More informations about frame 1 battleground:

 

Beach head of Syracuse, 11th July 1943.

After one day of fierce fighting allied troops have succesfully consolidated their beachhead at Syracuse, during the following night the position is holded.

At dawn an armored counterattack is launched by the germans.
Allied attack planes scramble immediatly to defend the beachhead under threat, while fighters are taking off to sweep the sky in the target area.

The struggle for air supremacy over the beachhead is not going to be one-sided, as italian and german fighters are scrambling too in large numbers.

 

 

   More informations about frame 2 battleground:

Night of the 17th August 1943, 22.00 GMT,

USAAF and RAF planes are going to bomb once again Milan..
 All the italian night-fighters are scrambling, other  ones are already climbing in the darkness with their fighter-bombers.

 Elsewhere the british and american bombers are inflight: the USAAF have joined, knowing that tonight the visibility is enough to use their Norden at night.
 Also the american night hunters are flying, ready to spot and eliminate any undesired intrusion.

   More informations about frame 3  battleground:

 

18th of August 1943, eastern Sicily..

 

On the ground American and German armors are once again clashing, this time in a spectacular urban assault.

 The Brits are launching their attacks on two important objectives today, while RAF is being sent to help in the hard battle for Messina, the Fleet air arm will hit targets in the island of Sardinia, the last Mussolini's "carrier" in the Mediterranean.

The Italians are engaged in the same battles, and a well-known crack unit is involved, "I 4 gatti"* of xx xx, that, even if ill-equipped, are still some of the most experienced pilots of this theatre.

 

 

More informations about frame 4  battleground:

 When the airports scramble-alarms started screaming and the spotters reported: "many postmen and many blondes inbound Rome!", the nicknames for four engined  bombers and twin engined escortsl...

Fearing that Rome, the "Eternal City", was going to be demolished by the American bombers, the interceptors prepared themselves to launch their attacks even harder than usual.  

Actually a  pact, signed on the 14th of August 1943, had decided that Rome was an "open city", which means that it wasn’t going be bombed to preserve its treasures of art and archaeology.  By the way, even if also after this date allied "precision" daylight  bombings took place on this city, the  number of this raids was relatively  small and the damage too: that pact saved the beauties of Rome.


Other cities, like Milan or Dresden, were not so lucky to have such a pact, and,  even if both were ancient cities with beautiful medieval buildings  suffered heavy damage [Dresden 80% of the total buildings destroyed, Milan 40%].  

  Some  historians called this period  the " finest hour" of the Italian pilots, comparing them to the RAF pilots defending Great Britain in 1940, wich were the reasons of this final Regia Aeronautica's  final "Grand exploit"?

 There were mainly 3 causes:

- New generations Italian and German fighters-planes were reaching the front, not only the Macchis: FIAT G.55,109G-6 and the legendary Reggiane 2005 (almost as fast as a mustang and extremely manoeuvrable), and others.

- Their tactical position was good as they were fighting mainly over friendly territory.

- Their commanders were also enjoying more freedom of action in that brief period from the fall of the fascist regime (25 July 1943) to the cease-fire with the allies (8 September).