MACCHI C205 Compared to Fiat G.55

Series 5 tests conclusions.

lazun said:

...
The G56 and RE2006 were to be fitted with the Fiat Tifone engine which was a DB605 under license as far as I know. The reason that they were interested more in the Fiat and Reggiane was because the Macchi took too long to build, even though in testing the Macchi came out on top in all aspects.

Click to expand...

The G.55 and Re.2005 were already powered by Tifone (with the 1st examples powered by DB 605A), the G.56 was to be powered by DB 603.

I have never heard of it being slow in roll. I was considered to be extremely maneuverable and the most well balanced fighter of the war.

Click to expand...

I'll kindly ask for sources for the last sentence.

lazun said:

I do not see where the inefficiency are at least in combat?

Click to expand...

The question is rather cryptic - care to elaborate?

The first series were known as the 202's which had a less powerful engine. Then the 205's with a slightly newer wing and more powerful engine. This did not degrade in loss of performance in the series III 205 fighter.

Click to expand...

The MC.202 and 205V shared the same wing, the 205N received a bigger wing. The loss in performance between early and later examples was there, some 13-22 km/h (link).

Of course if you cannot buy a jet you're going to buy one of the best piston aircraft on the market. Countries that could not afford jets bought piston driven airplanes like the Macchi and Fiat.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid it was not that easy. 1st, a country without a world-class aeronautical industry need to be on good terms with a country that produces aircraft. 2nd, you need to have money, but if you have the 1st condition well covered you might even get the aircraft for just a token amount of cash.
Much more countries bought Spitfire, P-51, or other British or US fighters than it was the case with Italian stuff anyway.

The p-40, p-47 and Reggiane are based on the Seversky P-35.

Click to expand...

Oh boy.

First, if efficiency is meassured by the aircrafts ability to win the war, then ultimately all axis aircraft were inefficient while all Allied Aircraft were efficient. I'm not claiming that, just following the logic of only applying one concept of efficiency. An aicraft can be efficient one on one (and that only takes one), it can be efficient in terms of maintenance and it can be efficient in terms of ease of manufacture. I'm sure we can come up with multiple other categories. However, nothing the italians (or other axis) could realistically field in the middle of 43 could have won the war. The difference in resources (also for designing) was to great, and a lot of other factors than Aircraft engineering were in play. One reason Germany supplied her allies With up to date fighterst were that from the middle of the war (and I Count 39 to 45) they didn't lack fighters, they lacked pilotes to fly them. And fuel.

Though industrial espionage by no means can be ruled out, I believe the likenesses of the italian fighters are mostly superficial, at least those not stemming from the use of the same engines. And as shown in the beginning of this thread the resemblance is only apparent in profile. The G 50 had pretty much the same tail as the CR 42 (I find that quite often aircraft manufacturers showed preferrence for the same tail on many of their diffrent designs), and though it is somewhat risky I'll claim that to my eyes the profiles of G 50 and MC 200 are no more alike than the Wildcat and the Buffalo. I choose these cases amongst many other possible, as probably similar considerations of good view over a big radial played a role in all 4 instances. The Re 2000 was very different (and it's usually not considered controversial to claim that it was inspired by the P-35), but the Re 2001 looks like an obvious 'missing link' between the 2000 and the 2005. In profile (as well as in general planform), all the series 5 shares a lot with all of their respective progenitors if you only look from the cockpit to the rear. And even the Ki-61 I shows some (if not that many) basic similarities, which made the allies suspect it wasn't a Japanese design when first they encountered it.

I remember a thread quite a while ago where someone argued that the P-51 was a copy of the P-40. That was pretty much based on similarities in profile between a few of the many quite different profiles of the respective basic designs.

To a cusory look all Japanese fighters look alike in profile, as long as they share a radial and a bubble canopy (which both seem to be connected with national prefereences). On the face of it, it looks like a little easier to give an inline figter distinct personality, as you get all those interesting possibilities of placing the radiators. Then again, as the war progressed the preferrences seemed to be right at the bottom of the fuselage, excepting the annular cowling which began to look like a national preferrence for Germany.

It is to some extent depending on whether one looks for similarities or differences. Supply the He 100 With bubble canopy, a radiator in same position and round the edges off a little, and it could pass for a series 5. All this is of course in the eye of the beholder...

Just Schmidt said:

I remember a thread quite a while ago where someone argued that the P-51 was a copy of the P-40. That was pretty much based on similarities in profile between a few of the many quite different profiles of the respective basic designs.

Click to expand...

Or maybe because the UK speced a P-40 and NA talked them into an improved design.

lazun said:

According to Macchi in Venegono and three interviews with pilots testing, it was solved, mostly having to do with moments and washout. The Macchi 205 was easy to recover from spins as reported from pilots.

