On July 9, 1940, three SM82s staged the first Axis air raid on Gibraltar, all returning safely from their 2,100-mile round trip (the first of seven such visits by summer 1941, none involving more than three aircraft). Perhaps their most remarkable mission was an attack by four SM82s against oil facilities on Bahrain and the Arabian mainland in October 1940, a 2,800-mile round trip launched from the Dodecanese, staging through East Africa. This particular operation was headed by Ettore Muti (known to the Arabs as the ‘green-eyed Djinn’), another living embodiment of the Fascist ideal of the ‘man of action.’ He had been a spy, a bodyguard for Mussolini’s sons while they themselves were serving as bomber pilots in the Ethiopian campaign, and a pilot flying literally hundreds of bombing missions over Ethiopia, Spain, and Greece.
A formation of four Italian Savoia Marchetti SM82 aircraft (one an unloaded pathfinder) of the 41st Group did actually bomb oil installations at Manama , near Bahrain
The mission flew from Rhodes, via Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and the Persian Gulf to its target, returning via Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea to a refuelling point (pre-positioned by a fifth aircraft) in Zula, Eritrea. All aircraft then successfully returned to Rome
Six oil wells were set alight, and other installations damaged, each of the 3 loaded bombers having dropped 1500kg of light (15 - 50kg) incendiary and explosive bombs.
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