Luigi Olivari

La Spezia, 1891-Santa Caterina, 1917

World War I: Fighters

From a bourgeois family, he enrolls in the Mirafiori school for civilian pilots and obtains his licence on a Blériot (November 1914). As a volunteer in WWI in the Aviators’ Battalion, he is assigned to the 1st Fighter Squadrilla (then the 70th Fighter Squadrilla), where he meets Francesco Baracca. From March 1916 to October 1917, he takes part in many air battles and dogfights, soon becoming the first Italian Ace Fighter. Transferred to the Baracca’s 91st Squadrilla (the ‘Squadrilla of Aces’), he dies in a crash on board his Spad S.VII near the airfield of Santa Caterina (Udine). Three Bronze Medals and three Silver Medals of Military Valor.