Skotoni D.R. The last flight of general Enrico Pezzi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Air Command on the Eastern Front

Abstract: This article discusses how in the winter of 1942 the Italian SM-81 transport aircrafts flew across the line of the Soviet-German front. The triple-engine “Savoia-Marchetti” SM-81 was widely used in the operations of the 245th and 246th squadron of the Italian Royal air force to supply the garrison of the 8th Italian army under siege by the Soviet troops in Millerovo and Chertkovo. On the 29th of December 1942 the SM-81 plane of general Enrico Pezzi, commander of the Italian air force on Soviet occupied territories, flew out on his last flight from the Chertkovo airport without extort. The plane did not return and its crash site on the territory of Lugansk region has not been identified to this day. In recent years Italian historiography has dedicated new studies on the fate of Pezzi, the last general of the 8th Italian army, missing in action on the Soviet-German front. On the basis of published literature and documents the author describes the different possible hypotheses regarding the crash of Pezzi’s plane, as well as the research on this topic conducted by Italian and Russian scholars. The author comes to the conclusion that the place of the SM-81 plane crash should be searched for in the region of Lugansk.

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