At work under the sun and the hot wind (but one of mechanics haven’t problems with the hair…) of the sunny Italian summer. The “109” is perhaps an airplane of the 6 Staffel of the II Gruppe of the Luftwaffe's JG 51 “Mölders” (II./JG51) transferred to the Mediterranean theatre in november 1942. 

Sun and wind

The Messerschmitt BF 109G-4/Trop, WNr.15020, Stammkennzeichen NH+RT, on an Italian air base (the tail of an Italian bomber CANT-Z-1007bis is visible in background). The aircraft has a North African camouflage, impossible establish the unit (JG27?). The Stammkennzeichen suggest an aircraft moved to Mediterranean theater as replacement. Victor Sierra

NH+RT in Italy

A cartload of hay drawn by oxen has clearly waked by his brief sleep open air over the stubbles, near his Bf 109, a German fighter pilot of the Luftwaffe’s JG 53 (Pik-As Geschwader) at Cancello, a landing strip on the Apennines at South of Rome, Autumn 1943. This photo give a clearly image of the hard life’s conditions of Luftwffe’s men on the rough airstrip fitted close the frontline in the Apennines areas. A personal remembrance: when I was a child, in the Fifties, at L’Aquila, Abruzzi, in the Fifties, I remember one sector of the local cemetery with many graves, some with a gravestone often penciled (XXX, Sky of XXX, day, month and year) of German pilots killed on the fight with the Allied air forces flying from South to North or on return. This pilots acting by the many airstrips on the area like that of the photo, airstrip immediately returned to agriculture just after the hostilities. Victor Sierra