The new special tails celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Italian Air Force Frecce Tricolori display team.
On Jun. 1, 2021, the Frecce Tricolori display team deployed to Pratica di Mare Air Base, ahead of the traditional June 2 flyover of Rome for Italy’s Republic Day. The arrival at the airbase located near Rome provided an interesting opportunity to observe all the new special tail liveries applied to 6 of the team’s MB-339A/PAN MLU aircraft, to celebrate the Frecce’s 60th anniversary.
Indeed, as explained in detail in this previous post, all the aircraft assigned to the official aerobatic team of the Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force) are going to be painted with a special tail, inspired by the display teams that represented Italy and its Air Force in the decade before the Frecce Tricolori were officially established.
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For the moment the first six aircraft aircraft have been given special colors: “Pony 0”, the aircraft of the commander (that doesn’t take part in the actual show) sports the 60th anniversary logo on the tail, while Pony 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 have been adorned with symbols and markings inspired by the “Cavallino Rampante”, “Getti Tonanti”, “Tigri Bianche”, “Diavoli Rossi” and “Lancieri Neri”, the display teams that in the 1950s were given, on a rotational basis, the task of representing the Air Force at air shows and flyovers in Italy and abroad.
Our contributor Giovanni Maduli was outside Pratica di Mare and took the images of the six Frecce aircraft with the new special tails that you can find in this post.
As already explained in the previous article, the liveries were created by the renowned Italian artist Mirco Pecorari of AircraftStudioDesign. The project calls for 11 Frecce aircraft to be given special tails: the liveries will be doubled so that the 5 liveries will be applied to 5 pairs of MB-339s with only one jet, Pony 0, with the 60th anniversary badge.
