Perhaps some aviation enthusiasts could be interested in this book about the history of the Sciacca airport (Sicily):
Sciacca 1940-1943. L’aeroporto fantasma. Diario e memorie di guerra
It’s a "big" book (372 pages, cm. 24,00x33,00, hardback) written in italian by an aviation enthusiast who lives in Sciacca and who devoted 25 years of researches in order to produce this work that describes the activity of this field in the period from 1938 until february 1944.
The most interesting feature of the book are the pictures: more than 400 – some of them in colour – well printed on a very good paper, many of them previously unpublished. There are some pictures of german aircraft too, even though the most interesting photos show Italian aircraft (e.g., some never published pictures of C.202 of the 153° Gruppo; many pictures of bombers, especially S.79).
The text gives a good coverage of the units that operated on the field, especially during the first years when the chronicle is almost “day by day”, with personal accounts.
There are some evident mistakes in the captions of a few pictures (a Go.242 identified as a P-38; a crashed Kl.35 PF+LB mistaken for a Bf.109; a pair - all green - Bf.109 taken probably in Germany and not at Sciacca); sometime the pictures are not printed in chronological order.
I join the scan of two pictures, one of them coming from the bookmark contained in the volume: the same picture is printed in a four page fold out in the book.
The price is quite high (€ 80,00) but I think that it’s worthwhile.
It may be requested to the author:
n.virgilio@inwind.it
Gianandrea Bussi