowlings and the upper parts of the engine nacelles should have been painted with the third colour, in the case of the profiles 1, 2, 5 and 12 green, at least some of them. But I am a total amateur in the Italian camouflage schemes, so this is just an opinion of a total amateur. But any case the lack of any three-way profile drawings is IMHO a shortcoming.

So overall, it's nice to have a book that is based on careful research and contains accurate information about the machine's operations and what it really achieved.

Marco Mattioli’s text gives a brief description of the aircraft’s development and a detailed but clear account of its operational history on all fronts it served. But due to the limited number of pages available, the text sometimes felt a bit too catalogue but there are some short quotes from  war diaries of squadriglie, wartime reports and recollections of crew members.

I was surprised that S.79’s active involvement as a bomber ended so early, from 1941, its use decreased significantly and became more marginal towards the end of 1942. It operated as a torpedo bomber still in late 1944 as Mattioli has told in his earlier book, which I have reviewed earlier.

A lot of interesting photos unfortunately many are rather small.

Hopefully Mattioli will also write a book on CANT Z.1007bis in the future.

Apps, Michael, The Four Ark Royals (Abingdon: Purnell 1976).
Dunning, Chris, Combat Units of the Regia Aeronautica Italian Air Force 1940-43. Volume 1(New Malden: Air
     Research, 1988).
Gardiner, Robert & Gray, Randal, eds. (1985). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906–1921 (London:
      Conway Maritime Press, 1985).
Green, William, "Zappata's Wooden Kingfisher". Air International, August 1992, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 81–90.
Greene, Jack & Massignani, Alessandro, The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940 – 1943 (Barnsley:
      Frontline Books, 2011).
Playfair, I. S. O. et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East Volume 1: The Early Successes Against Italy, to
      May 1941 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1954).
Roskill, S. W. Captain RN, The War at Sea 1939-1945. Volume I. The Defensive (London: Her Majesty’s
      Stationery Office, 1954).
Sgarlato, Nico, Italian Aircraft of World War II (Warren, MI: Squadron/Signal, 1979).
Shores, Christopher et.al., Malta: The Hurricane Years. 1940-41 (London: Grub Street, 1987).
Shores, Christopher et.al., A History of the Mediterranean Air War 1940-1945 Volume One (London: Grub
      Street, 2012).
Silverstone, Paul H., Directory of the World’s Capital Ships (Shepperton: Ian Allan Ltd., 1984).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_battleship_Jaime_I  Retrieved on 23 November 2019.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_I_(1921) Retrieved on 23 November 2019.
https://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-10DD-19D-HMS_Diamond.htm  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Diamond_(H22)  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-06CL-Capetown.htm [July  6th  Carried out bombardment at
            Bardia in support of shore military operation] Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-06.htm  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-07.htm Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-11.htm Retrieved on 4 January 2020.
http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-06CL-Caledon.htm [bombardment at Bardia not mentioned]
           Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-01BB-Malaya.htm  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-04CV-HMS_Ark_Royal.htm  Retrieved on 29 December 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ark_Royal_(91) Retrieved on 29 December 2019.

Marco Mattioli’s SAVOIA-MARCHETTI S.79 SPARVIERO TORPEDO-BOMBER UNITS Osprey Combat Aircraft • 106 (2014) 96 pages.

One of the better Osprey books, based on what the Italian torpedo planes really achieved, not on what they claimed.

The first poor results with level bomber attacks against Allied ships forced Italians to form its first experimental torpedo-bomber unit on 25 July 1940, about 1½ month after Italy’s entry to the WWII. The first torpedo attack was made on 15 August 1940. So to my surprise the Italians were definitely a late comer to the torpedo-bomber field. The fact that the Luftwaffe sent its first landplane torpedo-bomber crews to Italy to get torpedo training and the fact that Italians had several successes with torpedo bombers during the WWII had made me to believe that Italians had longer experience with torpedo-bombers.

