Dear All
A young friend of mine living in Finland and two Italian colleagues of his has joined forces to produce a new series of books called Lost Archives, Pictorial history of SIAI.
Lead author, Paolo Miana, rediscovered in 2006 the historic SIAI files, then held by Gruppo Lavoratori Seniores SIAI. After some eight years of study and joining forces with Jukka Keränen (Finland) and Angelo Brioschi, their first book have now been published, called Chapter 1 . The Sorci Verdi. A 71 pages study of perhaps, at the time, the most famous version of SIAI S.79 and the five individuals specifically built to take part in the race Istres-Damascus-Paris.
As the title says it is a pictorial with 102 illustrations including various drawings and artwork.
The book is selfproduced, published in English (translation very well done by Jukka) with the layout and drawings made by Angelo. For the actual printing they have first of all opted to use quality paper and even if the book is in softcover, the binding and printing is remarkably good.
Secondly, to get it printed, they opted to use a German company named Books on Demand in Norderstedt. I am impressed by the end result.
Content is, beside preface and so on,
1)S.79 Corsa – from the outside
2)S.79 Corsa – technical details
3)Istres-Damascus-Paris – visit to SIAI
4)Istres-Damascus-Paris – the race
5)Across the Atlantic – Rome to Brazil
The book is of course not for the 'beginner' since if you are only slightly interested in the S.79 as type, you will not find anything in here which will attract you. However if you want to know and especially to see what these specially modified S.79 looked like, this book is for you and if you want to know the technical details which differed from the main production, this book is also for you! Some interesting new designations are revealed and explained.
Having said all this, every coin of course has two sides, and in this case a main drawback is that having no editor and getting no feedbacks a certain tunnelvision is visible in this production. Of course it is difficult to know exactly on which level one should start and the feeling I have is that the authors expect the reader to be both fairly familiar not only with the type but also how the Italian aircraft industry worked during the 1930's. The main drawback is that the book lacks a detailed individual overview of each of these five aircraft built and those three later converted for the flight to Brazil. The second drawback is that the race is not given its proper place and you are left wondering who the other competitors were and also what happened to them.
Some new facts are revealed and while I perhaps don't agree with all the conclusions, it is quite fascinating to be able to discuss them with Jukka.
There are unfortunately two printing errors visible to me, easily corrected of course.
1)On page 35 the correct 41o Gruppo has become 14o Gruppo.
2)On page 60 some text has actually fallen away from the finnished product. The markings on the aircraft on top is believed to have been retouched over and over again simply to use that same shot for all the civil registrations of all five aircraft.
So if this is your cup of tea, the book is available from Amazon in Europe as follows
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.amazon.de/
http://www.amazon.it/
http://www.adlibris.com/ (the Nordic market)
Search for SIAI Lost Archive
I can fully recommend this book and wish the authors every luck and hopefully it will be followed by more interesting aspects on the SIAI company.
Stig Jarlevik, Gothenburg, Sweden