Handicapped by Italy's pre-war lack of a powerful engine suitable for fighters, Mario Castoldi's radial-powered Fiat C.200 was so underpowered and undergunned that when it arrived in service in 1939 it was already outclassed by the Hawker Hurricane which had joined the RAF two years earlier. Indeed the first C.200 unit, the 4° Stormo, expressed a preference for the CR.42 and accordingly reverted to the biplane in 1940. First flown on 24 December 1937 by Giuseppe Burei, the C.200, named the Saetta (lightning), went on to equip the 1°, 2°, 3°, 4° (in mid-1941) and 54° Stormi, and the 8°, 12°, 13°, 21" and 22° Gruppi, a total of about 1,200 aircraft being produced by Macchi, Breda and SAI Ambrosini. On the date that Italy entered the war, 10 June 1940, two home-based stormi were combat-ready with the C.200, being first flown in action over Malta in September that year, and it was largely the losses suffered by the Italian fighter arm at this time and during the Greek campaign that prompted the Luftwaffe to deploy X Fliegerkorps in the Mediterranean to bolster the Regia Aeronautica's flagging resources. C.200s were heavily committed in North Africa, and were fairly evenly matched with the early Hurricane Mk.Is, weighed down by tropical air filters, but the attrition suffered by all Italian air force units (principally through poor serviceability and air attacks on their airfields) quickly reduced the number of C.200s. Some 51 Saettas of the 22° Gruppo operated in the Odessa zone of the Eastern Front from August 1941 onwards, proving capable of matching the older Soviet fighters in the early stages of that campaign. By the time of the Italian armistice in September 1943, however, the Regia Aeronautica's total inventory of serviceable C.200s stood at only 33.

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