You may already know this, but Italy boasts the largest aerial acrobatic team in the world: The “Frecce Tricolori,” or tricolor arrows.
The ten-plane squad was founded in 1961, but the first Italian school of aerobatics dates from 1930. The Frecce give exhibitions at air shows, and can also be scheduled for flyovers on special events and/or occasions (Luciano Pavarotti’s funeral on September 8, 2007, for example). The aforementioned three colors are the red, white and green of the Italian flag.
I am not a connoisseur of airplanes, but I’m a huge enthusiast of beauty and badassery, and the few times I’ve seen this group perform I’ve been thrilled to my follicles.
Two Saturdays ago the Arrows were booked to fly over Venice — something which is forbidden by law to normal mortals and planes — as part of a festive weekend marking the 50th anniversary of Ferretti, designers and builders of luxury yachts. The plan was fulfilled as advertised: Once from east to west, once from south to north. The whole thing took about five minutes, a tiny fragment of time which felt infinitely bigger, broader, longer, and braver.
And then they were gone.
The first pass was finished before my brain woke up to the fact that I could be making pictures. Hence the diaphanous though smudged contrails of the colors of the national flag.Meanwhile, the squadron has circled round toward the south, ready to head for Venice once more. You can just barely make out the formation in the low center of this image.There they are. These are Aermacchi MB-339 A/PAN MLU aircraft, whose maximum speed is 908 km/h (564 mph). I cannot say what the speed was in this case, but it can’t have been much slower than that. Any aeronautic experts reading this, please correct me, as I stand here with my mouth open. Yes, these are nine planes — the tenth one mentioned earlier gives solo exhibitions.Several seconds later, they’re over the Bacino of San Marco.Time to climb.
And swoop. All this to the most terrifying shriek of the planes.
Over in five minutes. Or maybe fewer. My sense of time got lost somewhere.And they’re gone, screaming their way back to their base at Rivolto airport near Codroipo in the province of Udine, 92 km/ 57 miles away to the northeast. So I guess they landed in about 15 seconds (made up). All I know is that they were home before I was.
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