US Army Air Force

Along the spirit of the “Stupor Mundi”

U.S. Air Force

Southern Italy, 1944 or 1945: an USAAF’s Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress of the 15th Air Force’s 301st Bombardment Group starting the engines on the Lucera Airfield, Foggia Arfield Complex. Notice the under nose hatchway open while a crewmember getting ready to embark. After a first operational cycle as part of the 8th Air Force in England, the 301st BG (Bomb Squadrons 32nd, 352nd, 353rd and 419th) in November 1942 sent in North Africa to the 12th Air Force. In October of 1943 the 301st, now an unit of the 15th Air Force’s 5th Bomb Wing, was deployed at Lucera Airfield, one semi-permanent base, approximately 13 km W-NWE of Foggia, 41°29′52.72″N, 015°25′29.87″E, built by US Army Corps of Engineers with one pierced steel planking runway, extensive taxiway, hardstand parking areas and control tower, opened early February 1944 and closed October 1945. Why the allusion to “Stupor Mundi” (World’s Astonishment) by which was knew in the Middle Age the great Emperor Frederick II? Because for Frederick II, House of Hohenstaufen, Swabian dynasty, or Staufer - German, but which considered oneself more than ever Italian, born on the Marche, Central Italy, at Jesi, on 26 December 1194, son of the Emperor Henry VI and a Sicilian Princess of Norman origin, Constance of Hauteville, a great deal of life in the Italy – the Apulia (Puer Apuliae/Apulia’s Kid according the Pope Innocent III) was the best-loved country (an example the building of Castel del Monte an extraordinary castle with an unique geometric design: an octagonal prism with an octagonal tower at each corner) and strangely enough just died on Apulia, at Castel Fiorentino, near Foggia, on 13 December 1250. And also the Lucera’s name is strictly tied to Emperor. Just a Lucera, on the top of a hill which overlooking the plain, the Tavoliere di Capitanata, the same plain where, main centuries later, the Americans will make the airfield showed by the photo, about 1230 Frederick II built his Palatium, a massive fortress where was accommodated the dreaded and dreadful Saracens troops, therein transferred from the Sicily, which formed the backbone of the Emperor’s army. In brief time Lucera became a Muslim enclave on the Apulia’s country. Whenever if the 301st BG’s men had knowledge that around to them moved along the spirit of the Emperor and of his Saracen troops? Victor Sierra