The G in Reggiane and Regia is soft, closer to a J. like the G in in "agitated" or "ginger". The hard G in Italian is followed by an H, same as the C and CH. Examples of an hard G and hard C in English that use the same spelling would be words like gherkin and orchestra.
Ah not quite. In Italian; any g is only soft if it is prior to an e or an i. If a g is before an a, an o or a u; it is a hard g. And yes to get a hard g before an e or an I; it requires an h. This is analogous with the letter c in Italian; any c sounds like a “ch” if it is prior to an e or an i and if a c is prior to an a, an o, or a u then it is a hard c, and to get a hard c before an e or an i requires to be followed with an h. These are the same rules in French, and in the French words that are loaned to English, except there is no possible hard g nor c prior to an e nor i in French, and the soft c is the same as an s. Example; the words centre and colour. It is also the same rules in Spanish, except they also have no hard g nor c before an e nor an i. And their soft c is a “th” sound and their soft g is a hard guttural “h” sound.
Ed, I’ve been an avid aviation nerd for 40+ years, especially interested in piston engines aircraft and I always thought I knew quite a bit. However I always look forward to your videos as you almost always teach me something I either didn’t know, or give an angle I hadn’t considered. Your work is well researched, your supporting images not something that are often seen but I especially like presentation style: it’s like chatting with your best, well informed, funny mate. Keep it up please.
@@acomingextinctionI know. My best mate works in marketing. Lovely bloke, but totally useless if I want to have a beer and talk about aircraft. Ed should start a nerd pub crawl.
In reality it was an evolution of the Bf109 (that the Japanese had the occasion to examine), but the Japanese used many solutions that were also used on Macchi fighters (large landing gear, NACA five-digit airfoil, positioning of the weapons, positioning of the fuel tanks...) so it was visually much more similar to a Macchi C.202 than to a BF109. An example of convergent evolution. However, some particular (IE the quite complex positioning of the four fuel tanks, that's not obvious, and was identical in the Ki-61 and Macchi C.202) seems to indicate the Japanese had access to the Italian design as well.
@@danieleyre8913 I wouldnt call it necessarily an evolution to the Bf109, its just that it looked alot like it because it used the same engine. Even the Allies saw the Ki-61 alot more like the Italian Macchi C.202 than the Bf109. The Ki-61 was an entirely domestic design but its designers studied under Messerschmitt before the war so they would naturally arrive to the same design "flavor" even if they never got their hands on a Bf109.
@@mosesracal6758 You are correct. Except on one minor point: The Japanese army air force did in fact buy & receive at least one Bf 109E in 1940 (for testing purposes).
Well done Ed. Once again you have thrown not one but two aircraft that I have never heard of before. I used to think I was a WWII aviation buff. Maybe not.
Great story on these interesting aircraft. Can I offer some minor points on Italian? 'Regia' has a soft 'g' as in Reggie Perrin, so it's pronounced 'Reh-jee-uh', with the emphasis on the 'jee'. 'au' in Italian is pronounced as in 'ow!' or 'now', So Aeronautica is 'Aero-now-tickah'. Also, in 'Isotta Fraschini' 'sch' has a hard ch as in 'ski', to give 'fra-ski-knee'. British people tend to make the same error when ordering bruschetta as a starter in Italian restaurants, although I'm sure twaiters are used to it.
I don't know if it's mentioned in the video, but the Piaggio P108, which looks a lot like a B-17, is the plane that one of Mussolini's sons was killed in. After hearing about it, Mussolini was messed up for a while, not that he wasn't messed up anyway.
Caproni built some of the first dedicated fighter aircraft at the start of the First World War and the first dedicated anti Zeppelin fighter, their designs were outstripped so they moved to bombers and flying boats. Caproni aircraft during WW2 comprised mostly light bombers and close support/ fighter bombers. Breda had a similar situation for it's aircraft designs. These designs explained here in this video were inferior designs for fighter aircraft that were in service because of the amount of political pull the other Designers and Company owners had has with Mussolini.
0:52 About that. In the immediate postwar period when the Aeronautica Militare received P-47Ds and P-51Ds, the Italian pilots had mixed feelings. They loved the firepower, but in terms of flight performance they considered the American planes a downgrade.
