On 2 November 1940, five days after the Italian invasion, Greece had about 79 planes up against Italy’s 380. That morning, six PZLs of the 22nd Pursuit Squadron found themselves over Thessaloniki facing fifteen Italian bombers and seven escort fighters, according to Italian Air Force figures.

One of those six Greeks was Marinos Mitralexis, born in 1916 in Mila, Messinia. He entered the Air Force Academy (Σχολή Ικάρων) in October 1935 and graduated in 1938, training through the programme of the RAF College at Cranwell. The plane he flew was Polish, the PZL P.24, already obsolete by 1940, armed with two 20mm cannons and two machine guns.

The Italians came with fifteen Cant Z.1007s, escorted by Fiat CR.42s. The escort fighters dived on our pilots, but Mitralexis slipped straight through them and got to the bombers. After repeated attacks, he shot down the first one. The Greeks brought down three in total, yet most of the Italian formation was still untouched. Mitralexis picked out the next bomber and went after it. Then his ammunition ran out.

At that moment he had an easy way out: head back to Thessaloniki. For some men, that might have been a real option. Not for this Greek hero. Mitralexis did the unthinkable, scorning death. Ready to give his country the most precious thing he had, his own life, but determined to bring the enemy down, he threw his plane at the Italian Cant with no ammunition left and tore through its rudder with his propeller. The wounded Italian plane fell toward the ground, and four of its five crew managed to bail out. Mitralexis lost his engine in the violent impact. And still, our legendary pilot kept the plane in the air, brought it down in a slip, and landed in a field right near the Italians. Then he climbed out of the cockpit, pulled his pistol, and took the Italians prisoner!!

On 4 November 1940, a stunned British columnist at the Daily Mirror described the feat of a Greek pilot who, when his ammunition ran out, rammed a huge three-engine Italian plane in mid-air. By mistake, he named him as a Captain Dimitriou. The same piece reminds readers that the first ramming of the war was carried out by a Pole, Lieutenant Colonel Leopold Pamuła, on 1 September 1939, in a PZL P.11. Mitralexis, too, was flying a Polish plane.

For his deed he was promoted and received Greece’s highest decoration for bravery. He was the only airman to receive it during the war. When Greece fell in 1941, he crossed over to Africa and kept fighting alongside the Allies. In total he scored five aerial victories. In 1968 a stamp was printed showing the ramming, and there’s a statue of him at Elliniko.

On 19 September 1948, on a training flight in an Airspeed Oxford, the plane’s engine failed badly over the Aegean. It went down near Tinos, and none of the three men on board survived. Mitralexis was one of them. The man who had walked away from the ramming, and from an entire war, was killed by a random mechanical failure.

When the weapon runs empty, the Greek soul doesn’t turn back. It gives whatever it has left…

Christodoulos Molyvas

Head of Sector for European Directives and National Legislation of the NIKI Greek patriotic movement