I was surprised how few planes made most of the early Italian attacks, usually only two or three planes participating. E.g. in December 1941 three Sparvieri attacked a Royal Navy formation of three Anti-Aircraft cruisers and eight destroyers. Not surprisingly they achieved nothing in good visibility. But sometimes those attacks by a couple S-79s were successful. The small formation size was a big contrast to e.g. IJNAF twin-engine torpedo planes attacks, e.g. against the Force Z (consisted of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales, the battlecruiser HMS Repulse and four destroyers) on 10 December 1941. In the spring of 1942 there were the first bigger formation attacks, 9 – 12 planes attacking same time early in 1942 and up to 41 against the Pedestal convoy in August 1942. In early November 1942, a couple days before the opening of the Operation Torch, Italians concentrating 75 S.79 and 25 S.84 torpedo bombers on Sicily and Sardinia. That didn’t mean massive torpedo attacks against the invasion fleets, the biggest S.79 attack consisted 14 torpedo-bombers and usually formations consisted of under 10 planes. They didn’t achieve much, the Allies only lost the sloop HMS Ibis. The effective defense of Allies forced Italians to initiate night attacks, and after they lost from 27 March to 10 April 1943 ten aircrews out of 25 engaged in daytime actions and had sunk only the 9,545-ton freighter Empire Rowan in return, Italians abandoned daytime torpedo attacks altogether.

When the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, the S.79 torpedo-bomber force numbered 99 aircraft, of which 41 were airworthy. Their only success was a hit on the fleet carrier HMS Indomitable.

On the page 23 there is an odd claim that a head-on torpedo attack would force the target ship to slow down. In fact the standard evasion maneuver was to turn towards attacking torpedo planes and so to give the smallest target to them. And anyway it takes time to slow down a ship. The attack described seems to have been a variation of the standard “anvil” attack in which one torpedo plane/group of torpedo planes approaches 45deg right off the bow and another 45deg left off the bow. If the target ship turns towards one attacker/group of attackers it gives to the other one clean broadside drop.

I was surprised how effective Blenheim fighters were against Savoia-Marchetti S.79s (meaning that they accomplished something) and how ineffective Beaufighters were (many times they managed only to damage S.79s, I had expected that a fighter armed with four 20mm cannons and six machine guns would have been more effective against rather archaic looking mixed construction three motor) during the early part of the war.

S.79 torpedo-bombers got their last success before Italy’s armistice was achieved on the night of 7 September 1943 when the 1625-ton British LST-417 was torpedoed and forced to run aground on the shore near Termini Imerese on Sicily.

While I have been aware on the German actions against Italian fleet after the Italy’s armistice on 8 September 1943 their actions against Italian planes trying to fly to Allied-controlled areas were new to me. Out of 34 Sparvieri which had set off for Allied-control territory, two were shot down by Bf 109G pilots of JG 77 who also forced three other S.79s to turn back. One crew flew north voluntarily.

 After armistice on 8 September 1943

Those Sparvieri which ended under Allied control were principally used as transport and liaison duties. Italians who chose to continue fight alongside Germany joined the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI), in northern Italy, which was created towards the end of September 1943.  Between the autumn and winter of that year RSI organized its own air force, the Aeronautica Repubblicana, later redesignated the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana (ANR). The first mission against Allies’ Anzio beachhead was flown on the night of 10 March 1943 by six S.79s but it was unsuccessful and one Sparviero was lost. The only success of the ANR Sparvieri occurred on 4 August 1944 when during the attack of three Greece based Sparvieri the 7100- British freighter Samsylarna was torpedoed north of Benghazi and forced to run aground. The last mission of the ANR Sparvieri torpedo bombers was flown on late 5 January 1945 by two Sparvieri crews. Through 1944-45 ANR Sparvieri succeeded in damaging just one freighter for the loss of about 100 airmen. 11 actions were fought, during which 50 torpedoes were dropped.

During the war Sparviero was the most effective antishipping weapon Italy had, the Sparviero units sunk 21 ships (nine warships and 12 freighters) and damaged 17 others (11 warships and six merchantmen).

There are some quotes from Italian combat reports and memoirs on some actions. The big plus is that while Italians’ claims are mentioned they are checked against Allied records and it is clearly mentioned what claims can be verified from Allied reports, same thoroughness is seen in several other Osprey books of this series, e.g. Osamu Tagaya’s Mitsubishi Type 1 Rikko ʽBetty’ Units of World War 2. There are many interesting photos, even some dramatic action photos, but most of the photographs are small. And of course the colour profiles, many of them very interesting as one can predict when Italian planes are in question. There are also 12 unit badges in colour. There are four appendices: S.79 torpedo-bomber units (giving basic facts of the units’ histories), S.79 warships kills 1940-43, S.79 merchant ship kills 1941-44 and S.79 Gold Medal for Military Valour recipients.

Altogether an excellent addition to one’s library.