Libya. Colony governor Italo Balbo, after insistently requesting an order for action against Egypt, where British forces were significantly inferior (40,000 British, albeit with superior planes and tanks, compared to 221,000 Italians). The order arrived on June 28, but Balbo had died half an hour earlier, shot down while returning from a reconnaissance mission in enemy territory. Balbo, a fascist quadrumvir, a dangerous rival of Mussolini, founder of the Regia Aeronautica, and the first formation flyer of the Atlantic, was personally piloting his S79 trimotor, and it would later emerge that he was mistakenly shot down by Italian anti-aircraft fire from the cruiser San Giorgio, which ran aground off Tobruk, mistaking it for a British bomber. Fascism would conceal this inconvenient truth, deeming him shot down by the enemy.
