Modern/Post-War Photos

After seventy years

Stato Maggiore Marina

After 70 years an Italian fighter come out of the sea floor. On April 2012, during an exploration of the sea floor in front to Portovenere, in the Liguria’s coast, with Remus, an equipment for seabed’s mapping able to provide clear images, a team of deep-sea divers of Italian Navy’s COMFORDRAG (Comando Forze Dragaggio/Dregging Forces Command) has detected an aircraft’s wreck. The survey has identified the wreck: is a Reggiane Re 2000 employed in few exemplars by the Air Force, most certainly one of them built as naval fighter with launch through catapult and boarded on the Regia Marina’s battleship Littorio Class. And most certainly is the aircraft military code MM8281 of the Regia Aeronautica’s 1st Squadriglia di Riserva Forze Navali da Battaglia (Battle Naval Reserve Forces 1st Squadron) onboard of the battleship Vittorio Veneto lost on 16 April 1943. In that day the MM8281, pilot the warrant officer Luigi Guerrieri, was launched by the Vittorio Veneto together two other Re.2000, one of the battleship Littorio and one of battleship Roma, for an interception’s drill of torpedo bomber took off from Pisa, with return on the Sarzana Airfield. After the mission’s end the Guerrieri’s aircraft experienced troubles with the fuel system and, lacking the fuel, made an emergency water landing. The plane sunk and pilot was rescued by a Cant-Z-501 flying boat. The sinking’s point isn’t the exactly contact’s point of wreck discovered on April because in this 70 years in the water the plane was pulls by the trawls and in effect seem damaged on the tail. The MM8281 was a Re.2000 really interesting because was the prototype of the ten Naval Re.2000s built for launch through catapult from the Littorio Class of the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy). In origin an aircraft of the Swedish order, the MM8281 was modified for the new duty, but preserved the original full glasses canopy, flew for first time at Reggio Emilia on 27 Juin 1941 and afterwards was transferred in Apulia, at Grottaglie, for the test, May 1942, on board of the ship Miraglia. When the tests ended, the MM8281 was assigned, Spring 1943, to battleship Vittorio Veneto replacing the Re.2000 MM8283. The warrant officer Guerrieri survived to the war, but was killed on June 1946 in an accident in Apulia flying with a Lightning F-5, first pilot of the new Aeronautica Militare death in a flight accident. Victor Sierra