8:29 interestingly testing for the Isotta Fraschini Zeta was conducted by mounting it in the nose (central position) of the three engined SM79 sparviero
The Italians had a problem with power plants. The 2 and 5 series aircraft used licensed built Daimler Benz engines. Compare the Reggiane aircraft with the Seversky/Republic aircraft as several engineers that worked for Seversky returned to z Italy and Reggiane. The tails and wings show the heritage. Put the R.E. 2000 and the Seversky P-35 are very similar. Again, a license built engine was used.
You can thank the Regia Aeronautica decisions about engines. Traditionally Italian firms designed inline engines (both FIAT and Isotta Fraschini had built over 1000hp inline commercial aerial engines already in the '20s) but at the beginning of the '30s (exactly when DB, Rolls Royce and Allison started the development of the most famous inlines of WWII) the Regia decided to switch to radials, forcing the designers to work on a field they didn't know. They however managed to close the gap, and in 1939 was homologated the radial 1500hp Piaggio P.XII. A world class engine at the time. But at that point the Regia already decided to switch back to inlines, but they didn't want traditional V, only inverted V, so cutting off existing Isotta Fraschini engines and forcing FIAT to redesign the 1400hp A.38. That's why Alfa Romeo had to acquire the licence to produce the DB601.
@@neutronalchemist3241 Piaggio had still to license build the Gnome-Rhone Mistral Major 14k as the P.XI RC 40 that led up the engine you mentioned. There were good engines developed for the Schneider Cup racers which sadly were not followed through.
@@michaeltelson9798 Yet the same Gnome-Rohne wasn't able to evolve their design in something comparable to the P.XII (and later P.XV and P.XXII). The Italian tecnichans DID catch up in radial technology.
Ed, do you have any good references for that Isotta Fraschini RC25 X configuration engine please? It’s the first I’ve heard of it. On a related note, there has been some good, recent research that suggests the issue with the RR Vulture was more related to the thick section deH propeller having low critical mach number and the associated transonic issues didn’t play well with the constant speed unit and would have put unexpected loads on the engine. It was a similar prop on both the Avro Manchester and the Hawker Tornado, but it’s the engine that took the rap. So it’s interesting to speculate that some X engines might have had a future after all.
I think it is hard to find anything about this prototype engine, even in Italian, apart from what you can find on Wikipedia (a couple of articles) and some photos on google. The only ascertained thing is that it came from the coupling of two I.F. Gamma and retained the air cooling system, a reason for its continuous overheating problems, particularly the back cylinders. The other problem was, similarly to Napier's H engines, its tuning, in this case because of very limited resources, time dedicated and, as for many other italian engines from 1000 hp upwards, the unavailability of good metal alloys.
Am I alone in starting to visualise Ed as like a sort of sniffer dog which finds obscure and really interesting aeroplanes then compiles a great compact summary?
Yes these were one of many families of very promising airframes from the Italian aircraft industry that never got mass produced nor into service due to bumbling around of Italian air ministry and general lack of production capacity within that Italian aircraft industry and lack of available engines. There was also the A.U.T.18, the SM.91, the Ro.57 & Ro.58, even the Re.2000 fighters only got made due to orders from Sweden and Hungary.
What the Caproni Vizzola (not Vizolla) fighters excelled in was climb speed. A quite important feature (since fighters really don't use simple horizontal speed. They continually exchange altitude for speed and vice-versa). The climb time to 6000m among the first generation monoplane Italian fighters was 603 seconds, for the F.5, 623 seconds for the Reggiane 2000, 629 seconds for the Macchi 200 and 703 seconds for the FIAT G.50. The Isotta Fraschini Zeta RC25/60 was not intended to produce 1500hp, but 1250hp at 6000m, that's practically the same power than a DB605a at that altitude. After the first flight, of the F.6Z Ing. Fabrizi (Vizzola's chief designer) was pretty confident the residual cooling problems of the engine could be solved with a simple modification of the annular extractor at the end of the engine cowling, but the armistice blocked any evolution.
I have often wondered why Italian aircraft engines were so crummy when they had all that Schneider Trophy experience. Their Macchi M.C. 72 could hit 440 mph in 1934 and had a Fiat AS.6 engine capable of 2851 HP. Even if that engine only lasts two hours that is incredible power for back then.
