As the war went on, after 1941-42 the RAF always had a clear advantage with its US ally! In the Mediterranean theatre only from late 1942 (the first Spitfires arrived in Malta in March that year, Torch was in November), but until then the RAF was not much better than the Regia Aeronautica. And the ...

(...) Italian pilots still don't get the proper recognition they deserved from both world wars despite having smaller numbers of pilots and aircraft than the RAF, Luftwaffe. Actually, this is perhaps a misconception, according to John Ellis in 1939 Italy possessed 1796 aircraft and Britain 1660 (th...

Dunning's book was also printed in Italian translation by Delta Editrice. If you can live with the Italian Text, the title is "Solo Coraggio", it is practically identical to the English edition (errors included) and it seems to be still in special offer at Aviolibri for 30 Euros. http://www.aviolibr...

The overpainting would have been done on the island, laying a very thin layer of green paint which let the original camo pattern show through. Which exact shade of green could have been used is anybody's guess. If you can read Italian there is an interesting discussion here (and more colour photos o...

The photo looks like has had its colours retouched digitally for printing purposes, IMHO. I recall a similar discussion about the same photos on an Italian forum and the most authoritative opinions were for the green overspray. Surely the undersurfaces have a sheen to them but it is difficult to say...

Ciao Super :) Good suggestion. That's a very interesting site and a pretty good source of infos. (and the on line pages about the mission are an abstract from Moci's book) Hi Manlio, nice to see you here! I didn't know about the pages being an extract from Moci's book, living in the UK my ingnoranc...

A link to an online article that was posted a few days ago on an Itlian forum (article in Italian, I am afraid):

http://www.dodecaneso.org/bahrein.htm

Some think the Cr.42's of the 162ª received a very thin overspray in green over their usual 3-colour Fiat camouflage, in order to render them less visible from above when flying over the sea.

I was recently reading "modeldad"'s article on the Fiat Cr.42 piloted by Sgt. Pietro Salvadori, who made an emergency landing at Orfordness ( http://www.stormomagazine.com/Re-evalatuating_RA_Camo_1940.html ), and I would tend to dissent with the idea that the uppersurfaces were originally painted in...