World War I: Fighters

WWI sees the confirmation, both in Italy and abroad, of the ‘mythical’ figure of the ‘flying ace’, a myth that shapes the collective imagination and remains unaltered in the war’s immediate aftermath. The audacious and fearless pilot finds its archetype in Gabriele D’Annunzio and in Francesco Baracca. Compared to the army soldiers who live the hard reality of ‘total war’ in the trenches, the aviator who flies high in the sky seems to be a ‘winged knight’. Even if riding a machine, the fact of fighting among the clouds and challenging the enemy in acrobatic maneuvers and dangerous duels provides many pilots with a more ‘human’, romantic and noble dimension of war. In actual fact, the death in store for a pilot when downed, trapped in the flames of his machine, has nothing heroic about it.