Colonel Giuseppe Petacchi is a fictional Italian pilot hired by the criminal organisation SPECTRE to hijack a British bomber and its atomic payload. The character appears in the 1961 Ian Fleming novel Thunderball and was subsequently adapted (and split into the characters François Derval and Angelo Palazzi) for the 1965 EON Productions film of the same name. In addition, the character was later re-imagined as Jack Petachi for the 1983 unofficial film Never Say Never Again.
Novel biography[]
Much older brother of Dominetta Petacchi (stage name Dominetta Vitali), he told his sister that his grandfather had been so famous as a poacher and a smuggler in the Dolomites that his was the finest tombstone among all the Petacchi graves in the graveyard in Bolzano and he was going to have a finer one still, and by making money the same way. Giuseppe Petacchi became a pilot. During World War II, when it becomes clear which side will win, he kills the two other men on his aircraft and flies his plane to an Allied base, pretending he has been harboring Allied sympathies all along. As a result, he is a war hero. Petacchi's real motivation is his own self-interest. He has had a good career, but he wants out now, and he wants money. His current material desire is an extravagant Maserati.
Petacchi is carefully chosen by the independent criminal group SPECTRE to steal an air force plane that contains the two nuclear weapons called "Plan Omega". Petacchi gets on the flight as a NATO observer. He waits patiently for his opportunity, and then he puts on an oxygen mask and sets off poison gas in the plane. After a few minutes, the crew members all begin choking and dying.
- "Petacchi said happily, ‘Good evening. Good evening. I am delivering one plane in good condition.’ (He had thought the joke out long before.) ‘Please sign here.’"
- ― Ian Fleming.
Petacchi takes over the plane and pilots it to his rendezvous in the mid-Atlantic, with SPECTRE operative Emilio Largo's ship, the Disco Volante. He skillfully lands the aircraft on the water and as it floats, he exits the plane by climbing upon the wing. Prepared for a friendly meeting with his employers, he is instead murdered by them, to cut him out of the ransom money.
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