Italo Balbo

Italian politician and aviator, born in Ferrara, NE Italy. One of the leaders of the March on Rome, he was the Fascist movement's military organizer. He was the first minister of aviation in Italy, and led mass flights to Brazil (1929) and the USA (1933). In 1933 he became Governor of Libya. He opposed the alliance with Germany and the antisemitic laws. In 1940 he was killed when his plane was brought down at Tobruk.

Italo Balbo
Ferrara
Place of birth	Ferrara
Place of death	Skies over Tobruk
Allegiance	Italy
Years of service	1915-1940
Rank	Air Marshal
Awards	- 1 Bronze Medal - 2 Silver Medals

Italo Balbo (June 6, 1896 - June 28, 1940) was an Italian aviator, blackshirt leader and possible successor of Mussolini.

Balbo was born in Quartesana, near Ferrara (Italy), in 1896.

Eventually he joined the Fascists and soon became a secretary of a local fascist section.

By the time of the 1922 March on Rome, he was a prominent fascist leader.

In November 6, 1926, despite the fact that he knew nothing at the time about aviation, he was appointed Secretary of State for Air.

Balbo led two trans-Atlantic flights.

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn's [March 2, 2006 column] called for the city to remove Balbo's name from the street and replace it with a more worthy Italian-American.

Chicago named Balbo Avenue after him and staged a parade in his honor.

Later in 1933 Balbo was appointed governor general of Italian-held Libya, where he moved in January, 1934.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Balbo visited Rome to express his displeasure with Mussolini's support for Hitler.

On June 28, 1940 he was killed while on a reconnaissance flight on top of Italian positions in Tobruk, Libya, in a plane without insignia. The government in Rome maintained that the incident was an accident of friendly fire but Balbo's widow, Emanuela Florio, believed that it was an assassination on Mussolini's orders.