Late today afternoon, Sergeant Major Mirko Rossi, 41 years, under the 17 ° Wing of the Air Force, lost his life following the impact on the ground during a pre-planned parachute launch training activity was taking place at the Military Airport of Guidonia (RM).
The Petty Officer died at the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, where he was transported by an 118 helicopter.
After the incident the Sergeant Major had been immediately assisted by the military medical personnel present in the base.
The Air Force has activated the procedures to ascertain the causes of the accident.
PRP Channel is close to the pain of family members and the Armed Forces.
Insights
At the time of its reconstitution in the second post-war period, the Italian Air Force found itself strongly committed to pursuing its priority tasks, to try to give life, practically from nothing, to a renewed line of fighter jets, attack and, with the entry into NATO, including from nuclear strike. In this context, the dream of reviving, among its Departments, also a unit of paratroopers-saboteurs able to revive the glories and laurels of the ADRAs, the Arditi Destroyers of the Royal Air Force, distinguished in the last phases of the war in North Africa for the bold raids on allied targets had to stay in the drawer.
Only in the 1970 there was a fleeting attempt to establish an AM Regiment Formation Group, which was to incorporate a battalion of specialists in sabotage missions. Thus was born the "Blue Battalion", whose first volunteers soon began intense training at Guidonia airport.
For various reasons, however, the project was quickly abandoned and the patented staff was assigned, again in Guidonia, to the new "Parachute Section of the Air Force", where it gave life to the FALCHI BLU patrol, an acrobatic parachuting demonstration team that would have obtained well soon many national and international awards.
Alongside these propaganda tasks, the acrobatic team also maintained significant operational functions, which ranged from experimenting techniques and materials to participation, as instructors in rescue salvage aircraft, in survival courses at sea and in the mountains that the Arma Azzurra he began to organize for his flight crews.
At the end of the years, 90 was in the meantime outlining a new operational necessity: that of creating and operating nuclei of high psycho-physical profile rescuers and greater tactical skills, capable of performing, in addition to the traditional tasks in the SAR missions of search and rescue, also Combat SAR missions for the recovery of crews killed over the lines and in territory controlled by the enemy (in a basically linear war scenario).
The 17º Stormo incursori was born from the former Raiders Department of the Air Force (RIAM) until 8 April 2008. The current name of the department derives from the dissolved “17º remote-controlled interceptor flock” and its motto from the 17th Fighter Group.
The 17º Stormo incursori, framed in the 1st “Special Operations” Air Brigade, is part of the Italian Special Forces (TIER 1), under the command of the Joint Forces Command for Special Forces Operations (COFS).