El Alamein area, 1942: a German Stuka abandoned after a disastrous forced landing in the desert caused by battle damages. Clearly visible on the left wing, exactly in correspondence to the wing’s black cross, the exit hole of an AA shot. The plane was clearly hit by ground fire who has also caused the engine failure (the upper intact blade seem a contact with the ground with no running engine). A British soldier checks-out the enemy aircraft by now inoffensive. Victor Sierra 

An unlucky Stuka

Comiso, Sicily, 1942: a Bf 109F of Luftwaffe’s JG53 moved in the workshop after the return from a mission over Malta with some onboard damages: clear on the right wing the heavy damage likely wreaked by AA fire. Notice also the bent propeller’s blades, sign of a belly landing. Victor Sierra 

Malta’s souvenir

Completely outdated as fighter aircraft, after 1943 the Italian biplane Fiat CR.42 surprisingly knew a new life into the Luftwaffe. On the model of the Soviet Forces, the Luftwaffe in fact established some units (Nachtschlachtgruppen) for night harassment beyond the Allied lines and anti-partisan roles equipped with various type of airplanes some outdated, but well suitable for this type of missions. Moreover the Russians employed as night harassment plane behind German lines most biplanes Po-2s. An airplane’s type choose by the Luftwaffe was precisely the CR.42 and the German Rüstungs-und-Kriegsproduktion Stab – which took control of Italy's aircraft industry after the Italy’s armistice of 8 September 1943 - ordered 200 Fiat CR.42LW (LW=Luftwaffe) equipped with exhaust flame dampers and armed with the two classic 12.7 mm Breda-Safat machine-guns and under wing bomb racks for four 50 kg bombs. After the Allied heavy destroyed several completed and semi-completed aircraft on the production line, the CR.42LWs completed was 150 and the planes accepted into services by the Luftwaffe was 112. The Nachtschlachtgruppen (NSGr.) which employed the CR.42LWs was above all the NSGr 9 and NSGr 7 plus the Jagdgeschwader 107. The latter flew anti-partisan missions in France, while the NSGr 9 and NSGr 7 served the first in Italy for night harassment missions beyond the Allied lines, included the Anzio’s landing head, the second for anti-partisan missions in Croatia. Victor Sierra