Footnotes to Alfa Avio

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

The senior lurker sent me a couple of notes on the Macchi 202; they sounded 
as if they would be of interest to the participants in the aircraft thread, 
so I asked him if I could pass them on and he said OK.

"The 202 in NASM was restored during the era of Don Merchant as Silver Hill 
resto boss.  The engine was restored by Domenico Colasacco, (RIP) the shop 
foreman in Newark at the time, who donated his hours. He had been the crew 
chief for an M202 squadron in N Afrika during the war, before becoming a POW 
and being shipped here to the states, where he later became one of the 
company's most invaluable assets. We located parts at the museo in Arese and 
from some of the suppliers, and from aero clubs.  Other volunteers did the 
airframe. The ship was originally used by the Brits as part of a competitive 
test program, who then sent the ship to the U.S. following the end of the war 
in Europe. There are a couple of fotos taken at Silver Hill prior to the 
resto.  In those days, the storage huts at Silver Hill werent heated.  The 
visit to Silver Hill was arranged by Monty Winkler, a California 
Congressman's AA, who was a very fast Giulia TI Super driver and GTA driver, 
here in the U.S.

The DB601 engine was built "under license" by A.R.  Most of these motors 
produced somewhat higher output than their German counterparts and were 
promptly shipped off to Germania for use in the Bf109. The others were in use 
in the Macchi 202 "Folgore". At the time Ing Giampaulo Garcea was in charge 
of the test cells (via Avio) in Portello and was encouraged by the SS 
inspection officers to make sure that the most efficient motors were tagged 
for the Bfs.  His "encouragement" was a Walther P-38 "scratchng the back of 
my neck". Garcea tells some of his stories in his book "La Mia Alfa" as well 
as in the short lived A.R. employees' organ "Notizie".

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John here again. Giampaolo Garcea's book "La Mia Alfa", mentioned above, was 
recently, and is perhaps still, available from the Libreria dell'Automobile 
in Milan. For anyone who has read and thoroughly enjoyed Grifith Borgeson's 
people-centered book on "The Alfa Romeo Tradition", "La Mia Alfa" offers a 
remarkable vignette of the people, society, and culture of the company, seen 
through the eyes and pen of a very talented engineer, draftsman and writer. 
If you believe, as I do, that there is more to Alfa than the cars, this is a 
priceless window into that other world.

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