Building a Balbo
Italo Balbo was passionate about aviation, in particular Italian aviation. Desperate to show off the capabilities of the aeroplanes and pilots of Italy, Mussolini’s Undersecretary for Aviation devised a scheme considered crazy to fly a mass of aeroplanes around the Mediterranean all at once. It was ambitious and many thought a plan to fail. Balbo thought otherwise, and in June 1928 he launched his air armada; 61 seaplanes in formation crossed the water from Italy to Sardinia and on to Spain.
It was a spectacular success. Balbo filled the air with Italian aeroplanes and the world stopped to look up. He repeated the gambit several times, and his mass formation flights became so well known that they would forevermore bear his name: a balbo.
Fast-forward 90 years. Thousands of balbos have dotted the skies around the world over the decades and people still stop to look up, showing time and time again their worth as a means of grabbing attention.
And attention is what the organisers of last November’s 50th Anniversary Air Show at Lilydale in Victoria wanted, so it made a lot of sense to invoke Italo Balbo’s tried and true method. Using only aircraft and pilots based at the Yarra Valley airport, the plan was to put on a show that people would remember.
“For the 50th anniversary of Lilydale Airfield the organisers wanted to involve and showcase as many of the pilots that fly regularly at Lilydale as
