Death of a Caproni Bomber Pilot

Contributed by Ted Huscher

[Ed. Note. Aero-historian Ted Huscher  discovered the description  of this action in the photo-diary of Hungarian Cavalry Officer Pal Kelemen  and with help from Roberto Gentilli, has discovered the identities of the Hungarian fighter pilot who downed the Caproni bomber in this story, the number and crew members of the bomber, and the location of the incident, Fort Luserna, in Northern Italy.]

Wreckage of the Caproni Bomber at Millegrobbe
Near Fort Luserna

From Kelemen  Diary

Above us the big Caproni [Ca33 Ca1179] is seriously engaged with our little fighting monoplane [sic]. Our anti-air batteries send heavy charges against the sky without avail. The white smoke-clusters from the detonations spread and evaporate slowly on the sharply brilliant blue.

Our flier [top Hungarian ace Josef Kiss] gets nearer all the time to the clumsily maneuvering biplane, and the frequent cough of their machine guns can be distinctly heard on the earth. All of a sudden the Italian machine settles downward. Our wheels above it for a brief moment, then flies off northward [toward Ciré near Pergine Valsugana] while at ever-increasing rate the Caproni speeds toward the ground, its motor stopped, the wings wavering, and plunges to earth.

By the time I get there [a field near Fort Luserna] the body of the Italian flying captain [Gaetano Coniglio], killed by a machine-gun bullet, is laid out on the turf beside the plane. One wing [starboard] of the gigantic bird of war, bent and broken, has pierced into the earth and oil is filtering out of the riddled [port] motor.

Victor in the Air Action
Hungarian Ace Josef Kiss

The Italian officer is clad in a full leather suit, his faultless elegance disturbed only by the angle at which his cap is crushed over his clean-shaven face. A fine-worked silver wristwatch ticks on unshaken and the whole body stretched out at ease seems to be only sleeping.

We search his pockets; his portfolio is handed to me. Besides letters, bank notes, slips of paper, there is a double-folded card in a hard black binding: "Season ticket to the circus, Verona."

Insignia of the
5th Caproni Squadron 

Here on this barren shell-plowed field the circus is just a printed name on a piece of cardboard. The glittering lamps at the base of the box rows, the grubbed up carpet of the sawdust, the snapping whip of the ringmaster, the bareback rider in her tulle skirt and flashing jewels, and all the other endless delights of youth have been left behind forever by one young life. The other slender rakish officers in the box will wait tonight in vain for this comrade. But the music of the circus band will still blare and the floury-faced clown will turn somersaults with paid good humor on a velvet cover on the sand. And the ladies will flirt from afar, just as if he were there, as he was perhaps even yesterday.

I should like to slide the card back under the bloodstained shirt so that, as in pagan times when everything that served the hero followed him into the tomb, this property of his also should disappear from the face of the earth and there should be at least one place left empty in his memory, in the circus in Verona.

From Hussar's Picture Book: From the Diary of a Hungarian Cavalry Officer in World War I, by Pal Kelemen, 172-173, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1972.

Fort Luserna, Site of the Crash, Today

Ted Huscher's Further Research

By examining archival sources and references, Ted Huscher has discovered some additional details about this incident, which occurred on 25 August 1916. Caproni Ca33, Ca1179, was based out of Verona, and its commander, Capitano Gaetano Coniglio, who was KIA, was also the commanding officer of Squadriglia 5a. The aircraft was landed adroitly by his copilot, Tenete Guido Sobrero, who survived the crash, along with two other wounded crew members. This was Josef Kiss's second of 19 air victories, four (including Ca1179) of which were captured, making him the #5 ace for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ltn. Kurt Fiedler was Kiss's aircraft observer (the officer who rode in the back seat and fired the swivel machine gun) during the capture of Ca1179. Kiss had a forward-firing machine gun mounted on the top wing of his aircraft (a Brandenburg C.I26.29) that day. Kiss's aircraft received 70 bullet holes in the fierce aerial engagement.

As a member of my 2011 Italian Front World War I  tour group, Ted was able to make an evening side trip to Pergine Valsugana to visit the villa where the pilots of Fliegerkompanie 24 lived (now a hospital) from its perch overlooking the former location of their airfield (now a superhighway and warehouse/industrial district). From the tour groups vantage points during visits to Fort Belvedere and Fort Verena, Ted strained to see the likely landing place of Ca1179 near Fort Luserna, between the aforementioned forts. Fort Belvedere has a photo of the crashed Ca1179 displayed within its corridors.