I Beechcraft C.45 in Servizio Con l’Italia

by Maurizio Di Terlizzi

Icaro 18 Con Le Fiamme Gialle

Reviewed by Graham Carter

This is an interesting challenge for a reviewer as I received the book as an e-copy with a selection of pages and a covering letter with ordering information as follows:

“The book is offered at a price of 32€ (Euros). Book is shipped abroad, for details and infos (sic) you can contact Editor Paolo Miana paolo@gliarchiviritrovati.it or place an online order at: https://gliarchiviritrovati.it/store/I-Beechcraft-C45-in-servizio-con-lItalia-p509040612

From a bit of digging around on the internet I have found that this, the 20th book published by Maurizio Di Terlizzi, is a 244 page soft bound A4 book written entirely in Italian which certainly limits my comprehension beyond a few words although the photos and drawings are self-explanatory. The photos in the electronic edition are lovely and clear in both full colour and B&W and I must assume the same level of quality in the hard copy. 

Maurizio is the Director of the Italian Custom Police Air Service Museum, and much of the book is dedicated to the restoration of a particular C.45 , serial number MM.61714 coded RR-18, which had been obtained  as a wreck by GAVS Turin (Gruppo Amici Velivoli Storici – Friends of old airplane Group) in 1990 but which had languished in various states of decay until 2017 when it was discovered in a field in Turin and restoration was started. Much of the book is devoted to the story of this restoration which is covered in great detail in text and images. The finished effort looks glorious.

This was preceded by a detailed section covering the Italian uses of the C.45 in both the Air Force and the Custom Police for anti-smuggling work between 1954 and 1979.  As well, the aircraft had many starring roles in movies in the 60s and 70s, including “The Last Emperor” and this makes up another chapter. Another section also includes details of how many surviving Italian C.45s there are and their locations. A further section gives a full history of all the 126 examples that were in service in Italy

Another section is devoted to detailed interior and exterior photo-coverage to help the modeller add those special details. Richard J Caruana provides seven colour profiles of largely unusual schemes while the last part of the book covers the construction and detailing of a 1/48th model kit which I assume is the ICM release. 

Without a hard copy to hand I can only comment that this looks like a great resource for an aeroplane that does not get a lot of press. It was used by a huge number of air forces and built in great numbers. Kits are available in the two popular scales and I can recall building the Rareplane vacform kit a few decades ago. If this is your interest area then it will be a very useful reference for your library, especially if you are an Italian speaker or reader. Even if you are not, there are digital translators around and the images are perfectly useful and speak for themselves, and the technical terms are usually very similar to English words anyway.

Thanks to Maurizio Di Terlizzi for the sample.

Review Copyright © 2022 by Graham Carter
This Page Created on 6 December, 2022
Last updated 7 December, 2022

Back to HyperScale Main Page

Back to Reviews Page