The corps and its Nazi German allies, the Condor Legion, fought against the Spanish Republic and provided support for the Italian ground troops of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie.

Ciano had in the meantime met with representatives of the Spanish monarchy to arrange the transfer of about thirty fighter planes and other equipment, which would arrive on 2 August, that would be sent by the French government.

On 27 July, Mussolini ordered the undersecretary for the Regia Aeronautica, General Giuseppe Valle, to send 12 three-engined Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 bombers with crews and relevant specialists to Franco.

Besides military targets, the Aviazione Legionaria carried out a great number of strategic bombings of cities in the Spanish Republican rear area.

The most significant one was the 1936 bombing of Madrid, ordered by General Franco, in which the city's residential areas were subject to heavy bombardment with the exception of the upper-class Salamanca district, which was assumed to contain many Nationalist supporters.

[4] In 1938, Italian planes carried out most of their large-scale bombing operations by striking the cities of Barcelona, Alicante, Granollers and Valencia, as well as the railway stations of Sant Vicenç de Calders in 1938 and Xàtiva in 1939.

By the end of the conflict, the Aviazione Legionaria had logged a total of 135,265 hours of flying time on 5,318 operations, dropped 11,524 tons of bombs and destroyed 943 enemy air units and 224 ships.

The ratio of results to men and machines lost was positive but also confirmed the commanders of the Regia Aeronautica of their mistaken belief that biplanes and triplanes were still valid in modern combat.