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Italian Aces of World War 1

 by Paolo Varriale, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2009, $22.95.

Back in 2003, Paolo Varriale collaborated with Antonio Iozzi and Roberto Gentilli to produce Italian Aces of World War I and Their Aircraft, a voluminous Schiffer release that was far from cheap but gave customers everything they paid for. Anyone who owns that seemingly definitive tome might dismiss Varriale’s solo effort for Osprey’s “Aircraft of the Aces” series as a poor man’s paperback edition of the earlier book, but it is a little more than that. Additional info has come to light since that earlier project, and Varriale has incorporated it into his biographies.

Italian Aces of World War 1 is a supplementary work for anyone with an ardent penchant for the topic. For the lay reader with a passing interest in the first air war, it stands on its own, summarizing the struggle for air superiority over an oft-neglected front.

 

Originally published in the May 2010 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.