This picture, abstracted by the Savoia-Marchetti S.79’s technical manual, show the winch used for bomb’s loading into the bay of this Italian bomber aircraft. The winch, located behind the dorsal 12.7mm machine gun below a specific door, in the picture in open position, transfer the bomb, hooked into the tail in vertical position, from the ground to the bomb rack, the latter different depending on the bomb’s type. This practice was necessary because the bomb’s stowage inside the S.79 were vertical rather than horizontal, effect of the origin of the most famous WW2 Italian bomber, fast civil airliner, and of the resulting fuselage’s shape. Victor Sierra

A winch for the bombs

The Breda-SAFAT 12.7mm (.500 in) machine gun in the dorsal turret backward defence of an Italian bomber Savoia-Marchetti S.79’s traversed at high elevation’s angle. Its caliber made this MG – on the S.79 with two loader, each with 250 shot, side angle traverse 300 degrees for each sector, elevation angle traverse 70 degrees, muzzle velocity 765 meter per second (2,510 ft/s) installed also in the dorsal turret of the Fiat BR.20M and CRDA Cant-Z-1007bis bombers - a weapon for its time particularly redoubtable. In effect the most common British bomber in the Mediterranean theater at beginning of the war, the Bristol Blenheim Mk 1, had a dorsal turret with a single 0.303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers K, later two, but again of the same caliber, on the Blenheim IV. Victor Sierra

A weapon particularly redoubtable

Loading operation of a 500 kg bomb (990 lbs) into an Italian bomber S.79 through the winch on fuselage’s top. The winch lift outwards the bomb, hooked by the tail, up to the fuselage’s top and later lowered into the bomb rack inside the fuselage. The S.79 had different bombs racks interchangeable and depending of the bomb’s type: rack for two 500 kg bombs, rack for five 250 kg bombs, rack for twelve 100 kg bombs, up to twelve dispenser each for forty-nine 2 kg bomblets (thermos bombs), total 588 bomblets. Notice the open entry door with built-in boarding ladder on the fuselage’s left side. Victor Sierra