During the Second World War, the planes that tormented the skies of Europe displayed a symbol on their steering rudders, an emblem that made them instantly recognizable to their flight companions and as threatening as possible towards their enemies.
The jewels of the Luftwaffe, the German military aviation, proudly exhibited the infamous swastika, the hooked cross that became the tragic symbol of the National Socialist regime. On the wide fins of these frightening sharks this gruesome image stood out, the extreme synthesis of a violent disease, and when its profile appeared unexpectedly among the clouds the battle promised to be a ruthless one.
The brave pilots of the RAF knew this, and on the vertical stabilizers of their planes they proudly displayed the Union flag.
The Americans knew it, and to carry out the Italian Campaign, they launched the fastest and most sophisticated aircraft that they had managed to produce until that moment, the indestructible B-17 that the same, damned Yankees called "flying fortresses", to summarize the unassailable power.
The B-17s were many and belonged to different groups of bombers. Their missions over Italy were ruthless, they did not distinguish the military targets from innocent citizens, but it was time to press the accelerator on the psychological war, because the Yankees were great strategists and they knew that the most powerful weapon they had was the exhausted population now one step away from an uprising.
Almost in antithesis to the German swastika, the B-17s of the 99th Bomb Group, exposed, symbol against symbol a large Y on their rudders.
Those of the 99th call themselves Diamondbacks but there is no certainty of when and how the "diamond" popped up on the vertical stabilizers of their B-17s, nor of the missions that they accomplished in the Italian skies.
What were these huge tanks of the sky looking for as they flew with their Y planted on their backs?
How could a simple letter of the alphabet end up being painted on the body of the American golden eagle?
When on 4th August 1943 the most mysterious allied air mission on Italy took place, during which the Monastery of Santa Chiara was destroyed, were the Diamondbacks also over the skies of Naples?
The 99th came to be referred to as the Diamondbacks, due to a diamond insignia painted on the vertical stabilizer of their B-17s.
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