Daily History Picture: Plane Down April 26, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures , trackback
The war in the Mediterranean Pacific
28 Apr 2017: Umbriel writes ‘While you’ve captioned your pic of this past 26 April as “The War in the Pacific”, I thought I recognized it as having been taken in the Mediterranean, and found copies on line confirming my recollection: It is, interestingly, a Spitfire in US colors — the exhaust ports along the engine and the fold-down cockpit door are giveaways, even with the nose in the surf. It was part of a “reverse lend-lease” intended to get US pilots into action before US production of advanced fighters had quite gotten up to pace. Other links confirm that this one was downed during part of the Salerno landings, actually by friendly fire. This was particularly common in the early Italian campaign, I think, as the Luftwaffe remained a real enough threat to keep Allied gunners’ trigger fingers particularly itchy.
