Making better Italian aircraft, 1933~1945

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TM06

Airman 1st Class
123
45
May 2, 2024
Italy had a bad habit of shooting itself in the foot when it came to military development, from the shortsighted decision to nix inline engine development in 1933 to building tanks designed for the mountains of Sicily then using them in the deserts of Africa and the steppes of Russia.
While the tanks are outside the scope of this discussion, let's try and fix the aircraft development.

Some ideas to kickstart the discussion:
  • Regia Aeronautica does not cancel all development of inline engines in 1933.
  • Overall aircraft program requirements do not shift as much, resulting in the quicker introduction and production of aircraft.
  • Reggiane successfully produces the Re 101~105 series of engines from 1937 to 1943, the Re 103 seeing widespread use on high-altitude interceptors such as the Ro.58 and Re.2005.
  • The 16-cylinder Fiat AS.8 makes it into production by late 1941, primarily used by fighter aircraft such as the G.55 and C.205.
  • The 18-cylinder Alfa Romeo 135 is designed for 87 octane off-the-bat, entering large scale production by 1938, the boosted 136 entering production in 1942.
 
TM06 said:
Regia Aeronautica does not cancel all development of inline engines in 1933.
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This is the main point IMO:
- there is less of the institutional knowledge that is lost
- there is no need to learn new knowledge and technology required for the radial engines to be up the snuff
(the two together will also save a lot of time, the commodity no coin can buy)
- on streamlining of the day, radial engine installation will be more draggier (unless someone botches the installation of a V12 badly)
- V12s of the day were usually with better superchargers, since there was no 'forest' of auxiliary drives squishing the intake
- cross-pollination with foreign V12 engines (British, German) can help
- V12s usually had better layout of exhaust stacks for the greater exhaust thrust

TM06 said:
Overall aircraft program requirements do not shift as much, resulting in the quicker introduction and production of aircraft.
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Italians often tried to introduce several aircraft for the same task in the same time. That can be good for small companies and will make politicians looking good in small cities, but it is bad for war. Take a peek at what Douglas and Curtiss were doing across the pond, as well as what MTT did with the Bf 109 wrt. the mass production of the stressed-skin aircraft. For the airframes that were not totally metal-clad, take a look at De Havilland and Hawker.

TM06 said:
The 16-cylinder Fiat AS.8 makes it into production by late 1941, primarily used by fighter aircraft such as the G.55 and C.205.
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If Fiat and/or others have a big, modern 40L+ V12 in production by the late 1930s, it will be a stiff competition for a V16.

TM06 said:
The 18-cylinder Alfa Romeo 135 is designed for 87 octane off-the-bat, entering large scale production by 1938, the boosted 136 entering production in 1942.
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The only part of the post that I disagree
I'd put the brakes on the Alfa Romeo 18 cyl engines post haste. At least the Piaggio 18 cyl engines saw some service use.
 
tomo pauk said:
If Fiat and/or others have a big, modern 40L+ V12 in production by the late 1930s, it will be a stiff competition for a V16.
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Maybe, but the AS.8 definitely measures up.
2,250 horsepower from a 790 kg 35 L engine that ran reliably for 100 hours is appealing no matter what way you slice it. And if the AS.8 is similar in proportions to the A.38 (which it should be), then it'd fit into all the same places a DB 605 would.
tomo pauk said:
The only part of the post that I disagree
I'd put the brakes on the Alfa Romeo 18 cyl engines post haste. At least the Piaggio 18 cyl engines saw some service use.
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The Alfa 135 on 87 octane once they got it to work made 1,620 hp. AFAIK the biggest thing causing so many issues was the fact that the engine wasn't designed to use 87 octane, rather 100 octane. By designing it to work on 87 from the start, you'd be getting a 1,620 hp engine by 1938 when the 1940 Piaggio P.XII topped out at 1,500 hp.
I've seen scattered claims of an uprated and slightly larger displacement Piaggio radial named P.XXII making 1,700 hp but information seems to be scarce. And by the time I'm seeing it show up, the 2,000 hp Alfa 136 would already be available.
 
To put it mildly, I don't share your enthusiasm about the Alfa 18 cyl engines.
 
OK, now try to run it on 87 octane fuel. Racing engines using racing fuel can show the way, a start point on the trail,................or they can lead to a hidden cliff.

