That first raid on Gibraltar was almost a disaster, of the five aircrafts that took off from Decimomannu, in Sardinia, one was forced to return due to an engine failure and three of them were forced to land in Spain due to being too low on fuel. One of them managed to safely land in an Spanish airfield located in island of Mallorca and, thanks to Spanish pro-axis policies, it was quickly refuelled and left Mallorca bound for Italy again. Many other missions were launched until October which resulted in some damages done to Gibraltar. The 274ª Squadriglia (274th Flight) tried to switch to the more trustable SM.82 but their petition was refused as the successor to the P.108B, the P.133 was already in the design board, however that aircraft never arrived.
There were some successful raids on Gibraltar, once the endurance problems of the first mission were solved, like the ones that took place during the night of 3rd July, 24th September, 20th October and 21st October. Each of those missions involved one to four aircrafts, were unsuccessful and resulted in a 33% of loss rate. The results were poor as they only managed to destroy a parked Lockheed Hudson and some artillery positions in the first big mission and some unspecified damage in the others, in spite of the long-range mission crew training between 3rd July and September. On 28th October one of them force landed in Algeria when was coming back from a raid on Gibraltar, making that way the 16th sortie with one aircraft missing, two interned in Spain, two lost in Algeria and another one lost in Italy.
After the Allied invasion in French North Africa, more losses were sustained by the P.108B as they flew over Algeria and African targets. The Allied had over 160 warships and 250 merchant ships in the region, the Luftwaffe had a total of 1068 aircrafts divided in two fliegerkorps, the II. and the X. ones and the Regia Aeronautica had 285 based in Sardinia, 115 of them being torpedo-bombers. Therefore they were used also as naval bombers and, during those series of naval raids, at least three of them were shot down over Africa mainly by Bristol Beaufighters. However, over Algeria, P.108B managed to strike targets in Bône (nowadays Annaba), Algiers, Blinda, Philippeville (nowadays Skikda), Maison Blanche and Oran.
Some Allied ships were damaged by the P.108's raids and some Allied aircrafts were also destroyed in the raids as the P.108B was the only Italian aircraft capable of flying the 2000km (1240mi) to Oran. The 274ª Squadriglia (the main unit which operated this aircraft) had just eight of them and performed only 28 sorties in eight missions during a whole month. Three were shot down and one of them managed to repel enemy aircrafts using their wing turrets. Two of them were shot down by Bristol Beaufighters belonging to the No.153 Squadron RAF when the 274 Squadriglia bombed the port of Oran. The last of the raids on Algeria took place on 20th January 1943 and, as the serviceability dropped to just one or two aircrafts and the squadriglia needed to be reinforced, the were rebased to the mainland.
Once reinforced to eight aircraft, the P.108Bs saw many sorties against the Allied invasion force. A total of 12 sorties were made between 11 and 22nd of July 1943. Two aircrafts were destroyed during those raids and another two were badly damaged, mainly by Bristol Beaufighters and Mosquito night fighters with just one ship damaged, being that the last score of the 274ª Squadriglia.
The last of the 24 ordered P.108B was delivered in August. After the Italian armistice of 8th September 1943, there were only 9 aircraft available. Of those, eight were sabotaged to prevent their capture to German hands and the last surviving one flew to southern Italy where it was involved in a landing accident.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio_P.108#Operational_history
2. La Bancarella Aeronautica - Ali d'Italia 15 - Piaggio P.108
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