Italian Savoia-Marchetti S.79 in flight abeam the Apulia’s coast on the first weeks after the Italy’s armistice with the Allies (signed 3 September 1943, announced 8 September 1943). The aircraft hoist again the white cross on the rudder, but has already on the fuselage and on the wing the tricolor roundel (red-white-green) adopted by the Italian Air Force after the change of alliance of the Kingdom of Italy and its deployment with the Allied forces. Between September 1943 and May 1944 about 2,000 men of the Italian Air Force, 1,200 in flight, the other with disparate means, many by foot, crossed the lines reaching their comrades already deployed on the territories under Allied control and engaged with the co-belligerent Regia Aeronautica. Victor Sierra

Just after the armistice

In the frantic and dramatic days just after the official announcement, 8 September 1943, of the signature of the Armistice between the Italy and the Allies, about 250 Italian aircraft based in the Central and Northern Italy in the German hands attempt to escape out the new enemy reaching the Southern Italy’s airports occupied by the Allies. Of this planes, about forty are shot down by the Germans or lost for other reasons, while the other join the circa 200 Italian aircraft already on the South or on the Islands. The aircraft of this photo, fuselage code MAL-3 (MAL for Malpensa), a former bomber Savoia-Marchetti S.79 of the Malpensa’s Scuola Volo Senza Visibilità (Blind Flight School), had just successfully his long and dangerous flight from Malpensa Airport, near Milan, at Milazzo airfield, on the Sicily. Note in background an Allied Jeep and a Bristol Beaufighter. Victor Sierra

Escape towards South

Photo by above of Italian bombers, mainly Cant-Z-1007bis and Cant-Z-1007ter, seized by the Luftwaffe once of the Italy’s armistice’s official announcement (8 September 1943) and gathered on the Lonate Pozzolo airfield, near Varese, on Lombardy. A little rate of this planes will transferred to the air force of the Fascist Repubblica Sociale Italiana, or RSI, well known as Repubblica di Salò (Salò’s Republic), the other will scrapped. Victor Sierra