Italo Balbo

Italo Balbo was an interesting character from the war.  Marshal of the Italian Air Force and Mussolini's heir apparent, he was against Italy's alliance with Nazi Germany.

In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, Balbo visited Rome to express his displeasure with Mussolini's support for German dictator Adolf Hitler. Balbo was the only Fascist of rank to publicly criticize this aspect of Mussolini's foreign policy. He argued that Italy should side with Britain. But Balbo attracted little following to his argument. When informed of Italy's formal alliance with Nazi Germany, Balbo exclaimed:  "You will all wind up shining the shoes of the Germans!".

There is something that I read somewhere, although, I can no longer find it, which told of the British 'war magician' Jasper Maskelyne, an expert in camouflage, who had made the harbour of Alexandria appear to enemy bombers to be several miles away.  This was discovered by Balbo, who instructed that dummy bombs be dropped on the dummy harbour.

On the 28th of June 1940, Balbo's aircraft was shot down by 'friendly fire'.  During his funeral in Tobruk, the RAF sent a single plane which dropped flowers.

Does anyone have any further information both on the dummy bombs being dropped and the RAF dropping flowers at his funeral?