[Sylvester Stadler]

I think Atkinson's fairy tale is based on the official history The Mediterranean and Middle East Vol. 5 by C.I.C. Molony, 1973. I have seen color photos of the Fw 190 in question and that it belonged to SKG 210. Evidently the British soldiers didn't do a thorough job of destroying this aircraft either.

BTW, Atkinson received a Pulitzer Prize for an earlier work, The Long Gray Line, and I hope he doesn't receive one for this book where he rarely looks at the German version of events in Sicily and Italy. He never even mentioned General Hans von Hube, commander of all German forces whose brilliant strategy resulted not only in the evacuation of all German soldiers from the island but also their equipment including tanks, trucks, AA, etc. His 60,000 men held off around one-half million Allied soldiers for over a month and then escaped.