República Española Aeronáutica Militar "Improvisada" Aircraft Patterns

No Pasarán

In the summer of 1936, the Spanish Republic found itself at war with a military uprising backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Soviet Union responded with material support — aircraft, tanks, advisors, and volunteers operating under cover identities. Among the first deliveries were thirty-one Tupolev SB-2 fast bombers, shipped disassembled from Odessa aboard the freighter Komsomol and reassembled at Los Alcázares airfield on the Murcian coast.

The Spanish called them Katiuska — little Katia. On 28 October 1936, four Katiuskas of the 1ª Escuadrilla, Grupo 12, flew the type's first combat mission, attacking the Nationalist air base at Tablada near Seville. They escaped interception by outrunning the defending fighters — the SB-2's speed was, for a brief window, its best protection. The Fiat CR.32 and Heinkel He 51 biplanes of the Nationalist forces could not catch it in level flight; diving from high altitude was the only viable intercept.

That window closed quickly. On 2 November, a Katiuska was shot down by CR-32s, exposing the type's critical weaknesses: no armour for the crew, no self-sealing fuel tanks. Grupo 12 lost six aircraft before the year was out.

A second batch of thirty-one SBs arrived in June–July 1937, bringing Grupo 12 back to strength and allowing the formation of a new all-Spanish unit, Grupo 24. Both grupos flew through the Battle of Brunete that July, where a Katiuska was downed by a Bf 109B of the Legion Condor — and one of those fighters was shot down in return. On 29 May 1937, two SBs attacked the German pocket battleship Deutschland off Ibiza, mistaking it for the Nationalist cruiser Canarias; the strike killed 31 and wounded 83 German sailors, triggering a retaliatory bombardment of Almería by the German fleet.

Soviet volunteer crews were withdrawn in autumn 1937. Spanish crews took over. Grupo 12 was disbanded; its aircraft absorbed into Grupo 24. As the Bf 109 became more prevalent, losses mounted. By June 1938, few SBs remained serviceable. A final delivery of thirty-one SB-2M-103As arrived via France in July 1938, bringing the total of Spanish Katiuskas to ninety-three. By the time the Civil War ended in April 1939, seventy-three had been lost — forty to enemy action.

Nineteen surviving SBs were captured by the Nationalists and formed into a bomber squadron. Some were re-engined with French Hispano-Suiza 12Ybrs motors to ease maintenance, but spares remained scarce. By April 1943 only three were airworthy. When Junkers Ju 88s arrived in December 1943, the remaining Katiuskas were relegated to occasional training flights before being withdrawn and scrapped in 1948.

The camouflage applied to Republican SBs is poorly documented. Aircraft arrived from Soviet factories in matt light grey; Spanish ground crews repainted them in locally sourced colours whose exact shades are unknown and likely varied by unit and period. Surviving physical evidence — a fragment owned by researcher Isaac Montoya — shows layers of dark green, a yellowish primer or overpaint, and traces of the original Soviet grey beneath. Wartime photographs suggest a range of schemes: tan or brick-red uppersurfaces on early aircraft, later giving way to two-tone disruptive patterns in brown or green over dark green, with some aircraft in uniform green overall.

The pattern carried here is drawn from that improvised tradition — the Air Force of a republic fighting with what it had, painted in colours mixed at the airfield.