Piaggio P.108C/T, part five

When the development of the P.108B was underway, Piaggio's workload was further hindered by the request of a new transport aircraft which should be able of long-range flights to South America for Linee Aeree Transcontinentali Italiane (LATI). At first the intention was to manufacture under license the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, but the license wasn't granted, so it was proposed to use the P.108C as an interim transport in 1940 while work on the official transports, P.126C and the P.127C (with four and six engines respectively) continued. The P.108C had a pressurised cabin capable of accommodating up to 32 passengers in a wider fuselage, but it lacked any defensive armament. It flew for the first time on 16th July 1942 but by that date there weren't any trasatlantic routes to serve. Despite that, and the inability of Piaggio to serve the P.108B in time, five P.108Cs were ordered.
On 26th March 1941 the P.108T military cargo version was ordered. It was an unpressurised version of the P.108C with one Caproni dorsal turret and, in some versions only, one Breda ventral turret plus two flank machine guns all of them with a Breda-SAFAT 12,7mm (0.5in). It was powered by four Piaggio P.XII RC.35 radial engines with a power of 1332hp each and was capable of achieving speeds up to 440km/h (270mph). Through a ventral door, it could fit up to two Macchi C.200s and had an internal volume of 77square meters (2700 square ft). It could carry up to 60 soldiers, eight torpedoes or 12 to 13 tonnes of cargo. After many redesigns, it flew for the first time on 7th September 1942 and, although they were destined to serve with the 148ma Squadriglia (148th flight), as very few of them were built before the Germans took over the production and, subsequently, 11 of them were built.
After Italian armistice in September 1943, all of them were taken over by the Luftwaffe and four P.108C plus five P.108Ts were used in the Eastern Front, where they were employed in the evacuation of Crimean peninsula where they carried over 100 soldiers in each flight. As both the P.108C and the P.108T were more reliable than its bomber counterpart, they had a great load capability and the Luftwaffe was still relying on smaller cargo aircrafts like the Junkers Ju.52, they were liked by the Luftwaffe. The Germans also modified the P.108T version adding four 13mm (0.51in) MG 131 machine guns in defensive positions, a ventral one, a dorsal one and two waist ones.
One aircraft, nicknamed "Die General", was destroyed on Salonicco airfield, in Greece, as Transportfliegerstaffel 5 operated most of them until the end of the war with one aircraft assigned to links between Italy and Germany and the rest assigned to the Eastern Front. On 10th August 1944 an air raid destroyed six of them and another four were destroyed or captured in 1945. A post-war P.108T-2 version was proposed but without any success at all, ending that way, the P.108 development history.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio_P.108#P.108C/T
2. La Bancarella Aeronautica - Ali d'Italia 15 - Piaggio P.108