P-38G-13 Lightning Colonello Angelo Rotondi

[mksystem]

This plane was captured by the Italians on 12th June 1943 after mistakenly landing in Capoterra. It was flown by pilot Colonello Angelo Rotondi for attacks on B-17 bombers over Torvajanica. One B-17 was shot down making it the only known kill by an enemy flying an American fighter. Skin,DP,AIR,CFG files for
David Copley's P38G. ENJOY!

 

[kelticheart]

Nice guy this pilot....

What a fine example of combat fairness! Only Germans and Italians used captured aircrafts to confuse their opponents.....

A blot on the many episodes of chivalry which happened during the war, when humanity prevailed over hatred.

Cheers!
KH :ernae:

 

[Allen]

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?linkid=5758&catid=61

 

[mvg3d]

This plane was captured by the Italians on 12th June 1943 after mistakenly landing in Capoterra. It was flown by pilot Colonello Angelo Rotondi for attacks on B-17 bombers over Torvajanica. One B-17 was shot down making it the only known kill by an enemy flying an American fighter. Skin,DP,AIR,CFG files for
David Copley's P38G. ENJOY!

This aircraft was finally grounded due to the damages caused by Italian fuel to the tanks.
:salute::salute::salute::salute:

 

[lanf77]

What a fine example of combat fairness! Only Germans and Italians used captured aircrafts to confuse their opponents.....

A blot on the many episodes of chivalry which happened during the war, when humanity prevailed over hatred.

Cheers!
KH :ernae:

I'm sorry but......................CHIVALRY?????

one name:OPERATION GOMORRAH..................please......:isadizzy:

 

[mksystem]

P-38G Angelo Rotondi.zip

A new entry has been added to Add-Ons Library, category CFS 2 Skins - Other

Description: This plane was captured by the Italians on 12th June 1943 after mistakenly landing in Capoterra. It was flown by pilot Colonello Angelo Rotondi for attacks on B-17 bombers over Torvajanica. One B-17 was shot down making it the only known kill by an enemy flying an American fighter.

To check it out, rate it or add comments, visit P-38G Angelo Rotondi.zip
The comments you make there will appear in the posts below.

 

[Rami]

Reply...

Mksystem,

Thank you for a wonderful example of this "hack," these often have very colorful histories! Did you hear about the P-38 that landed in Spain and Portugal?

http://forum.armyairforces.com/tm.aspx?m=148277&mpage=&print=true

 

[Blood_Hawk23]

Well no one ever said Chruchill had any honor. He was almost as much a tyrant as Hitler and Stalin. Be it not as direct. Never look at the plans of politicians to be honorable. to quote a favorite movie of mine.

"I'm a politician. That means I'm a cheat and a lier. When I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops."

That about sums that up.

You always have to look at the individual acounts to see acts of honor or displays of chivalry. There were many on both the allies and axis side.

But war is hell. So the old rule "All is fair" tends to take over.

 

[bearcat241]

one name:OPERATION GOMORRAH..................please......:isadizzy:

Well, my apologies for the digress, but bringing OP "G" into the conversation is certainly the proverbial "apples and oranges". At any rate, i found this comment regarding its impact on nazi officialdom quite interesting: "The Hamburg raid was a shock to the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, and his air force chief, Hermann Goering. Former reichsminister Albert Speer wrote years later, “Hamburg had suffered the fate Hitler and Goering conceived for London in 1940.”

Hmmm...methinks maybe Bomber Harris borrowed that play and the code name from Daddy High Stepper's playbook.

 

[Rami]

Reply...

"I'm a politician. That means I'm a cheat and a liar. When I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops."

I love The Hunt for Red October. I love "Your aircraft have dropped enough Sonar buoys, so that I man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland, without getting his feet wet. Now, shall we dispense with the bull?"

But in all fairness, Blood_Hawk, ALL of the "Big Three" in Europe were vying for control of Post-War Europe. Though Stalin was brutal, especially to his own people, consider his point of view for a moment. The Soviet Union had been dealing with a Internal Revolution, foreign invasion, (not Germany, but the non-Communist forces that tried to fester an overthrow of Communism following World War I, including the United States) and then Hitler knocking at the gates of Moscow. Given the circumstances, it is at least understandable why he wanted some protection ("buffer states" - though this was only part of the story, I know) for his borders following the end of the war.

In addition, Roosevelt also was vying for world control, hence the Atlantic Charter, which served as the proverbial "passing of the torch" from Great Britain being the dominating superpower to the United States. The United States gained this because Churchill bled the Union Jack white trying to keep Great Britain afloat during the early days of the War. In short, the British Empire was exhausted, and Churchill was also convinced (rightly so, as it turned out) that FDR and Stalin had a secret agreement.

All leaders had their angles in this one...and with your comparison of the bombing of Hamburg, there is always Dresden, or the German bombing of Rotterdam.

But let's return to the topic at hand, the Italian skin for the P-38 Lightning, shall we?

