When General Guglielmo Nasi surrendered with military honors the last troops of the Italian colonial army in East Africa at Gondar in November 1941, many of his personnel decided to start a guerrilla war in the mountains and deserts of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.

On 9 May 1942, the Regia Aeronautica staged a long-range twenty-eight-hour Savoia-Marchetti SM.75 flight over Asmara, dropping propaganda leaflets telling Italian colonists that Rome had not forgotten them and would return.

One craft encountered fuel difficulties and instead bombed Port Sudan; both aircraft successfully hit their targets and returned to Rhodes, accomplishing a significant propaganda victory.

Their ambushes prompted the Allies under William Platt with the British Military Mission to Ethiopia to dispatch troops with airplanes and tanks, from Kenya and Sudan to the guerrilla-ridden territories of the former Italian East Africa.

[14] That summer, the Allied authorities decided to intern the majority of the Italian population of coastal Somalia, in order to avoid them possibly coming into contact with Japanese submarines.

[15] Italian guerrilla efforts declined following the Axis defeat at the Battle of El Alamein and the capture of Major Lucchetti (the head of the Fronte di Resistenza organization).

The guerrilla war continued until the summer of 1943, when the remaining Italian soldiers started to destroy their armaments and in some cases, escaped to Italy, like Lieutenant Amedeo Guillet,[16] who reached Taranto on September 3, 1943.