All airplanes can be put into a flat spin and very few could actually recover from a flat spin. Not sure if any World War II fighters could actually recover from an incipient flat spin.

The G56 and RE2006 were to be fitted with the Fiat Tifone engine which was a DB605 under license as far as I know. The reason that they were interested more in the Fiat and Reggiane was because the Macchi took too long to build, even though in testing the Macchi came out on top in all aspects.

I have never heard of it being slow in roll. I was considered to be extremely maneuverable and the most well balanced fighter of the war.

Click to expand...

Since the wing plan form seems to have changed I would believe you that the aircrafts wing's spin stall was improved.

The Germans were interested in DB603 developments of these fighters. They would have been monsters with these engines; capable of 465mph. (likely with the DB603LA in my view or possibly the DB603EM). Remember the opposition was the Spitfire XIV, XVIII, Spitfire F.22 and P.51H

Although Italy was involved in radar developments struggled to obtain and produce enough advanced radars. The Germans were definitely sharing their best technology: some Italian destroyers had FuMO 26 seetakt a very advanced radar not even found on any German destroyers. It was capable of full blind fire against sea and air targets, including height finding. Lack of ground radar obvioult would have deteriorated the apparent performance of these aircraft.

I'm sure theynwould have been "productionised" something that takes an additional year after production commences.

Hi lazun,

Thanks for the reply. Who is Jerry?

I have never seen anything that suggests the P-40 design owed anything to the P-35. The P-47 had the same designer, but I'm not sure anything but the general nature of his designs trnsferred. The P-47 was bigger and the bulging belly was there for ductwork to the rear-mounted turbocharger. They DO have similar lines, sort of like a new Mooney is similar in appreanace to a Mooney Mite. Side by side you can see the resemblance as a family, but "similar in appearance" is not the same as "developed from." "Developed from" implies virtually the same airframe with minor changes to replace a piece such as the engine that has to be changed for some reason.

Though similar in appearance at a glance, nothing in a P-47 is interchangeable with a P-35.

I HAVE seen claims that the P-51 owes a lot to the P-40 since North American was given all the P-40 drawings in anticipation of them building it for the British. So I have seen claims that the P-51 design was North American's modification of a P-40.

While it sounds compelling, I have been blessed with the opportunity to work on WWII warbirds. As it happens, our museum has a flying P-40N and three flying P-51s (two P-51Ds and a P-51A). I can tell you that the structure of the two has little in common except they are both made with Aluminum and rivets. The wing structure in particular is nothing close to similar other than both having a spar and skin. The canopies on the P-51A are not very close to a P-40 either. The spinners attach differently. The elevators are treated quite differently. The list goes on.

I can see similar lines and design influence in the Reggianes and the Severskies, and the family lineage of the P-35 extends to the XP-72 as well, and perhaps a few other around the world. Certainly I have seen the Re.2005 described as the "ultimate Seversky development."

The P-35, P-43, and P-47 (as well as XP-41 and XP-44) each had a number of overlapping features, but off the top of my head it was mostly the use of radial engines, elliptical wing planforms, and the low-drag S-3 airfoil section that persisted from the P-35. The P-43 obviously had a great deal more in common with the P-47 given its turbocharged nature and revised canopy among other similarities (the XP-41 had fully retracting gear too, but was a bit closer to an up-engined P-35 than the P-43 I believe) and the XP-44 would have been the closest to a miniature P-47 of sorts using the R-2180 in place of the P-43's 1830 or P-47's R-2800.

The P-43 might have actually made a somewhat decent high altitude fighter if it hadn't been for the fuel tank arrangement. (the basic airframe seems to also have some advantages over the contemporary P-36/P-40 given the XP-41 was a bit faster than the similarly powered P-36/Hawk models, but there might be other reasons for this)

A bit off topic, but this also reminds me of an issue that's failed to come up in some of the recent turbochared fighter related discussions: coupling a turbo with a radial engine tends to complement the design a good deal better than an inline/V, especially for high speed aircraft given the lesser trade-offs of drag, weight, and jet exhaust thrust (with radials already being larger in diameter and less efficient at using exhaust thrust while also usually lighter than similarly performing liquid cooled engines once the cooling system is taken into account -also shorter, and the short/stout geometry tends to give greater options to embed turbos and intercoolers without adding too much drag)

tomo pauk said:

Readie is currently away from the forum, so, if you don't mind



Ineffective they were (if we can attribute effectiveness to machines, rather than to organizations), and they were fine fighters in the same time. Post war use of combat aircraft was a thing of countries' budget, not a thing of any piston-engined fighter being that good; people did not make the switch to the jet fighters just because there was no prop attached to them.
1st produced MC 205 fighters were armed with just 2 heavy MGs, the two cannons were not installed until a bigger wing wasn't introduced, with according loss in performance.


