A former Luftwaffe’s Fieseler Fi 156C-1 Storch now in American hands together an USAAF’s Lockheed P.38 Lightning likely somewhere in the Mediterranean Theatre. The planes have two different American insignia’s type: the Storch has still the star in the blue disk with yellow edge adopted late 1942 while the Lightning has the insignia late 1943 which suppose a photo taken in Southern Italy (at this date all the P-38’s units in MTO were based in Italy). I don’t know which meaning the “3/4” over the Storch’s fuselage: who knows? Victor Sierra

Storch and Lightning

Lockheed P-38F Lightning of the USAAF’s 71st Fighter Squadron destroyed by fire surely after an enemy raid on a North African base, late 1942/early 1943. The 72st FS moved to North Africa from RAF Ibsley, England, on 23 October 1942 and was deployed on the Algerian air bases of Saint-Leu, 8 November 1942, Tafaraoui-Oran, 14 November 1942, Nouvion, 21 November 1942, Maison Blanche-Algiers, 17 December 1942, Biskra, 22 December 1942 and Châteaudun -du-Rhumel, 16 February 1943. On Summer 1943, 28 June, moved from Algeria to Tunisia, Mateur, and afterwards Djedeida, 31 October 1943, with detachment at Gerbini Airfield, Sicily, 5-18 September 1943, and Gambut, Libya, 5-15 October 1943. Late 1943, 8 December, after a very brief deployment in Sardinia, at Metato, the 71st FS moved definitively to Italy, at Grottaglie, Apulia. Victor Sierra

It was a Lighting

Nice portrait of a dive bomber Douglas SBD Dauntless rear gunner.Checking  the ammunition belts  of the coaxial 7.62-mm machine guns. 
 1943 , U.S. Air Force  

