In the late autumn of 1963, the Aeroscuola Cerrina organized and carried out a challenging raid on the distant Canary Islands. From the tourist airport of Bruino (LILT code), not far from Turin, three of the team's aircraft undertook a flight of over 7,000 kilometres across the skies of France, Spain, and Morocco until reaching the archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. The departure took place on November 28th, with the first stop in Cannes for refuelling and the first stop in Perpignan. The Perpignan-Tenerife Air Rally included the twin-engine Cessna UC-78 Bobcat I-HOPE piloted by flight instructor Adolfo Ferioli (passengers Luigia Gambetti, Margherita Tesio, and Renato Friolo), the Orličan L-40 Meta Sokol I-CERD piloted by aerobatic flight instructor Giuseppe Demarie (passenger Aldo Zanotto), and the Partenavia P.57 Fachiro Il-f I-MOBI piloted by Giorgio Merlo (passenger Marco Galdi). In the Canary Islands, the airfields of El Médano and El Matorral on the island of Tenerife and the remote Punta del Faro runway in Jandia on Fuerteventura were touched. This visit to the desolate Jandia peninsula brings to mind a mysterious page in history. In the years before the Second World War, the German engineer Gustav Winter, a collaborator of the Nazi secret services, settled in Jandia to open a mining settlement. He dug tunnels with narrow-gauge tracks leading to the pier and levelled an area to allow aircraft to land. At the outbreak of hostilities, thanks to the connivance of the Franco regime, the infrastructure became an important support base for U-Boots operating in the Atlantic. The Allies learned of this only after the war, but in the meantime "Don Gustavo el Aléman" had already devoted himself to other matters.
In the picture: Promotional postcard of the Aeroscuola Cerrina with a bird's eye view of the airport and panoramic views of the infrastructures. (Aeromedia Archive)
(Aeromedia, December 2023)
