A classic image of the conditions in which the air forces of both belligerents, Axis and Allies, served in the North African Campaign: clouds of dust and sand raised starting the engines for take-off. The plane of this photo is a Curtiss Tomahawk Mark IIB of No 250 Squadron RAF before taking off from LG 13/Sidi Heneish South, an Egyptian military airfield, today abandoned, about 35 km E-SE of Marsa Matruh, 410 km NE from Cairo. The No 250 Squadron RAF, equipped with Tomahawk IIB from April 1941 to April 1942, when was converted to Hawker Hurricane, was based at Sidi Haneish South from June to November 1941; therefore the photo was taken between this two dates. Victor Sierra

A cloud of sand

From the IWM’s caption: «Bombay Mark I, L5845 ‘D’, of No. 216 Squadron RAF, undergoing engine maintenance at Marble Arch Landing Ground, Tripolitania, while engaged on the transportation and resupply of No. 239 Wing RAF, the first Allied fighter wing to operate from the landing ground after its capture on 17 December 1942». The Marble Arch, visible in the background, were a monument built by the Italians in obedience to an order of Governor of Libya, Italo Balbo, on the Via Balbia as sign of the border of the Libyan Regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The monument, designed by the architect Florestano Di Fausto and inaugurated on 16 March 1937, were knew by the Italians with the name of Arco dei Fileni (or Ara Philaenorum) in remembrance of the mythical Carthaginian brothers Fileni here sacrificed yourself for the good of their Motherland. The Arco was demolished on 1973 by order of the Colonel Gaddafi as colonial power symbol and today the bronze statues of the Fileni Brothers, at a previous time on the top of Arch, are in a little museum at Sirte while the marble’s part of the monument lie neglected on the ground near the museum. Returning to Bristol Bombay, this plane was used by the RAF in the North African Theater of Operations also for paratroops training and as aircraft ambulance. Time ago I ago I posted a photo of a Bombay air ambulance in North Africa. See www.ww2incolor.com/australian-forces/BOMBAY-AMBULANCE. Best regards, Victor Sierra

Bristol Bombay at Arco dei Fileni

At the Belgian town of Namur during the Battle of the Bulge, a British tank guards the Meuse River against an expected attack by the Germans. Field Marshal Montgomery on December 19th (1944) had deployed tanks and armored cars to hold the bridges along a 60-mile stretch of the Meuse. But he confessed that his notion of the attack route the Germans would use was "unpleasantly vague".