The Italian Air Force’s Fiat G.50bis military code MM6158 landed in Switzerland, at Emmen airfield, on 21 September 1942. The pilot, a warrant officer, during the delivery from Turin to Ghedi, near Brescia, Lombardia, of a fresh factory airplane which only four flight hours, lost orientation because of a compass failure: deviation of up to 75 degrees of the actual course. The plane crossed the border from Italian and Switzerland and pilot, convinced of lack of fuel, decided the land on Swiss territory. Plane and pilot was interned in Switzerland, but the late was exchanged, together two German pilots, against a British Mosquito’s crew which made an emergency landing in Berne and returned in Italy on 21 December 1942. Victor Sierra

Interned in Switzerland

Loading on board of an Italian Air Force BR.20M bomber of bomblets dispensers (Spezzoniera). The BR.20 could carry four dispensers, armed with up to 720×1 or 2 kg (2 or 4 lb) HE or incendiary bomblets (Spezzoni), forerunners of the post-war “cluster bombs”, however today prohibited by international agreements. An anti-personnel bomb scatterd by aircrafts and employed by Italian Regia Aeronautica during WW2 was the Manzolini AR-4 knew also as Thermos Bomb. Victor Sierra

Bomblets dispensers

Paratrooper of Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI), the Italian Fascist Republic founded by Benito Mussolini on 23 september 1943, waiting for the embark on board of a Savoia-Marchetti S.82 transport aircraft, Vergiate airfield, Varese, Northern Italy, 1944. On Autumn 1943 in Tradate, Varese, was established the Centro di Addestramento Paracadutisti Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana (Parachutist Training Center of National Republican Air Force, the RSI’Air Force), with servicemen and instructors of the former Kingdom of Italy’s Parachutist School and many young volunteers, this latters licensed on Vergiate airfield. The Tradate’s school trained the parachutist of the Battaglione Azzurro (Blue Battalion), which embedded on the Reggimento “Folgore” (“Folgore” Regiment) fought against the Allied troops at the gate of Rome, May-June 1944, and also the parachutist of GNR-Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana’s Battaglione "Mazzarini" (National Republican Guard’s “Mazzarini”Battalion) and of X MAS. Victor Sierra