At 14.10 on 20 May 1943, with an incursion by British fighter-bombers, five bombs were dropped on Macomer , which created devastation and death. On the eightieth anniversary of that air raid, in memory of the victims (six soldiers and five civilians), the cultural association Melchiorre Murenu and the Municipality organize a demonstration, with moments of prayer, together with the mayor, Antonio Succu and the parish priest Father Andrea Rossi.
The event will take place in via Cottolengo, part of the town where the bombs were dropped and where, five years ago, thanks to the Murenu association, the artist Carmine Piras created a basalt stele, about two meters high, where among the names of the eleven victims of the bombing, it also presents the original shrapnel of the Tritonal bombs, collected after the air raid. In those terrible hours, six soldiers of the "Cremona" division stationed in Macomer and five civilians died in the explosions. The first bomb, the planes that emerged from the Bortigali mountain, dropped it in the "Cherchizzu" area. the second bomb, on the other hand, hit one of the railway wagons, which contained weapons, ammunition and bombs, which had to be transported to the Pratosardo artillery in Nuoro. Six soldiers and 46-year-old Antonio Giuseppe Miscali, an employee of the state railways, died in the explosion. The third bomb instead caused the death of 4 civilians, who were in their homes in what is now Via Cottolengo, near the railway. 57-year-old Salvatorangela Pala died, the 36-year-old railwayman Antonio Dore, his 46-year-old wife Caterina Rosa Pinna, the maid, Petronilla Puggioni, 26-year-old from Bosa. The fourth bomb was dropped on the sports field (where the technical institute is), next to the state railways, while the fifth bomb fell between the Alas factory and the Mura barracks, without causing any casualties.