Hidalgo de Cisneros’s adventure

18 March 1937. Guadalajara front.

Ten days after the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) launched its offensive towards Guadalajara, the Republican air force ruled the sky. Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, head of the Republic’s air force, decided to take his own plane up to see the battlefield and the chaos in the Italian lines after that morning’s bombing. It was reckless: he could easily run into enemy fighters.

This is his own account of what happened:

“One of those days, as I was flying back, tired but pleased with how our pilots had done, I saw a Fiat fighter with fascist markings on my right, and immediately another appeared on my left. As you can imagine, I was terrified. My first feeling was that I had been a fool: how easily they had caught me! I did the only thing I could, a dive almost to the ground, but both Fiats followed and stayed right on me. To my surprise, they did not open fire. I thought they wanted to take me prisoner, but then one of them waved, and I understood. A few days earlier, five Fiats arriving from Italy had landed by mistake at one of our airfields; two managed to escape, but we captured the other three. These two planes were being tested on my orders, but I had forgotten about them, and the mechanics had forgotten to remove the fascist markings.”