Help with research and finding contacts

03/17/2012 - 08:23

Hi I'm from Norfolk in the UK and I'm researching a RAF 148 Squadron that was based at Brindisi and dropped supplies and agents to partisan in Northern Italy.I've join the forum to try and get a better understanding of Italy and hopefully make some contacts with Italian researchers/historians or partisan veterans.I am in particular trying to find information on an Italian female agent who parachuted from the plane my friend was a crew member of.An SOE agent who dropped into Italy during and who became an archivist for the SOE in Italy was in contact with a (as he said) keen young Italian living in the Veneto in 2002 who was researching the wartime operations of all Allied clandestine missions in that region involving infiltration of Italians, and he had come across a mention of "Fiammetta" whom I duly identified for him as a participant in Operation WHITEHORSE . He then somehow found out that she was still alive and living in a hospice in Palermo, and in due course he gave me an address to write to her there as "Contessa [Countess] Maria Ciofalo". He had already established some sort of line to her (I think by telephone) and described her as "rather diffident but lively despite her age, nearly 90".The SOE historian sent letter via this contact which had some of the details of her wartime career to hopefully stimulate her memory but unfortunately no responce came from them, then he heard that she was now totally blind and her morale at zero and he let the matter lapse. One bit of information from this series of events I would like to follow up is that the Italian researcher was in touch with Maria Ciofalo daughter, a doctor, who was keen herself to help in stimulating her Mothers memories, since she knew very little of her mother's wartime history.I would love to find either the Daughter of Maria Ciofalo or the Italy researcher to try and find more information on Maria Ciofalo, her codename was "Fiammetta" and the operation was on the 16th of July 1944 and was called "Whitehorse" and the Halifax bomber that dropped her flew out of the airbase at Brindisi Southern Italy. If anyone can point me in the right direction etc it would be greatly appreciatedAll the BestSteve Andrews

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