 

[Blood_Hawk23]

Yeah you had some of the worst egos on the planet at that moment. Five of the six major players had Power hungry leaders. The only ones that I can't point to one major leader is Japan. Yes they had the Emperor but he realy wasn't in control. so who did they have?

US had Rosevelt
UK had Churchill
Russia had Stalin
Germany, Hitler
Italy, Mussolini
Japan ?

Goering was a fool. but i'll leave that for another time.

Excellent Skin. Definitely turned some heads.

You know its a great plane when it can wear any countries colors and still look good.

 

[mav]

Yeah you had some of the worst egos on the planet at that moment. Five of the six major players had Power hungry leaders. The only ones that I can't point to one major leader is Japan. Yes they had the Emperor but he realy wasn't in control. so who did they have?

US had Rosevelt
UK had Churchill
Russia had Stalin
Germany, Hitler
Italy, Mussolini
Japan ?

Goering was a fool. but i'll leave that for another time.

Excellent Skin. Definitely turned some heads.

You know its a great plane when it can wear any countries colors and still look good.

yeh... that about covers it! LOL

 

[Shadow Wolf 07]

Japan had a ruthless army general/prime minister named Tojo. They hanged his butt after the end of the war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki_Tojo

 

[miamieagle]

Thank you!

 

[bearcat241]

Japan had a ruthless army general/prime minister named Tojo. They hanged his butt after the end of the war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki_Tojo

I was waiting for that one...Oh the power of political propaganda...funny how the Japanese emperor had the "power" to defer the informal declaration or surprise attack in 1941 to the Tojo gang in order to escape culpability in the court of world opinion and then pick up the power again in August 1945 to order a so-called "unconditional surrender" that kept himself on the throne when the fight became untenable. Tojo was just his sacrificial goat by private arrangements. All the nation's sins were conveniently placed on his head and sent to the gallows as an "atonement".

As long as it seemed Japan had a chance in the fight, the emperor was happy to stay in the shadows on the grounds of the traditional code of Imperial "silence" and allow the Tojo gang to run amuck. But in a strange coincidence, the day he was scheduled to eat an atomic bomb in a Tokyo strike, he conveniently steps out front of the gang to speak publicly for the first time and order a cessation of hostilities. So, he -- and historians of allied nations -- convinced the world to believe that from Nanking to Nagasaki, he kept all that imperial wisdom and authority corked under some code of restriction while his nation plunged headlong to destruction in his honor. After his call to surrender, for a good front, the gang put up some mild resistance with behind-the-scenes negotiations and a "failed" coup d'état, but the outcome was inevitable the moment the emperor spoke. So who was really running the show in Tokyo?

 

[Rami]

Reply...

Bearcat,

Regarding the emperor's broadcast, have you ever heard of Kenji Hatanaka? He came within one blackout of radically altering world history.

 

[bearcat241]

Bearcat,

Regarding the emperor's broadcast, have you ever heard of Kenji Hatanaka? He came within one blackout of radically altering world history.

Be that as it may, he was just a loose cannon in the ranks. In the end, it was the Army command that ordered him to stand down without support, which he obeyed. Now i ask the question -- again -- where did command get their orders from? And are we to assume that in the grand scheme, this man would be permitted to go as far as killing the emperor whom he and the nation had so proudly served throughout the conflict? If the Army was really in charge of things, ordering him to stand down would have been counter-intuitive to their goals. As long as the emperor drew breath, he was always in a position to broadcast.

 

[kelticheart]

I'm sorry but......................CHIVALRY?????

one name:OPERATION GOMORRAH..................please......:isadizzy:

Hi lanf77,

I meant in air to air combat. Everybody knows about the unprecedented levels of cruelty WWII reached. In the air, sometimes, things were different.

On the bad side, Germans repaired damaged B-17s and B-24s forced to land, turned them into gunships, tried to get close and shoot down US bombers with them. I read in few cases they were successful. This captured P-38 did the same thing.

While there were countless episodes of pilots who strafed helpess opposing airmen hanging from a parachute, there are several accounts from witnesses who were sort of escorted down to the ground by the same pilot who had shot them down. Or pilots who refused to finish off a brave opponent who had ran out of ammunitions, or, worse, was obviously heavily wounded.

Italian fighter ace Luigi Gorrini, refused to aim at the cockpit of an enemy plane but tried always to aim at the engine/s or the fuel tanks and he trained his wing mates and young pilots to do the same. He was badly reprimanded for throwing his canteen full of water to a British pilot he had just downed in the Libyan desert.

Several German aces, like Adolf Galland and Gunther Rall, refused to strafe parachutes or treat badly captured Allied pilots. Galland and Robert Stanford-Tuck became close friends after the war. I recently read "Samurai!" written by Saburo Sakai and, in spite of the rigid war code imposed on Japanese pilots in WWII and the radically different Japanese cultural attitude of the time towards death in combat compared to Western culture, he did not fight like a blood-thirsty demon either.

I might be wrong, but all of the above could be classified as chivalry episodes.

Cheers!
KH :ernae: