Photos

50 years from the second arrival of Italy in Trieste, 86 from the first one: great party here!

This is the italian flag-ship, the aircraft-carrier Garibaldi.
Having lost the WWII, Italy was forbidden to build aircraft carriers. Garibaldi was officially launched as a helicopter carrier. Lately, changes in international treaties were made and now Garibaldi is allowed to carry airplanes too.

The only two countries in the world with the "know how" for building steam catapults are USA and France. Great Britain and Russia, among others, gave up to such a complex technology. Instead, these smaller aircraft carriers have the end of the runway swept uspide, like a spring-board. It's called "sky-jump". The airplane actually takes off flying slower than the minimum take-off speed. It has some seconds of almost free fall to accelerate and fly. That is the reason why only the vertical/short take off airplanes, like the "AV8B Harrier", are on board of these ships: only they are capable of being maneuvrable also below the stall speed.

Technical: eq. focal length 50 mm, autolevels, noise reduction, sharpening, alpha mask to get the sky more blue.