Getting one engine to last 100 hrs was one goal. Getting 20 engines to each last over 100 hours is a lot harder. And be very careful about peak powers and the power used in a 100 hr endurance test. Merlin engine for the Speed Spitfire shows some of the problem. They hit over 1800hp in 1938 using racing fuel. They also ran at 1600hp for 10 hours at least once (more than once?) which gave them a lot of confidence in the basic engine lasting at higher boost pressures once they had better gas. How long did it take for RR to OK running the engine at 1600hp using 100/130 fuel in service, even emergency rating?
Also note that racing/record setting engines were running at sea level and the superchargers were set up accordingly. Max power at sea level.
Napier got 1350hp out of supercharged 24 liter Lions for racing/record setting use and they were doing in the early 30s. They certainly were not using gasoline for fuel.
Germans got 2300hp out of a DB601 for brief periods of time for the Me 209 record plane.
 
Aside from technical details, the aviation industry organization and state procurement policy was a disaster. Mussolini was deathly afraid of labor unrest, and aircraft contracts were spread out left and right as a way to keep workers content, leading to a huge variety of aircraft. Obsolete aircraft were kept in production, partially for the same reasons; e.g. the most produced Italian aircraft of WWII was the CR.42, a biplane for crying out loud. Supposedly one of the best biplane fighters ever, but still.

Further, the industry was organized as vertically integrated conglomerates. When company X designed a plane, they used engines from company X rather than the best available. Leading to situations with an otherwise capable plane being hobbled by a poor engine, and (to an extent) vice versa.

Solve such issues, consolidate resources into fewer but better financed projects, and the Italian aviation industry might not have punched so far below their weight.

And yes, don't go and outlaw inline engine development. Though even without that restriction, many of the famous Italian inline engines were of obsolete individual cylinder barrel construction, and new development was still required in order to bring the engines up to par with their international competitors.
 

Considering that Italians made a lot of military and record-setting aircraft as monoplanes in the 1930s, making new biplane fighters past 1937 is even more appalling.

I find the Reggiane company as a big offender wrt. series production. They manufactured under 700 pcs of their fighters, from Re 2000 to 2005, in 4 years. It probably had a lot to do with the conditions that the company had against it (from the general Italian war economy to the restricted supply of some raw materials), but still such a low number is disappointing. Even the other company in the Caproni concern, that manufactured the 2-engined light bombers of the 300 series, seems to have made more of these despite the greater complexity and the size of the later.

BTW - Italians making an early switch to the 4 HMG battery on fighters would've made these even more competitive in both air combat and as strafers against the surface targets. Also, seeing the drop tanks on German and American fighters during the second half of 1930s should've rang a bell within the RA officials, since Italian fighters were supposed to operate at the great distances, be it in a tactical sense, or for self-deployment.
 
Unless we know the square footage and number of employees of the Italian factories it is hard to judge if they were under performing or not.
even a free market you need orders before you build larger factories (unless you gamble).
Even in the US by sometime in 1940 structural steel, cement and other building materials were controlled by the government to prevent stockpiling and profiteering.
Now throw in machine tools of any sort, electrical equipment and so on.
Very few countries were self sufficient in machine tools. Italy's ability to import much was severely limited.

Reggiane should get a pass. After building Caproni bombers in WW I they did nothing in aviation until 1937 when they built two CA 405 record planes

for the Istres - Damascus - Paris competition based on two Piaggio P.32 medium bombers.
Reggiane built two bomber prototypes based on the Piaggio P.32 with the what was learned from the Ca 405. Nether was adopted.
And then the Re 2000 saga starts.
So you have a "plant" that had built a total of 4 twin engine airplanes (or modified existing airframes) of mostly wood construction trying to build all metal fighters in 1938-39 and while it performed well in trials, the borrowed construction feature of the internal fuel storage may have lead to the rejection by the Regia Aeronautica and it's approval for export.
Hungary orders some but also licenses production. Hungary gets about 70 of the first production batch and Sweden 60. Actual support for Reggiane by the Italian government may have come to late to allow much production expansion?
 
Turning towards the other branch of the Caproni concern - the one that was making the bombers. These ranged between something that made Blenheim look like a speed demon, to the types that were roughly Blenheim equivalent by the time Blenheim was ancient news. The 300 series bombers were powered by the weakest engines available in Italy, so indeed the engine situation must improve 1st.
With that change happening, the modern bombers (for 1940 and on) should be at least as good as the DB7 or the Martin 167 that French and British bought. The preceding generation of bomber types should be at least as good as the Martin B-10, or the SB by Tupolev, or indeed as the Blenheim.

