2023-07-19 04:25:04
In addition to being the tomb of hundreds of brigade members and showing Europe that the war was not going to end in a flash, the battle of Jarama was also the scene of a thousand and one ‘dog fights’, a curious euphemism to define air combat. between airplanes. During the first days of the conflict, the Republican air force ruled the skies thanks to its Polikarpov I-15 and I-16. Maneuverable, compact and fast, the aircraft wreaked havoc between the slow Junkers Ju-52 bombers and the Fiat CR-32. The so-called ‘Lacalle Squad’, under the command of ‘ace’ Andrés García Calle, became their main executioner.
dog fight
Meanwhile, the rebellious airplanes were limited to carrying out air patrols and the pilots of the Italian Legionary Aviation had received orders to avoid air combat in Jarama to reduce their already heavy number of casualties. «Upon seeing us and verifying that the fighter that was protecting them did not advance to break our formation, the enemy column [de bombarderos] he turned and walked away. […] Then they returned to the charge, but the fighters always protected them at too high a height and quite late, “explained Calle himself in his memoirs. The situation only changed when, in mid-February, Joaquín García-Morato and his ‘Escuadrilla Azul’ were sent to the front.
García-Morato, considered one of the best pilots of the rebel aviation, brought with him a paradigm shift. On February 18, during one of his air patrols, he broke the rules and launched with his two companions, Narciso Bermúdez de Castro and Julio Salvador Benjumea, against 26 Republican fighters. That show of gallantry made the 21 Italian Fiats that accompanied them do the same. The aviator from Melilla affirmed shortly after that day, in the solitude of the cockpit, he could only think that he would die. It was not like that and they were victorious. A first of many others that would arrive over the skies of Jarama against the Polikarpovs.
That battle, exacerbated by the Francoist press of the time, further increased the rivalry between García-Morato and Calle. The first, promoted by the media, allowed himself the luxury of challenging his enemy in a single duel. It seems that the Republican did not accept, as he explained in his memoirs: «Alfredo Tourné informed me that General Queipo de Llano had announced on the radio that García-Morato was challenging me to a fight on Jarama. I replied that it seemed simple to me since I did not need to challenge anyone, since every day I could find myself in the Jarama in front of my squadron ».
Dear to dear
The Polikarpov I-16 was a Soviet fighter that was a great evolution over its previous version, the I-15. And it is that, while his little brother was agile but slow, this airplane could reach 450 kilometers per hour, which made it one of the fastest of the time. Although the main advantage of this airplane – its speed – also made it a double-edged sword for novice pilots, who from time to time crashed into the ground when landing. When the Civil War began, the Republic received a hundred of these fighters, a number that increased to 300 when the war ended.
In these lands it demonstrated its effectiveness and, on many occasions, it became a headache for Franco’s aviation. The Polikarpov I-16 was nicknamed ‘Rat’ because it attacked enemy bombers from below, coming out of the ground as if it were one of these animals. Although the most striking thing is that, although it was despised by foreign powers, it was a revolutionary airplane, as JA Guerrero explains well in his dossier on this device prepared for the San Martín publishing house. Its mixed manufacturing – metal and wood – made it more resistant than its contemporaries, built in plywood and canvas; it had armor at the rear and was armed with between two and four unsynchronized 7.62mm caliber machine guns in the wings.
I-16 exhibited at the Cuatro Vientos Air Museum, in Madrid ABC
In return, the backbone of the Francoist air forces was formed by the CR-32 fighters of the Aviazione Legionaria. Mussolini sent 400 of them throughout the entire war, and the truth is that he gave the rebels a lot of air. And the same thing happened in Italy, where some 1,200 were built in its four versions. Michael Alpert maintains in ‘The Civil War in the air’ that, despite having larger dimensions than the I-15 and I-16, these aircraft demonstrated that their advantages were maneuverability and robustness: «Throughout the entire conflict was armed with a larger machine gun [de 12,7 mm] than that of the Russian fighters. In return, it was slower, reaching a top speed of 360 kilometers per hour.
It is difficult to know which of the two was more lethal. Guerrero is in favor of the fact that there are no reliable data. The most efficient, according to wield, is to resort to primary sources: the aviators who fought in the Civil War. One of them, Francisco Tarazona, left blank how annoying the ‘Chirris’ were in his memoirs, ‘I was a red fighter pilot’: «That was the way to hunt the Fiats, based on passes and having the advantage of altitude. The ‘Fly’, although much faster than the Italian fighter, was easy prey for it when it was imprudent enough to fight against it. Then the smaller turning radius and the greater maneuverability of the Cr-32 became poison for our monoplane ».
These are, without a doubt, the words that best define the ‘dogfights’ between them. And it is that, although in practice the expertise of the rebel aviators balanced the contest in the skies, the reality is that, on paper, his ‘Chirri’ was behind the Soviet enemy. “The I-16 far surpassed its most numerous opponent, the Fiat Cr-32, despite the fact that the particular conditions of the Spanish conflict made it succumb many times to the agile Italian biplanes,” explains Guerrero. That mirage was expensive for the Soviet Union and made a ‘Fly’ who was revolutionary for the time fall from grace.
Pilots and planes with the most casualties in the Civil War
Air Forces of the Spanish Republic
Serguei Ivanovich Gritsevets / 30 – 40 / Polilarpov I-16
Jose Maria Bravo Fernandez-Beautiful / 23 / Polilarpov I-1
Manuel Zarauza Keyboard / 10 – 23 / Polylarpov I-1
Andrés García Calle (“Lacalle”) / 11 – 21 / Polilarpov I-15
National Aviation
Joaquin Garcia Morato / 40 / Fiat CR-32 “Chirri”
Julio Salvador and Diaz-Benjumea / 21 – 26 / Fiat CR-32 “Chirri”
Manuel Vazquez Sagastizabal / 21 – 22 / Fiat CR-32 “Chirri”
Arístides García-López Rengel / 17 – 18 / Fiat CR-32 «Chirri»
#fighter #Civil #War