Born in the Marche region (he was born in Fabriano, AN on February 14, 1917) and Roman by adoption, he obtained a diploma as an industrial expert. Enlisted in 1939 in the then Regia Aeronautica and won the competition in effective permanent service for the role of the Aeronautical Engineers, he participated in the Second World War in support of the troops deployed on the North African front, providing first-rate weather support for the vehicles of the time; in '41 in Tobruk, Libya, he had the task of replanting all the meteorological stations destroyed by the allies in the course of the conflicts up to Demia, on the Via Balbia. Returning to his homeland he was assigned as weather forecasting officer of the Assi of torpedo bombers at the Istres airport in France, where both Italian and German planes operated.
After the 8 September 1943 was captured by the Germans and interned in various Nazi prison camps in Ukraine, Poland and Germany, for a total of twenty months. The 14 March 1945 found a way to escape from the Magdeburg camp and returned to Rome on foot, walking continuously for two months.
At the end of the conflict he held numerous operational positions in the Air Force until 1958, the year in which, also given his excellent knowledge of English and French, he took on the role of secretary of the Aeronautical Meteorology Review and, subsequently, with the promotion to the rank of colonel, that of director of the same, after a brief spell as head of the weather office of the XNUMXnd Air Region. Over the long years at the magazine, ten.col. Baroni was able to write numerous articles and take care of the translation of many foreign works, contributing to the growth and cultural updating of the weather staff of the armed force, of the Italian scientific community, but also of the numerous passionate subscribers to the magazine.
In 1973 he was asked to prepare a lineup for the making of a film on the use of balloons for meteorological radiosondes. In the film, entitled Io vagabondo, the sounding balloon recounted its own adventures and those of its "radiosonda" friend in flying over the skies of all of Italy; the short film was a real success.
As already mentioned, in the 1973 he began to lead, still in service, the most followed RAI broadcast "Che tempo fa", together with his colleague and pioneer gen. Edmondo Bernacca.
The success was immediate and also the result of his desire to give birth to the thrill of an almost unknown topic that was to be "told" like the art of forecasting time.
He ended his active service in 1976, year of placement on leave due to age, while he continued to collaborate with RAI until the end of 1993.
In 1990 he was promoted to general rank for having participated in the resistance as a military intern in concentration camps, as recounted in Annalisa Venditti's book The Knight of Roses and Clouds. As the author of the book states, "General Baroni was a modern man of other times. A man that is always up to date, constantly updated on the facts of the world and on the matter he loved so much in his life, meteorology, but also a person with gentle, polite ways, perhaps a little austere looking, but with a heart of gold ".
Source: General Office for Communication - ten. with the. Alessandro Fuccello
