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

Voluntarily I repost this picture because I had found new and most exactly elements of the events therein depicted.
The location, indicated as “an airfield in Sicily”, is actually the Reggio Calabria airfield, in far Southern Italy on the other side of Messina Straits, while the “Malta-based aircraft” strafing with cannon fire this Italian Macchi 200s fighter are two Bristol Beaufighter Mark ICs of No. 272 Squadron RAF Detachment flying from Luqa, Malta. Date? Likely late 1942 or beginning 1943. In effect the No 272 Squadron moved to Malta, Ta Kali airfield, in November 1942. MC.200’s unit? Perhaps 8th Gruppo of 2nd Stormo Caccia or 54th Stormo both on Reggio Calabria on Summer and Autumn 1942. Victor Sierra


RAF strafing Reggio Calabria airfield

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