Brave airman tried to circumnavigate the globe
The pilot was
celebrated for performing solo reconnaissance flights over Zeppelin yards in
Austria and for being daring enough to fly over Vienna, before he was shot down
and captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp. He tried unsuccessfully to
escape twice, but was successful on his third attempt and was able to rejoin the
Italian troops.
After the
war, he was awarded three Gold medals and a Silver medal for military valour
and made a Knight of the Military Order of Savoy.
Born into a
Bergamo family in 1895, Locatelli studied at the Istituto Industriale Pietro Paleocapa in Bergamo and then became chief technician at a local company.
After World
War I broke out, Locatelli joined a flying unit and was granted his pilot’s
licence in 1915. He then served in the poet and patriot Gabriele D’Annunzio’s air squadron.
He flew 513
sorties during the war, starting with reconnaissance missions, but then flying
fighters and bombers.
In 1924,
Locatelli led Italy’s attempt to achieve the first aerial
circumnavigation of the globe. With a crew of three, he flew a German-made
flying boat, a metal-hulled Dornier Do J Wal - whale - powered by two Rolls Royce
engines. He left Pisa on 25 July heading west, but his attempt came to an end
on 21 August when heavy fog forced him to touch down in the sea 120 miles short of Greenland. The
plane’s engine carriers were damaged and so the flight could not be resumed.
Fortunately,
four days earlier he had met up in Reykjavik with the American team who were
attempting the same feat and this meeting was to save the lives of Locatelli
and his crew..jpg)
A Dornier flying boat similar to the one in which
which Locatelli attempted to fly around the globe
When the
Italians failed to arrive in Greenland, the Americans raised the alarm and
Locatelli and his crew were picked up by a US naval ship that had been sent to
search the area.
Locatelli later became a National Fascist party legislator and was elected as a deputy to parliament. In 1933 he was nominated as podestà - mayor - of Bergamo, a role in which he served for a year.
In 1936, at the age of 41, Locatelli was killed in Lechemeti in Ethiopia during the second Italo-Ethiopian war. He was buried in the Cimitero Monumentale di Bergamo.
In Bergamo, Via
Antonio Locatelli in the Città Bassa is named after him
and he is also commemorated by the Antonio Locatelli Primary School in
Cavernago, a comune - municipality - situated about 11 km (7 miles) southeast of Bergamo.
Locatelli had been a keen mountaineer in his youth and had climbed the Adamello in Trentino with his brother, Carlo. Therefore, the Antonio Locatelli Hut, a refuge in the Tre Cime Natural Park in Alto Adige-South Tyrol is named after him.
To honour Locatelli’s memory, a statue of the Virgin of Loreto, the patron saint of airmen, is housed inside the refuge. From the refuge, visitors have panoramic views of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, three distinctive mountain peaks that look like battlements.
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