Ferdinando D'Amico -

[John Beaman]

Oh my, a great loss and a good friend. My condolences to his family. He was a researcher without peer on Italian fighters.

When I visited him in Florence a few years ago, he took me to his house in the hills above the city. A beautiful place with views of the hills to be envied. He showed me great photos and films which have still not been published.

Mounted on a wall was a flattened (recovered) upper cowling of an Italian 109G-6! I commented that he must have a very tolerant wife. He just smiled!

I shall miss him greatly.

[S Sheflin]

I am saddened by the news of Ferdinando d'Amico’s passing. Blessings to his family. You will never be forgotten, Ferdinando.

Respectfully,

Steve Sheflin

[Rémi Baudru]

It is a very sad news. He will stay in our heart
Mes pensées vont à sa famille et à tous ses proches.
RB

[piero]

My deep condolences to his family.
RIP Ferdinando
Giampiero from Verona

[Boris Ciglic]

So sad to hear that...

[Milos Gazdic]

My condolences to a family of great author, researcher & person with whom I was lucky to be in touch few years back. Passing of such a man is loss for whole community!

[Steve Coates]

A sad day. Although we only had occasional correspondence, he clearly knew his stuff and we will all be the poorer for his passing although his published legacy will live on. My thoughts go out to his family.

[RolandF]

His work will remain. Most of his books are regarded as standard. Hopefully his knowledge is archived and will passed over to a worthy successor.
My deepest condolences to his family.

Regards
RolandF

[Nick Beale]

Here’s where it started: I’d bought “The Bf 109 in Italian Service” and later written to the publisher with some Werk Nummern of ANR Messerschmitts, found on one of my early trips to the National Archives. Hence the first letter I received from Ferdinando, dated 24 February 1988 and beginning, “Dear Mr Beale, I’m sorry to disturb you …”

Within a few weeks, with his long-time writing partner Gabriele Valentini, we’d embarked on writing a book together. It turned out that they already knew practically everyone in Luftwaffe research when I knew hardly anybody, and the contacts I made thanks to them have been invaluable over the years.

The following year, Linda and I stayed with Ferdinando and Patrizia at their house in the hills above Florence. The trip was mainly about writing and planning research, with a bit of sight-seeing and spectacular Italian food thrown in (much of it courtesy of Patrizia), plus a birthday cake decorated with Union Jacks for Linda. Ferdinando’s “breakfast” (a single espresso) seemed to be his only fluid intake before nightfall. And there were many moments of abject terror thanks to his preferred mode of driving on winding mountain roads (“assertive” might be one way of describing it).

Pre-internet, most of what we did was via bulky packages of our findings posted between England, Florence and Milan (where Gabriele lives) and with Ferdinando handling the translations between English and Italian (Gabriele’s only language back then). In 1990 the three of us met up in Freiburg to research at the Bundesarchiv. Memories of that trip include my colleagues’ utter disdain for German food and how Ferdinando’s driving — almost normal in Italy — was even more scary against the backdrop of German motoring where people actually paid attention to traffic signs, speed limits etc. Also, trying to mediate (I was the only one with any German) between some rather sedate German archivists and a pair of rather impatient Italians was an experience. The day they went off to Koblenz, I stayed behind. I rationalised this by saying that I was better employed working on German-language texts but I don’t think I rated my chances of surviving a 750 km round-trip in that black VW Golf diesel all that highly either.

Personal computers arrived in our lives about then. Ferdinando started with an Amstrad word processor and swiftly moved on to an Atari ST. I followed suit and — the miracles of technology! — we could now post 3.5” floppy disks back and forth, with our latest versions of the text (no graphics because even greyscale scanners were way too expensive to contemplate, let alone the colour ones). Ferdinando liked electronic toys; by the time the book was done he was on his fourth computer (a Mac Performa, I think) while I was still on my first. And that’s not counting the upgrades he applied to his successive machines — Linda reckoned that he overloaded them with extras until they started to started to smoke, then bought a new one.

It would be fair to say that the D’Amico/Valentini working relationship wasn’t exclusively sunny but the results the two of them achieved speak for themselves. They unearthed and clarified so much about the history of the ANR, causing a lot of controversy with the “old guard” of researchers in that field.

After years of dithering and inaction on the part of Airlife Publishing “Air War Italy” finally came out and we branched out into separate projects but still exchanged material and other input over the following years. Ferdinando found me some invaluable operational summaries in the Italian archives, I edited the manuscript of their volume on ANR camouflage and markings, for example. We never lost touch, we still discussed new things we found. As John has said, he was extremely proud of his Bf 109 cowling panel — the ‘109 was always his greatest interest.

Sadly, Patrizia was seriously ill for a long time. Her death in January 2014 left Ferdinando shattered and depressed and it was only slowly that he picked himself up again. In the last year or two, he’d found happiness with his girlfriend Monika and was proud to be taking regular exercise and losing a lot of weight. I think he would have been about 60 by now.

People have extended their condolences to the family, but Ferdinando and Patrizia didn’t have children and as far as I know both had outlived their parents. I don’t know if either of them had any siblings.

I’ll miss him a lot.

[Brian]

Thanks, Nick

That just about says it all.

Cheers
Brian