Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 23:58:58 +0100 To: "Lynn Ritger" From: "Ferdinando D'Amico" | Block Address | Add to Address Book Subject: About the Bf 109 of Darbois... Dear Lynn, I'm sorry to bother you with my precisations and I'm sure that after this one you'll consider me a neverending nitpicker, but the publication on "The Bf 109 Lair" of the article by Gaël Elegoët about the defected JG 4 aircraft, pushes me to a few precisations. Apart from the section devoted to that episode in "Air War Italy 1944-45" and to the article already appeared on the "Bulletin of the Luftwaffe Circle", on the Italian aviation magazine JP4 we (me and Valentini, that is) published on July 1996 the complete story of the aircraft and its pilot. As you can see by the enclosed scans of the article, it dealt with the subject well before and it even had an unique painting realized by my friend Gabriele Valentini. This just to set the record straight... ;o))) Furthermore, a few corrections: a) the correct name of the airfield where the G-6 landed is Santa Maria Capua Vetere (not Verde) and it is near Caserta, not Naples; b) the airfield was an emergency British one, not American; c) the flight which gave to Darbois the occasion to defect was a tranfer, not a ferry one; d) the name of the author of the French article is Jean-Michel Goyat (not Goya); e) the report on the captured aircraft was from MAAF, not from "the Americans"; f) the airfield constantly referred at as "Managio" is instead Maniago. Hope this won't be taken as hyper-criticism, but only as some corrections that a reference site like "The Lair" surely won't miss. Keep up the good work! Warmest regards Ferdinando