Achille Rastelli

Bombs on the Town

THE ALLIED ATTACKS - THE CIVIL VICTIMS IN MILAN

This research, carried out between documents and testimonies, brings out from the past a rather forgotten history: the aerial bombardments that the Lombard metropolis and its province have immediately expanded during the last world war.
But it is not just a military history: it is also the story of a city at war, one history of people and also an industrial history, since the main motivation of the airstrikes, continued from 1940 to 1945 (with an interval of two years) is indeed in its concentration of factories, then the largest in Italy and one of the largest in Europe.

The work frames the events of Milan both in the context of the war events and in the evolution of the terrorist bombardment, today, unfortunately, more and more practiced all over the world.
The great raids of August 1943 and the massacre of children in Gorla in October 1944 are told in detail.
For this last tragic episode there are also numerous testimonies of whom then he was, in spite of himself, a protagonist.

A history book, but also a unique document on the history of Milan and Italy.

The text, published by Mursia, can be found in all the bookshops (ISBN 88-425-3220-7)

Achille Rastelli

We want to dedicate a memory to Prof. Achille Rastelli who has provided his precious collaboration for the historical part of our site, where we speak of American aviation.

Born in Besana Brianza (MB) on February 14, 1944, he lived in Milan; he graduated in Law and specialized in the field of Navy writing numerous books on naval units of which he was a great connoisseur, collaborating for years with the Maritime Magazine for which he wrote several articles and with the Navy Historical Office with studies on the Bulletin of Archive.