AEROPLANE TO AEROPLANO

         He had uprooted himself from foggy Europe to answer the peremptoriness of a duty: To love, in the field - in its constancy and its becoming - every image of God, imprinted in the story of everyone who loves, grows, suffers, hopes and therefore proves to be unique and non-replicable.      For many are called, but few are chosen            By Giorgio Torelli      (Translated and adapted by Leonardo Pavese)      In the long digressions of memory, which is so thick with solar images, one most lofty morning of many years ago comes to the foreground: The triumphant sun of Africa is proclaiming his lust for reflexes on the windshield of a small airplane, while I’m flying from Cameroon to Gabon with a pilot who’s wearing white silken gloves. We knew each other from other adventures. Dr. Albert Schweitzer        In my me...

                Alcyone is a character of the Greek mythology. A woman turned into a water bird by the wrath of Zeus. Alcione is the Italian translation of her name, but it is also the name that the Italians had given to one of their airplanes, the WWII bomber CANT Z. 1007.      The Alcione that is the subject of this post was also transformed. After it emergency-landed in French territory in 1940, this Alcione was turned into a unique and unrepeatable Italo-Franco- American hybrid land bird. And so l'Alcyon f rançaise, christened with a name that commemorated a glorious battle, spent the rest of its honorable service in the desert.         This is its story.                      The C.A.N.T. Z. 1007  Bir Hacheim      d i Luigino Caliaro (traduzione di L. Pavese)      On September 29, 1940, at 08:50, a formati...

       The " Telebomba " was not an Italian TV show or an exploding TV set, but it was an experimental stand-off weapon (tele, from the Greek "far" or "at a distance" and bomba, bomb in Italian) tested in Italy during WWI. The objective, of course, was to allow aircraft to launch bombs at a relatively safe distance from enemy air defenses. The concept was revived recently during the Russo-Ukrainian war , in which the Russian Air Force is using similar weapons very proficuously.      I thought that it would be interesting to show a couple of photographs of the Italian tele-bomb, excerpted from the n.145 of the Italian Magazine "Ali Antiche."     Ali Antiche is the publication of the GAVS , and Italian association of aviation enthusiasts who research Italian aviation history and restore historically significant Italian aviation aircraft. A Telebomba being attached to a bomb pylon of the Forlanini F6 airship The Crocco Guidoni “Telebomba” by Gia...

  The Mysterious I.G.R.    by Giulio Cesare Valdonio         I’ve had for many years in my library a brochure that was published in 1937 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the aeronautics laboratory of the Politecnico of Turin (Italy). The lab was started in 1912 by Dr. Modesto Panetti, encouraged by Colonel Motta who was the commander of the Battaglione Specialisti del Genio, the Engineer Specialist Battalion). The brochure contains a picture of an airplane that I cannot identify. In the wind tunnel there is mounted a model of a four-engine central hull seaplane, with braced wing and empennage.           As far as I know, in Italy the development of an airplane of that kind was never started; so, I thought that it could be academic study with no relation to Italian industry.      A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Politecnico of Turin’s wind tunnel, which was built after WWII in pla...

  April 28, 1945 , Giulino di Mezzegra , in the Province of Como, Italy. In a place so marginal to be almost invisible, there dies, after having been captured while he was fleeing and convicted without a trial, Benito Mussolini . And with him, Claretta Petacci . There was no order to shoot Benito Mussolini and his ministers. So, who did really kill him? A dialog with Luciano Garibaldi. From Pangea,  rivista avventuriera di cultura e idee. Traduzione di Leonardo Pavese About that day, oh what a paradox, the only certain thing is that it is not certain what you, certainly, will find in history books. That is, that the one who killed Il Duce was “ Colonel Valerio ,” an alias that can be traced back to Walter Audisio , an accountant from Alessandria, later a representative and a Senator of the Republic in communist garb. One could say that what matters are the outcomes and not the means. But it is not true: legends are built on the bodies of leaders. The identity of a nation i...