Di Martino, Massimo Italian paratroopers. Uniform - Distinctive - Equipment. 2 Volumes

Volume 1: 1938-1943; Volume 2: 1943-1969. The author, who has always been passionate about the history of parachuting, has been collecting material and documentation concerning Italian paratroopers for decades. Over the years, the more the collection was enriched, the more he felt the lack of specific literature, which could support, especially the collector, in the research and study of everything concerning the world of military parachuting: clothing, helmets, decorations, degrees, baggage, paper material, etc. From here the idea, putting together the material of several collectors, to give life to an unparalleled consultation tool. Today, after more than nine years of work, a work of more than eight hundred pages structured on two volumes is given. The history of the Paratroopers written by uniforms, photographs, badges, personal effects and, by the regulations of the time. Each chapter is preceded by a brief historical introduction to the departments and their use. A work made to excite, to look at and to look at, to read and reread, to enjoy more than 3600 images, almost all unpublished, and details of very rare pieces, never published before. The first volume describes the period from the birth of the Specialty in 1938, to the School of Castel Benito in Libya, the arms events that saw the Italian paratroopers stand out and deserve respect from the enemy (they are valid for all, the deeds of El alamein ) to arrive at the tragic facts of the armistice of September 1943. In the second volume of analyzes the period of the Italian Social Republic and also the facts concerning the parachutists of the Southern Kingdom, to reach all the 60s, through the divisions of the civil war and the rebirth of the post-war specialty. Superlative work, on a par and, better than many similar publications in a foreign language.

More than 3600 photos, most of which have never been published before, illustrate this comprehensive work. The first volume describes the period from the formation of the first Italian parachute units in 1938 to the Castel Benito school in Libya, as well as all the important wartime events in which the Italian paratroopers played an important role, including the battle for El Alamein in November 1942. The first volume concludes with the events surrounding the Italian capitulation in September 1943. The second volume deals with the parachute units of the "Repubblica Sociale Italiana", the fascist rump state of Benito Mussolini, and those of the Southern Kingdom up to the end of the Second World War and the parachute units newly established after the end of the Second World War up to the end of the 1960s.