This morning, in Sciacca, in the province of Agrigento, the discovery of the wreck of a plane Savoia Marchetti was sunk, sunk the 14 1942 of August while trying to reach the island of Pantelleria during a reconnaissance flight. He was found by the Rebreather Sicilia team headed by Santo Tirnetta. "We are in the 1942. The weak points of the Regia Aeronautica were the organization and the logistics too "bureaucratized". The Second Air Team is transferred to Sicily, but can count on a small number of airplanes. The aircraft supplied were reliable, but compared to the Allied ones they appeared to be old-fashioned. Only a few models could be held on par with the MC205, but they were slow to be taken over by the front line departments. Some will never be delivered due to excessive prudence on the part of the upper echelons, because they are still considered experimental. However, the Italian industry was not able to produce many replacements. The Luftwaffe instead counted on very powerful and effective means. The Germans sent the X Fliegerkorps equipped with FW190 and Me109 to Sicily, but the departments had to pay a heavy tax. Given the lack of adequate Italian hunting availability, the departments of "109" and "190" suffered many losses. The protagonist of the Axis successes on the British convoys is certainly the Savoy - Marchetti SM79 "Sparrowhawk". In the daily missions on the routes that led the British on Malta and in Egypt, Sparviero found a very wide use as torpedo, bomber and reconnaissance. The freighter who carried everything necessary to support the island's defense and basic necessities had no easy life against the Italian torpedoers of the 30 ° Stormo located in Sciacca or the Sparrowers of the 36 ° Stormo di Castelvetrano ". Below, the story of the discovery. "We are in Sciacca, a city south of Sicily, and thanks to the logistics that organized Santo, we start looking for a ghost airport built by Benito Mussolini during the second world war for the various bombing missions on Malta and in the Sicily channel . 
The documentary filmmaker Francesco Fauci accompanies us: our goal is to find some historical documents inside the control room of the ghost airport that will give us clues to the search for some aircraft in the depths of Sciacca. After a few kilometers in the Saccensi countryside, we find the airport headquarters. After taking some photos at the "new airport" we decide to go looking for a fisherman, a witness that could be useful for the search for our plane. Arrived at the port we meet Peppino. He knows the sea of the Sicilian channel really well. It confirms that there are more than one aircraft offshore of Sciacca, maybe even four, so we give the coordinates of a plane to 10 miles from the coast of Sciacca. The next morning we start looking for the plane. After 40 minutes of navigation we arrive at the point suggested by the fisherman. We begin to scan the whole area in a circular way. After other 30 minutes of circular search, we see something in the echo sounder. It looks like a school of fish, but maybe it could be the plane. We prepare quickly for the dive. The wreck should be laid on a backdrop of 40 meters. We reach the bottom quickly, but the mud overwhelms us, the visibility is only twenty centimeters. We continue to search, when we bang on a sheet. Here it is, it's the plane. The Savoia Marchetti that even the Air Force has tried to look for without results. After extensive studies, we reconstruct the history of the aircraft and its crew commanded by the lieutenant Alfonso Battistini, pilot of the 56a Squadriglia. Commissioned to scour the sea area in front of Pantelleria, took off that fateful 14 August 1942 from Sciacca airport. The misfortune wanted the BF 109 fighters of the JG 53 Pik Ass, present in the area, to return to their base for lack of fuel, while the 202 Macchi of the commanders Remondino and Fanali were engaged in actions against the enemy fleet. The British with the Spitfire and the Beaufighter twin-engine equipped with radar, located the solitary Savoia Marchetti 79 and how the vultures attacked us. The life of the pilot lieutenant Italo Panettoni and the airmen Dante Zaccardelli, Renato Zinzi and Enrico Quattrini lost their lives ". In the picture from the left: Santo Tirnetta of the Rebreather Sicilia team, the captain Cristian Angelillo, representing the 37 ° Stormo of Trapani and Sebastiano Tusa, superintendent of the Sea of the Sicily Region.
(Photo: team Rebreather Sicilia)