Could you please provide a sourced information (not English language Wikipedia article, if possible) that G55 managed 426 mph?



The low availability is a part of inefficiency - numbers produced do matter. Do we know what Macchi vs. what Spitfire, who held the initial advantages (current speed height), place time of battle, is it confirmed by both sides?



The Italian series 5 fighters (and other Axis fighters in second half of the war) were unable to wrestle the air superiority from the Allies, in MTO and on other theaters - hence the series 5 fighters were inefficient?

Click to expand...

That came directly from Macchi chief test pilot Franco Brisolini during flight tests in 1980. Also a quote but not complete shows if there was issues, tests would have brought that forward, but apparently it impressed and was one of the finest aircraft he ever flown capable to anything the Allied had: Chief Naval Test Pilot, remembered how they were impressed when they tested the Veltro. One of the finest aircraft I ever flew was the Macchi MC. 205. Oh, beautiful. And here you had the perfect combination of Italian styling and German engineering. It was really a delight to fly, and up to anything on the Allied program. But again, it came just before the Italians capitulated so it was never used extensively. And we did tests on it and were most impressed.

This is just like everyone thought the wings where the same length not too long ago on the Macchi's. Anyway, they were different and not many know this unless involved directly with Macchi. Ingegnere Luigi Raggi and Ingegnere Mario Castelli along with CEO at the time Fabrizio Foresio all confirmed the minor differences in the 202 and 205 wings during the restoration at AerMacchi.

It is true with the P-47 and 2005. Can't confirm for sure on the P-40, Longhi is dead now, I would have asked him!! The designs came from the P-35. This is confirmed by friend Ingegnere Roberto Longhi who worked in the USA along-side many of the prominent engineers of the time. The P-47 and all Reggiane aircraft were derived from the P-35. When he was kidnapped by the fascists in the US, he was brought back to Italy as a prisoner to work on engineering aircraft. He later came back to the US after the war and worked for Boeing for a short time. He was nominated into the American Institute of Aeronautics and awarded by the International Aeronautics Commission for his achievements.

Jerry is the owner of the Fiat currently being restored to fly.

Figured that. Jerry who?

Can we know his name?

We don't have a P-35, but we do have a Seversky AT-12, which is a 2-seat trainer version of the P-35. Here is a pic:



It still flies about 2 - 4 times every 2 years or so. According to John Maloney who usually flies it, it is a very good-flying, good-handling aircraft. If you put it next to the Curtiss P-47G we have, the family resemblance is unmistakable.

Jerry Yagen. He hates publicizing his new restorations, keeping them almost secret. I recall when the Mosquito was being restored in New Zealand as word got out and there was a race to get it flying first. Scouring for parts around the world, wouldn't you know it prices were doubling fast!

tomo pauk said:

The low availability is a part of inefficiency - numbers produced do matter. Do we know what Macchi vs. what Spitfire, who held the initial advantages (current speed height), place time of battle, is it confirmed by both sides?

Click to expand...

September 8, 1943 73a Squadriglia, belonging to the 9th Gruppo of 4° Stormo, was based at Gioia del Colle from August 28th, 1943 confirmed both sides.

Thanks lazun,

He was my first guess. Will be very nice to see an Italian warbird flying!

I wish the effort well and wish it were closer, but anywhere is fine when it is done. Will be very nice to hear a DB engine running, too.

lazun said:

That came directly from Macchi chief test pilot Franco Brisolini during flight tests in 1980. Also a quote but not complete shows if there was issues, tests would have brought that forward, but apparently it impressed and was one of the finest aircraft he ever flown capable to anything the Allied had: Chief Naval Test Pilot, remembered how they were impressed when they tested the Veltro. One of the finest aircraft I ever flew was the Macchi MC. 205. Oh, beautiful. And here you had the perfect combination of Italian styling and German engineering. It was really a delight to fly, and up to anything on the Allied program. But again, it came just before the Italians capitulated so it was never used extensively. And we did tests on it and were most impressed.

Click to expand...

Don't think that anyone will say that Italian fighters were bad, German engines and armament (when installed) gave them what was lacking in radial-engined predecessors. (Un)fortunately, styling is bad in winning the wars, and W. Allies moved the goal post from 380 mph 2xHMG-armed fighters to 400 mph, heavy armed fighters already in late 1942, and more as 1943 unfolded. What would the G.55, Re.2005 and MC.205V do with fully rated DB 605A (400 mph?) from late 1943 on was not going to cut it.
The claim for 426 mph of G.55 with fully rated engine needs a truckload of salt, the G.56 (DB 603A) and Fw 190D-9 were rated for such turn of speed, with some 300 PS more and less guns.

