We could say that Pierpaolo Maglio was born in 5°Stormo (5th Wing Italian Air Force) even though he never served in it. His father was part of it since he was 17 years old and Pierpaolo used to visit the Rimini air base with him quite often as a child, especially during summer time. In his youth Pierpaolo Maglio used to play with stickers, patches and pins, all of them featuring the Diana Wing emblem, so much that he became quite familiar with her. Her image was probably his first “love”. Pierpaolo lost all contacts with the Wing round 1989 when his father retired and the Wing moved from Rimini to Cervia. Only 20 years later he was able to visit again quite often the Wing and he met several of his childhood friends who were serving in the 5° Stormo like their fathers. Unfortunately when Pierpaolo reunited himsef with the Wing (2009) rumours went that the 5° Stormo would be disbanded at the end of the Peace Caesar Program (the name of the F-16 lease programme from USA). He had just got it back and he was going to lose it forever! “I felt quite compelled to contrive a way to leave some sign of mine in the history of that glorious unit,” expains Pierpaolo, “and a special Diana was the best way to achive that. Since I’m a modeller I needed something I could be able to airbrush on the tail of a lifesized F-16, so I asked my brother in law Marco Martellini, who is a professional cartoonist, to create a cartoon Diana with simple shades for me to airbrush. With a bit of “Marvel” drama and a bit of sexy touch Marco brought my Diana to life. Then and there I understood we had a winner. The original drawing had two greyhounds too to symbolize the 23°Gruppo that was still part of the wing. What a chance that in ancient times too greyhounds were often depicted alongside Diana as she would take them along to go hunting. Then it was a matter of persuading the Air Force to let me paint a tail like that and, as you can imagine, it was not easy.” By luck Pierpaolo had a very good ally in W/O Maurizio Mauro who at the time was an F-16 Crew Chief in Cervia. With his help in early March 2010 Pierpaolo was able to show the sketch to all maintenace personnel in Cervia and all of them liked her a lot; even the Lockheed Martin and General Electric guys in Cervia approved of it. Unfortunately the pilots of 23°Gruppo had already worked out their own project so Squadron Commander kindly told him that the project could not be implemented. Pierpaolo Maglio reminds: “I was quite desperate and almost sure that my dream was never to come true when I was told that the Chief of Staff of Italian Air Force authorized the painting of two F-16s: one complete Special Colour (the 23° Gruppo’s project) and one Special tail. Since both aircrafts had to be ready for an open day (the last one for the Wing) called “With Diana in my Heart”, my Diana was back on track because the Viper project had connections with neither the Wing emblem nor the name Diana.” Pierpaolo got the final go only on Friday the 9th of April at 4.45 pm and the tail was to be delivered by early morning on Friday the 16th. The only change to the project was that the 23°Gruppo’s pilots had asked him to remove the greyhounds from the tail art. “Both me and Maurizio were very excited and we immediately went to a paint store to get the paint and liters of laquer thinner.” Pierpaolo continues. “Then we needed to select a Special Team to help us with the big job. A couple of fellow modelers from Bologna and Brindisi (Massimo Stagni and Guido Brandolini) came to the rescue for the paint job, Gianfranco Borghini accurately polished both the air intake and the landing gears, Ivo Arlotti painted the white base color on the tail to cover the old markings which were black and would prevent the use of light colours like yellow and flesh. Actually we tried to sand off the black markings but the rought stealth paint was too hard to sand without a motor tool so we choose to spry a white base. My friend Daniele Gulinelli, who is an architect, blew up the drawing with a plotter to match the dimension of the tail. He also was to print the masks for each colour but unfotunately it was almost Easter time and there was no way to order the masking special paper in time for our needs, so in the end I had to paint the Diana freehand using my Aztek modelling airbrush! I can tell you it was not an easy task to connect it to the big compressor used to inflate the tyres of the fighters!” Masks were only used for the names of the people who worked on this project; indeed on the right stabilizer we put the names of all the civilians in the team while the three crew chiefs (Maurizio plus W/Os Fabio Capoccia and Massimiliano Ferrara) had their names painted on the sides of the fuselage and on the inner front gear door. The name on the canopy frames, both sides, were that of Wing Commander, Col. Paolo Cianfannelli. Pierpaolo remembers: “We had been working hard from early morning till after sunset but kept being late on
8 maggio 2013, la Diana torna in volo con i colori olandesi. (foto Frank Crébas via 323 Sqn KLu)
Spotters Magazine
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