The third SM.75, registered in April 1938. In November 1940, I-TITO was involved in airlifting Italian troops from Brindisi to Tirana, Albania - no doubt for the war against Greece. Photo from: Smithsonian Institution

The Z.506C model of the Airone seaplane was a 14-passenger airliner but this first airframe, I-ALAL, was a special which in March and April 1938 made a route proving flight from Lido di Roma to Buenos Aires and back, covering 24,000 km at an average speed of over 300 km/h. Small Ala Littoria titles worn in cheatline. Where is that monument or lighthouse? I-ALAL impressed for military duties in June 1940. Photo supplied by the Fasisct era Italian Library of Information in New York City. Photo from: Smithsionian Institution

First S.73 for Ala Littoria. The type entered service with Sabena first in 1935. Photo from: Life

The S.74 was a large airliner seating a maximum of 27 passengers. The photo seems to have been taken on 27 March 1935 when the prototype, I-URBE, was flown to Rome - Urbe airport. The three examples built served on the Rome - Marseille - Lyon - Paris route until 1938. They were then sent to Tobruk in Libya and fully militarised in 1940. All three were lost during the war. Photo from: Nationaal Archief (Netherlands)

The Dodecanese Islands were an Italian territory in the Aegean Sea - Mar Egeo in Italian. A surviving 1935 timetable shows that Ala Littoria flying boats took almost three and a half hours from Brindinsi - Idroscalo Civile to Athens and two and a half hours from Athens to Rhodes. Developed from the S.55, the S.66 could carry 18 to 22 passengers - nine to eleven in each hull. The type saw service as a rescue aircraft during WWII. Photo by: Franz Grasser

'Arrival of the first direct Rome - Budapest flight.' The humble terminal here was replaced by a small modern building in 1935. Mátyásföld was replaced by Budaörs (LHBS), itself short-lived as Budapest's airport, in 1937. Photo from: Fortepan