Inside view of the forward fuselage’s section of a Romanian Air Force’s S.79 twin engine bomber. Note the nose machine gun station, one of five 7.92 mm machine guns of the standard defensive armament. Victor Sierra

Within a Romanian bomber

One of the 24 Italian-built Savoia-Marchetti S.79B bombers purchased on 1937 from the Forţele Aeriene Regale ale României (FARR), the Royal Romanian Air Force, and delivered on 1938. This aircraft were a twin engine version of the three engines S.79 with as power plants two French 950-HP each Gnome-Rhône 14K 14-cylinder, two-row, air-cooled radial engines built in Romania. During the ferry to Romania two aircraft was lost and with the remaining 22 S-79Bs was equipped the 1st Bomber Group (71st and 72nd Bomber Squadron) of FARR. Some of this planes was employed during the first phase of the war against the Soviet Union, but suffered heavy losses and was replaced by the new S.79JRs, the S.79 twin engine with the Junkers Jumo power plants. Victor Sierra