Sabato Martelli Castaldi was born in Cava de’ Tirreni (SA) on 19th August 1896.

After spending his childhood in Raito, on the Amalfi coast, he moved with his father to Rome where he continued his studies at the San Giuseppe di Merode, and then enlisted as a volunteer at the Royal Army Academy in Turin.

Appointed second lieutenant in the Engineer Corps, he took part in World War I on 9th April 1916.

In 1917, after passing selection, he obtained his military pilot’s licence in Foggia and was once again sent to the front, where he flew more than a hundred missions. He was assigned to the Aerial Reconnaissance Department, where missions for aerophotographic surveys and subsequent photo interpretation were carried out. In the course of his career, he progressively qualified to fly different aircraft, becoming a versatile pilot with great skill in the various specialities.

At the end of the Great War, he returned a silver and two bronze medals for military valour.

On 17th July 1931, he was promoted to colonel for ‘extraordinary merit’, and on 1st December 1932 he was called to take up the post of Chief of Staff to the Minister of Aeronautics, Italo Balbo, at a time when the armed force was in the period of raids and cruises.

On 28th October 1933, at only 37 years of age, he was appointed Brigadier General ‘by absolute choice’: he is still the youngest Italian General of all time, for all the Armed Forces.

In 1934, as a result of a series of circumstances brought about by his report to the Duce in which he denounced the real state of the air force, he was discharged and, persecuted by the OVRA, unable to get a job. After months of difficulties and searching, he managed to be hired as an exterminator at the Stacchini powder factory in Rome. He will soon become a manager.

During those years, he applied several times to the head of the government Benito Mussolini for reinstatement in the Regia Aeronautica, but each of his requests was rejected.

After 8th September, he was among the partisan fighters at Porta San Paolo in Rome. With the battle name ‘Tevere’, in memory of the river that had witnessed so many of his sporting successes in rowing, he worked hard for the Resistance, collaborating with both the political side of the anti-fascist parties and the military side of the Clandestine Military Front.

On 17th January 1943, the German police arrested Stacchini, Martelli Castaldi’s employer, accusing him of supporting the Partisans. Martelli Castaldi, with the intention of exonerating Stacchini, presented himself at the SS headquarters and was arrested by them.

He was taken to the Via Tasso prison, where he remained in the punishment cell for sixty-seven days and was subjected to various tortures. Even there, he never stopped working on behalf of his comrades: by bribing the guards, he managed to write to his family and get food and medicine to all the inmates on his floor. Of those days, traces and testimonies remain through the letters and notes he wrote to his wife, Luisa Barbiani, and the inscriptions he left, including a poem, on the wall of cell no. 2.

The evidence that the SS managed to gather against him, however, meant that he became ‘deserving of death’ without trial.

He was killed, along with 334 other martyrs, in the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine on 24th March 1944.

His body rests in sarcophagus 117 of the Fosse Ardeatine Mausoleum together with those of the other victims. In perpetual memory, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour.

You can look up the birth certificate on the Ancestor Portal: Salerno State Archives, Italian Civil Status, Cava de’ Tirreni, 1896

The original is kept at the State Archives of Salerno

The Conscription List and Matriculation Roll are also kept at the same Institute.

For more on the figure of Sabato Martelli Castaldi, see the volume by Edoardo Grassia, Sabato Martelli Castaldi. Il generale partigiano, Padova, Ugo Mursia Editore, 2016.

Archival and bibliographical sources:

Archives of the Air Force Historical Office, Fondo Medaglie d’Oro al Valor Militare, b. 20, fasc. 169;

Central Air Force Library, Emeroteca, Raccolta Personaggi, cart. 75, fasc. 1337

In addition, the Air Force Historical Museum in Vigna di Valle preserves – following a donation ceremony in 2017 – some Martelli Castaldi memorabilia.