This is just like everyone thought the wings where the same length not too long ago on the Macchi's. Anyway, they were different and not many know this unless involved directly with Macchi. Ingegnere Luigi Raggi and Ingegnere Mario Castelli along with CEO at the time Fabrizio Foresio all confirmed the minor differences in the 202 and 205 wings during the restoration at AerMacchi.

Click to expand...

If that is the case, would you please be so kind to post the dimensions?

It is true with the P-47 and 2005. Can't confirm for sure on the P-40, Longhi is dead now, I would have asked him!! The designs came from the P-35. This is confirmed by friend Ingegnere Roberto Longhi who worked in the USA along-side many of the prominent engineers of the time. The P-47 and all Reggiane aircraft were derived from the P-35. When he was kidnapped by the fascists in the US, he was brought back to Italy as a prisoner to work on engineering aircraft. He later came back to the US after the war and worked for Boeing for a short time. He was nominated into the American Institute of Aeronautics and awarded by the International Aeronautics Commission for his achievements.

Click to expand...

For Regianne, perhaps it is true. The P-47 was not based on P-35. P-40 was based on P-36.
Ing. Longhi worked, pre war, until 1936 in the USA, the P-47B emerged years later.

lazun said:

September 8, 1943 73a Squadriglia, belonging to the 9th Gruppo of 4° Stormo, was based at Gioia del Colle from August 28th, 1943 confirmed both sides.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this part of the answer. I'd like to ask the detain for the RAF (unit, types, pilots killed/downed), also for Italian fighter types.

426 mph is specified for g.56 with DB 603A (proably not fully rated). En wiki has the G.55 as 371mph (670 km/h) with WEP, this is ~25 km/h faster than the Bf 109G-6 with fully rated engine.
The G.55 has a cleaner airframe, 5m² more wing area but also some 350kg more weight. The cleaner airframe (retractable tailwheel, no bumps/humps/whatever) should be good for 25 km/h, heavier weight may be countered by higher lift wing which results in having max speed at higher alt.

The G.55 has also a thicker wing than the Bf 109, both in relative and absolute terms. It also has 5 guns, vs, 3 guns for the Bf 109.
The 670 km/h (417 mph) on Notleistung is 50 km/h more than on Kampleistung, an increase of 8%. The difference in power is ~100 PS at rated altitude (1250 to 1350 PS), or 8%. There is someting fishy there - for increase of power of 8% we should get an increase of speed of 2.5 - 3%? Basically, 640 km/h at most?

The tests of the G.56 were made in spring of 1944 - the DB 603A should be fully rated by then. The G.56 has a comparable power as the P-51D at ~19300 ft (~1540 PS), and both should be equally fast (430-440 mph per English language Wikipedia)? Chances are slim to none.

How did the G.56 compare the the Fw 190C/D? It seems kinda silly to spend so much effort replacing the 109 with the G.56 when you had everything to just build more 190's.

I would think a G.56 would be a lot more maneuverable than a Fw 190D or any late model Bf 109. So that's one reason - if you have two fighters with similar performance and one has a 17 second turn circle and the other has a 21 second turn circle I think I'm going to go with the first one all things being equal.

This is just from English language Wikipedia so needs confirming in another source, but on the surface it looks like the G.55 would be considerably more maneuverable.

G.55
Wingspan 38'
wing area 227.2
Wing loading 32 lb / sq ft

Fw 190D
Wingspan 34' 5"
Wing area 197 sq ft
Wing loading 47.7 lb / sq ft

The Fw 190D9 is considerably faster than the G.55 (426 mph vs. 390) but that is with MW-50 or water injection and WEP right? English wikipedia claims the G.56 with the DB 603 would equal that speed though I would have some doubts. However it might be close, a Ta -152 was much faster with that engine.

If they were close to the same speed then the edge seems to be with the Fiat.

I assume the DB 603 would make the G.56 heavier than the G.55 but it would still have an edge in turn rate. Roll would be a big question.

I don't know if the same thing applies to the Fiat G55 as the Macchi C.202/205, but for the Macchi fighters, although they were reasonably light and strong, their airframes were also VERY labor intensive to build. IIRC it was about 3X the man-hours as a Me 109.

- Ivan.

Some of the subtle differences between the C.205 and the G.55 evident when looking at them in photographs.

C.205:

C.205

G.55:

G.55

Most obvious differences in side elevation are the straight fin leading edge and entirely enclosed tailwheel of the Fiat. The biggest visual differences can be seen round their noses.

C.205:

C.205 nose

G.55:

G.55 nose

Most noticeable on the G.55 is the slightly cranked wing and cleaner nose profile reminiscent of a late model Bf 109. The C.205 has a more protruding proboscis in the spinner and those two barrel coolers do nothing for its appearance. Otherwise they both are very similar.

G55 also has a much bigger wing ...