Further about the fighters: making a mixed-construction fighter is not a step backwards if your industry is well-versed in this. Make a 'small Hurricane' etc. See how and where the wood can be employed, but the wood of type that there is actual supply in Europe.
Transport aircraft and trainers should be predominantly produced with the lower % of light alloys in structure when compared with combat aircraft.
 
Italy has good aircraft from the mid-1930s onwards, and before. What they need is less duplication and more efficient production and labour.

From the Bf 109's introduction in 1937 until the Fw 190 entered service in summer 1941, Germany had one single engine, single-seat monoplane fighter. The British focused on the Hurricane and Spitfire. Meanwhile in the same period 1937-41 the Italians introduced the multiple single-engined monoplane fighters from Reggiane, Fiat and Macchi. Same with multi-engine level bombers, with aircraft from CANT, Caproni, Fiat, Savoia-Marchetti and Piaggio all competing for the same government financing and labour.

Issue the specification, have a competition, pick the best and farm out production across the industry.
 
Admiral Beez said:
The British focused on the Hurricane and Spitfire.
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They were mixing it up a little with the Whirlwind. Yes it is a twin but it was a short range (or shortish range) single seat fighter with small engines the internal fuel capicty of 134 imp gallons is a good indication of the expected range/endurance. And they had the Big Hawker, which was somewhat delayed by the BoB and the fact that the intended engines were taking longer to come together than planned. And a few other prototypes.
Admiral Beez said:
Meanwhile in the same period 1937-41 the Italians introduced the multiple single-engined monoplane fighters from Reggiane, Fiat and Macchi.
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Just like the Germans did with the specification that lead to the 109. 4 contenders. Two ruled out quickly but the He 112 hung on for a while.
For the Italians the Reggiane was ruled out quickly and then was allowed to be exported (much like the He 112). The Reggiane didn't become a factor for the Italian air force got the DB 601 engines or license versions. The Fiat was dropped and the DP powered Reggiane was adopted.

Now perhaps they could have gone all in on the Macchi fighter and made Reggiane and Fiat build the Macchi design but I don't think it would have increased production all that much.
The big problem was engines.
 
I think FIAT, Reggiane and Macchi continuing to make fighters is fine, Germany and Britain are really the only countries that cut down fighter production to two companies.
US had 6 (Curtiss, Grumman, Republic/Seversky, Vought, Brewster and NAA), Japan had 4 (Nakajima, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Kawanishi), Russia had 5 (Lavochkin, Yakovlev, MiG, Polikarpov, Sukhoi), and France had entirely too many!

They definitely do need to cut down on the bombers though. I'd suggest dropping Fiat and Caproni from that equation as none of their bombers were particularly good and doing so would free up production capacity for the other more important things under those companies.
 
Agreed on the need to have more than one type of fighters in play, lest the company that won the contract might get too complacent.
Without the carrier aviation (that there was no equivalent in Italy) and for the late 1930s and early 40s, US fighter builders are just four (Curtiss, NAA, Lockheed, Republic/Seversky). For the Soviets, there was no Sukhoi fighters bar prototypes, and Polikarpov is out of the way when the new 3 entered the scene.

Definitely Caproni bombers were too ... weak to be considered in the what-if.
The SM.79 with two 1000 HP radials would've been at least a decent bomb truck for the second half of the 1930s, and faster to make than the 3-engined version.
CANT bombers seem to be pretty decent?
 

Those other countries (France excepted?) also had massively higher industrial capacity than Italy, so they were able to get better economies of scale despite having more manufacturers.

And if we look at engines, it's much more concentrated. Discounting small volume and/or small size engine makers, despite its gargantuan industrial resources the US had but two manufacturers designing radial engines and kind-of two doing liquid (if you count Packard as a whole entity) (lots of factories ran by different companies though). And so on.
 
TM06 said:
Germany and Britain are really the only countries that cut down fighter production to two companies.
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But they didn't kill off De Havilland and Gloster. Which payed dividends just after WW II with the early jets.
TM06 said:
US had 6 (Curtiss, Grumman, Republic/Seversky, Vought, Brewster and NAA)
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People are forgetting Bell, perhaps the US should have in 1939
 
TM06 said:
Russia had 5 (Lavochkin, Yakovlev, MiG, Polikarpov, Sukhoi)
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The USSR didn't have " aircraft manufacturing companies", the Soviets had state-owned aircraft plants that produced what the ministry ("people's commissariat") assigned to them. And there were design bureaus with their own (usually small) pilot plants that designed and built new airplanes, which were then produced by large mass-production plants on the orders of the ministry. The big serial plants (for example, number 21 in Gorky) had their own design bureaus, which also sometimes developed their own airplanes, but more often were technological departments of the experimental design bureaus. Sometimes a large serial plant did not want to produce what it was ordered to produce by the Ministry in the hope that the design of the factory bureau would be better (the case of I-180 and Pashinin's I-21). Therefore, it tried to resist the introduction of a new but "foreign" airplane - for the "own" airplane additional awards and promotions were due.
Some "big" serial plants produced airplanes of several experimental design bureaus, often the airplanes of one developer replaced the airplanes of another.
 
