This painting depicts the skeletal remains of a burnt out Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM79 bomber. It was made from a photograph taken after a raid on Castel Benito, an airfield created by the Italian Air Force in Tripoli.

Armstrong was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to make two paintings of crashed aircraft. The other is now at Manchester Art Gallery. Called September 1941, it depicts wrecks of British and German fighter planes on the south-coast.