Il Gobbo Maledetto (1st Edition) (1993)

User summary:

This is a solo-adventure gamebook, illustrated with about 40 original photographs taken during the Second World War.

It is july 23rd, 1941 and you have just graduated from a Royal Italian Air Force flight training school. You are assigned to a torpedo bomber squadron equipped with the Siai Marchetti S.79, one of the most famous Italian airplane of WWII, nicknamed "Il Gobbo Maledetto" ("The Damned Hunchback") by the Italian press because the rear-firing machine gun gave its fuselage a distinctive appearance.

Your plane takes off from the Pantelleria island for your first mission. You have an experienced crew at your orders. You have find an English fleet headed for Malta, try to sink an enemy ship with your only torpedo and fly back to your airfield. Many things can happen along your way...

Nearly one hundred original photographs illustrate all the main events of the game: from fighters' attack to dropping the torpedo, from emergency sea landings to the arrival of an air-sea rescue flying boat.

The introduction is by Martino Aichner, who earned the Golden Medal for Military Gallantry for sinking the British ship HMS Bedouin in 1942 with his S.79 torpedo bomber.

The game, through "windows" scattered all over the book, helps to discover the airplanes involved and several aspect of aerial warfare in the Mediterranian in those years.