LUCA RUFFATO

Luca Ruffato is an architect who graduated from the University of Architecture in Venice. For the early part of his academic career he served as an assistant-professor within a degree workshop, and as tutor in two international workshops activated by the University of Dortmund (Germany). For five years he worked as an architectural surveyor & designer with a firm specializing in archaeology as applied to the restoration of monumental and historic buildings.

Now residing in Italy, since childhood Luca has been fascinated by Japanese culture and history, and wanted to learn more about that country. Whilst the steps leading to military conflict in WWII were sudden, the more he read from the Allied side, it was clear there was a paucity of Japanese detail surrounding those events. Thus he developed a passion for researching and collecting original Japanese documents, the basis for any serious analysis of aerial operations. Luca is presently compiling the history of aerial warfare in the South West Pacific Area from December 1941 to March 1942.

Luca has contributed to Dan E. Bailey’s ‘WWII wrecks of the Truk Lagoon’ (North Valley Diver Publications, CA 2000) and David L. Williams’ ‘Naval camouflage 1914-1945’ (Chatham Publishing, Kent, 2001). He has also authored numerous articles in specialist journals and supports research by a select coterie of associated Australian, Canadian, French, English and American authors. Luca is a member of ‘The Pacific Society’ and ‘Pacific Air War History Associates - PAWHA’, a dedicated international group of authors and researchers working in this specialist field.