[Graham Boak]

There is more text and another picture in Spitfires over Israel. The Syrians received a batch of Harvards from the French, and formed one unarmed squadron and one armed. The armed aircraft were fitted with bomb racks and machine guns (but no detail given as to just how, nor how many per aircraft). The photo shows a camouflaged aircraft with no rear canopy and a slightly modified rear fuselage immediately aft of the canopy. The shape of the remaining fuselage/canopy interface shows that this is a US-built aircraft not one of the Canadian-built ones with a fixed rear canopy section (as 44). It has light bomb racks under the wings but no nose or port wing guns. The caption describes it as a Harvard Mk.II, which is in itself ambiguous. The Mk.IIA were US-built as Texans, the Mk.IIB Canadian-built Harvards. The French at this time probably operated both, and possibly even "pure" Texans as they did later.