US engine manufacturing was little weird. The air cooled engines had captured the commercial market. Allison was scraping by with development contracts and if they hadn't gotten the order for the P-40 engines in April of 1939 there was a very good chance GM, the parent company, would have closed the doors on the engine shop.
Packard had been out of the aircraft engine business for around 8-9 years. Somehow they got into the MTB engine business using their old 1926-30 aircraft engine. Packard had designed a number of marine racing engines.
However there were two (?) bit players in the wings.
Continental was maker of very low powered aircraft engines and was a contractor for the Army hyper engine. Continental was also an maker of car, truck, bus and industrial engines. They provided engines to a number of these companies although Continental built no vehicles of their own. They were cataloging 21 different non aircraft engines in 1940.
Lycoming was also making small aircraft engines and trying to make a flat 12 hyper engine.
Lycoming may have been out of the ground vehicle market at this time (late 30s) but they had made engines for Aurburn, Cord and Duesenberg cars.
 
The SM.79 and SM.82 are too important to be dropped IMO, and Savoia-Marchetti had some other aircraft in the works like the SM.84.
As for CANT, the Z.1007 was an excellent medium bomber whose only real weaknesses were a limited internal bomb load and weather damage-prone wooden skin, and the Z.1007ter was highly promising (the all-metal Z.1015 is also of note). The better engines and decreased requirement shifts in this scenario also drastically improve the chances of the Z.1018 making it into production.
z42 said:
Those other countries (France excepted?) also had massively higher industrial capacity than Italy, so they were able to get better economies of scale despite having more manufacturers.
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France had an enormous industrial capacity, they were bogged down by bureaucratic incompetence and outdated thinking among the top brass. If I were to rank the main 7 from what I know (not the deepest knowledge mind you, any corrections are appreciated), it would probably look something like this:
1) USA
2) Russia (1943 onwards)
3) Britain (Commonwealth included)
4) France (early 1940)
5) Germany (early 1940)
6) Russia (pre-1942)
7) Germany (1944)
8) Japan (Manchuria + SEA included)
9) Italy (Italian East Africa included)
10) Britain (mainland only)
11) Italy (mainland only)
12) Japan (mainland only)
Shortround6 said:
But they didn't kill off De Havilland and Gloster. Which payed dividends just after WW II with the early jets.
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Oh definitely, that point was more about single-seat single-engined fighters, and AFAIK de Havilland never made a single-engine fighter and Gloster never had a single-engined monoplane fighter enter production.
 
Last edited:
For all the waring powers, the timing had a great effect on wartime aircraft design. The U.S. (and to a certain extent, Britain) started serious development and production "late" compared to the Axis powers. The Allies started serious development and manufacture just before the war, especially the U.S. Thus the U.S. was developing "2nd generation" aircraft in the 2 years before the war while the Axis were loaded down with "1st generation" (mid-1930's designs) and had to develop and manufacture their next generation after the war started. Aircraft technology was moving so fast from the late 1930's onward that the Allies had an accidental "head start" on the next generation aircraft, simply because they started design and mass production later than the Axis in order to "catch up." It was lucky for the Allies that this occurred.
 
The small Caproni bombers may have been purchased because they were cheap.
Sort of a Avro Anson on steroids (cheap ones).
Caproni had the CA 135 on offer during the last half of the 1930s.

But the lack of high power engines really slowed things down. 1000hp were about as good as it got and that wasn't enough power for good medium bomber.
And the most common engines, the Piaggio P.XI had reliability problems.
Using three engines like the CANT Z.1007

offered a better chance of success with 50% more power. But the poor reliability of the engines hurt.
Having to buy three 14 cylinder 1000hp engines was not a good way to get 3000hp. A B-25 got 3400hp from 2 14 cylinder engines.

Italian tanks and aircraft seem to have been built on the numbers per Lira concept.
 
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