Riccardo Moizo (22 August 1877 – 27 February 1962) was an Italian aviation pioneer in the early part of the 20th century (in which he was one of the founders of the Regia Aeronautica) and a general during World War II. He was Commander-General of the Carabinieri from 1935 to 1940 and the last High Commissioner of the Province of Ljubljana in 1943; from 1939 to 1943 he was also a member of the Italian Senate.
Biography
Early years
He was born in Saliceto, province of Cuneo, on 22 August 1877, the son of Francesco Moizo and Ermenegilda Barberis. He enlisted in the Royal Italian Army on 14 October 1894, entering the Royal Military Academy of Artillery and Engineers in Turin, graduating on 4 July 1897 with the rank of artillery second lieutenant, after which he attended the School of Application of Artillery and Engineers. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 September 1899, and at the end of the courses he was assigned to the 7th Coastal Artillery Brigade. Between October 1905 and August 1908 he attended the courses of the Army War School in Turin, at the end of which he was sent to Rome, at the headquarters of the Staff Officer Corps; on May 13, 1909 he was transferred to Turin and assigned to the staff of the I Army Corps. On 10 August of the same year he was promoted to captain and assigned to the 3rd Fortress Artillery Regiment until 2 June 1910, when he was transferred to the 1st Mountain Artillery Regiment, while continuing to serve at the command of the I Army Corps.
While in Turin he developed an interest in the world of aviation; attracted by the novelty of the aircraft, he attended a piloting course, being assigned to the Specialists Engineers Battalion on November 17, 1910. He moved to Rome where he began to follow the course to become an airplane pilot on the Centocelle airfield, which he completed at the Malpensa airfield, where on May 31, 1911 he obtained the airplane pilot license, followed on August 1 by the military pilot license. In that same month, flying on a Nieuport monoplane, he participated in the great maneuvers of the Royal Italian Army held in Monferrato, the first in Italy that saw the participation of aircraft, then still used only for reconnaissance.
Italo-Turkish War
In October 1911 the newly established Aviation Unit, consisting of a squadron of seven aircraft operating within the Specialists Engineers Battalion, was sent to Libya following the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish war; in addition to reconnaissance, its aircraft were tasked with direction of artillery fire, study of the ground and the first, rudimentary, bombing raids. On 23 October 1911, after taking off, Moizo located and followed the movements of about 2,000 Ottoman troops, while discovering that the town of Azizia was located 60 km from Tripoli and not eight, as erroneously indicated on the inaccurate maps of the time. This was the first strategic reconnaissance flight ever carried out by an airplane. He participated in the air operations from the beginning of the war, being repatriated on May 7, 1912, but due to the lack of pilots on August 12 he was again sent to Libya, where he was assigned to the Zuwarah airfield, located about 100 km from Tripoli. After some missions in which his plane had been plagued by mechanical problems, he was ordered to return to Tripoli and on the morning of 10 September 1912 he took off with his Nieuport, but due to an engine breakdown he was forced to crash land in enemy-controlled territory, being captured by Arab irregulars and taken to El Hascian. He was then handed over to soldiers of the Ottoman Army and transferred to Jadu, where he was held until the end of hostilities. As such, he was the first airplane pilot to be held as prisoner of war in history. He was repatriated in debilitated physical conditions due to the harsh conditions of his imprisonment, and after recovering he resumed service in November 1913, at the 2nd Mountain Artillery Regiment, being awarded with the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Savoy for his fifty-nine wartime flights during the Italo-Turkish War.