After reading some news dealing with the presumed imminent return to flight of an airworthy Italian F-104 (obviously hoaxes related to the April Fool’s Day), I decided to publish the following postcard made with a picture I took more or less in this period, 7 years ago, in 2003. The image, a scan from a 35mm colour slide, depicts an F-104S ASA-M of the 10° Gruppo landing on runway 06 at Grazzanise airbase. It is “Photoshop free” (frame aside, of course): a genuine photograph of the F-104 in a day in which many Starfighter-related hoaxes are spreading through the Web.
David Cenciotti is a freelance journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written four books.
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