THE STORY OF A "PRANCING HORSE" THAT FOREVER LINKED BARACCA AND FERRARI

Some stories draw a part from official historiography, a part from personal memory, and the rest from myth and popular tradition. This is the tale we've been told about the origin of the Prancing Horse, an emblem that forever connected two great Italians: Francesco Baracca and Enzo Ferrari.

"Dear Ferrari, put it on your racing cars. It will bring you luck." It was June 17, 1923, when Enzo Ferrari, a penniless twenty-something with a tough life behind him, won the first automobile race of his life: the Savio Circuit Grand Prix, soaring on an Alfa Romeo bearing the number 28. Witnessing the young driver's first triumph was Countess Paolina de Biancoli. Enthusiastic about the race, she perhaps sensed a kinship between the young man, orphaned of his father and having lost a brother at the front, and her own son, forever lost in the Battle of the Solstice. Thus, driven by the tenderest maternal nostalgia, she is said to have decided to present Ferrari with a "black prancing horse" painted on a piece of canvas.

It was the same emblem that uniquely adorned a Spad S XIII. This combat biplane, produced by the French Société Pour l'Aviation et ses Dérivés, was entrusted in battle to her daring fighter pilot son, Major Francesco Baracca, the ace of aces of the Royal Italian Army, who had brought cavalry to the air.

The Ace of Aces

Francesco Baracca, born in Lugo, in the same Emilia-Romagna region where Ferrari was born, was the most important Italian fighter pilot of the early twentieth century and throughout Italy's military history. A skilled and courageous aviator, an idol of the crowds as only the Red Baron had become before him, he was considered an Italian legend.

A cadet at the Pinerolo cavalry school, then assigned to the 2nd "Piemonte Reale" Regiment, founded in 1692 by the Duke of Savoy with the motto "Venustus et Audax" and bearing a silver prancing horse on a red field, looking left with a lowered tail as its heraldic crest, the young Baracca—already an accomplished and competitive horseman—chose the path of the future after witnessing the exercises of the new "cavalry of the air" at the Centocelle airfield in Rome, embracing the daring new specialty of warfare flight.

He began to dominate the skies in early reconnaissance missions and achieved his first victory in a Nieuport 11 "Bébé", shooting down an Austrian reconnaissance aircraft. The event marked the first success of Italian aviation in combat history. Forced to land, the pilot of the enemy aircraft was greeted by the victor with a warm handshake—an indelible sign of the chivalry that prevailed among early fighter pilots.

The great Folco Quilici recalls in Umili Eroi (Humble Heroes): "...it's the aircraft I aim for, not the man," Baracca would say, explaining to his listeners: "When I fly, especially when I'm dueling with the enemy, my mind is empty, free, it doesn't think. I act on instinct, I roll the plane, I let it slip on the wing, I put it into a spin, I recover it."

A "Prancing Horse"

It was on his subsequent aircraft, a silver Nieuport 17 of the 70th Squadron, on which he achieved his fifth victory and became an "ace," that he chose to adopt the black prancing horse as his personal emblem. His comrade-in-arms, Prince Fulco Ruffo di Calabria, with whom he shared several victories, instead displayed a piratical and mocking smiling skull with crossed tibias.

Regarding the origin of the emblem that Baracca chose, and which today, thanks to Ferrari, the whole world knows and envies, there are two hypotheses. According to the first, as already mentioned, it refers to the stylization of the crest of the 2nd "Piemonte Reale" Cavalry Regiment to which Baracca belonged. The second, however, links it to chivalry in the purest sense of the term's virtuosity. The first aviators became aces upon shooting down their fifth opponent, and as a sign of respect to honor the adversary, they would paint the insignia of the last on their own plane. Baracca's fifth opponent, according to some reconstructions, was a pilot from Stuttgart who had chosen his city's symbol, the mare, as his personal emblem. The matter remains a small mystery.

In the first two years of the war, Baracca earned the rank of captain and was awarded numerous honors. On May 1, 1917, he was assigned to the 91st Squadron, where all the best pilots of the Royal Army, personally chosen by Baracca, had been assembled. In what was nicknamed "the squadron of aces," were Pier Ruggero Piccio, Fulco Ruffo di Calabria, Gaetano Aliperta, Bartolomeo Costantini, the unforgettable Guido Keller, who flew a plane emblazoned with a large red heart, Giovanni Sabelli, Enrico Perreri, and Ferruccio Ranza, whose plane featured a black owl. Many of the planes, including Baracca's, also displayed the "griffin," the symbol of the entire squadron.

Unfortunately, on June 19, 1918, the ace of aces was killed during a low-altitude strafing mission over Austro-Hungarian trenches near Montello, along the Piave line. Perhaps the target of a sniper, perhaps self-inflicted with a revolver shot to the temple—a sad custom for fighter pilots who did not wish to die burned in their flaming airplanes. The remains of the aircraft and his body were found on June 23 by Captain Franco Osnago, his companion on his last flight, who reached the slopes of Montello alongside Lieutenant Ranza.

Baracca was 30 years old, with a thin mustache, an uncertain smile, and dark eyes. He had earned a Gold Medal of Military Valor, the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Savoy, the Knight Officer's Cross of the Belgian Crown, and had achieved 34 victories in the sky.

How Ferrari Also Flew

Returning to the young Ferrari, legend has it that he accepted the memento without quite knowing how he would use it. At that time, "the Drake" raced as a gentleman driver, piloting Alfa Romeos, a already famous car manufacturer that already had its own emblem. It was just a matter of time. The following year, 1924, Enzo Ferrari founded a company with the aim of buying, modifying, and competing with racing cars on the national sports calendar.

On July 9, 1932, the Prancing Horse once again found its place in history, speeding at the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps against a yellow background—a color changed from the original white in honor of his hometown, Modena.

Ferrari would build his emblem upon this. His vast knowledge of automobile chassis and his boundless love for racing cars led to the birth of the "Scuderia Ferrari" in 1947. This enterprise had to relocate to Maranello for fear of bombings brought by that very specialty of warfare which had by then matured all its most lethal capabilities. It was no longer pioneering, nor overly chivalrous; it was simply total war, even from the air.

Ferrari's racing stable, destined to become a true legend of motorsport, debuted at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1950, where it finished second thanks to Alberto Ascari. The rest, you know better. Like many great figures inextricably linked by history, Francesco Baracca and Enzo Ferrari never met. They were born almost in the same corner of the earth, and who knows if they would have bonded. One thing we can be sure they had in common: with the machines invented by man, they flew fast. Fast enough to make our country proud forever.