You can thank the Regia Aeronautica decisions about engines. Traditionally Italian firms designed inline engines (both FIAT and Isotta Fraschini had built over 1000hp inline commercial aerial engines already in the '20s) but at the beginning of the '30s (exactly when DB, Rolls Royce and Allison started the development of the most famous inlines of WWII) the Regia decided to switch to radials, forcing the designers to work on a field they didn't know. They however managed to close the gap, and in 1939 was homologated the radial 1500hp Piaggio P.XII. A world class engine at the time. But at that point the Regia already decided to switch back to inlines, but they didn't want traditional V, only inverted V, so cutting off existing Isotta Fraschini engines and forcing FIAT to redesign the 1400hp A.38. That's why Alfa Romeo had to acquire the licence to produce the DB601.
Yes, well that “engine” was basically two V-12s back to back, nothing stellar and rather dangerous. So engine design was not their forte. However the Italians had one of the best if not the best wind tunnel in Europe or even the world.
As a testament to the size of Italy’s aviation industry, the first postwar Vespa scooters were made using leftover cans of paint meant for fighter aircraft.
excellente! (one small note; Reggiane has soft g's, so, reg, [as in the short for Reginald] and gee-ahn-nay) oh nevermind. I see below someone has already given you the note... always read before you chomp at the bit kid...
One thing that puzzles me is why those Italian fighters with the air-cooled radial engines (Fiat A.74 R.C.78 according to Wikipedia) have those blisters around the cowling. What are they for?
The USAF moved toward bubble canopies over the development of the P-47 and P-51. Why did the Italians leave it behind? You could still put some armor behind the pilot's seat and yet let him look over this shoulder ("check six") which is such a vital thing especially for fighters
Ed, Great job, as always! I have read pretty much all that is available, in Italian and other languages, on the F series. There really isn't that much available overall. A friend of the family was an acquaintance of Ing. Fabrizzi, the young designer of the F-5. Sadly, the young and brilliant engineer was killed in an unrelated air crash around the time the F-5 prototype was to fly, so the design ended up "orphaned". Perhaps, had the designer survived, the type would have had better luck. Some of the key advantages of the F5, relative say, to the Macchi, are not related to flight performance: the F-5 was much cheaper to produce, required less strategic materials, which Italy had little, and necessitated fewer work hours... I have somewhere a 4 or 5 page article (in Italian) where these details are quoted. I can forward it to you, if you wish, and can help with the translation... as well as the pronunciation: Reggia, Reggiane: the "gg" as in "Reggie Lewis"... And thank you for sharing,
Hard to believe if nowadays you think of Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini but the main obstacle in Italy to produce fighter planes to compete with English Hurricanes or, even more, Spitfires was their inability to develope strong V 12 engines. We are all aware of the outstanding Rolls Royce engines. At that time only Daimler Benz could compete. I think besides the engine problems the Italien fighter planes were aerodynamically outstanding. The best „Five Series“ fighters of Macchi, Fiat and Reggiane all used outright DB or license built Alfa Romeo DB engines.
The chief of aeronautic First in the 1933 put the stop of development of in line engines,so Italy had to start from scratch with radial engines .when in 1939 the gap was almost filled,they changed back of in line,but V inverted engines
A bit of both. They used the same engine (DB 605), were produced to fulfill similar requirements and had similar performance. Now, the Reggiane Re. 2005 has a more peculiar "relative": the P-47.
Stalin once said that “Quantity was its own Quality” and this holds true for Italian War Manufacturing during WW2. During that war, Italy produced 13,402 planes of all categories. Compare that to the U.S. which produced 296,000 aircraft, the Soviet Union 136,000, the British Empire 177,000, Germany 133,000, and the Japanese Empire 64,000. Talking about Italian warplanes is meaningless as so few were made. That was the Achilles Heel of the Italian War effort. No real Manufacturing Capability. Case in point, in the Allied Invasion of Sicily at Greta, the Italian Army had to use captured French tanks to fight the Americans soldiers there.
Considering their relatively smaller budgets and military industrial output, the Italians were definitely good at producing prototypes. 😉 But was it one of the planes in this video that some have speculated was the inspiration for the Mitsubishi A6M?
2x 0.5" machine guns does not sound too bad. If you scale up proportionally in three dimensions then the ratio is 2x125 / 8x27 when compared to 8x 0.303" machine guns on a Hawker Hurricane. Thing is those Italian .5" machine guns had comparatively low muzzle velocity and rate of fire.
I love the Italian aircraft, but Im always left wondering... Why wouldn't a nation the size and with resources of WW2 Italy just pick one or two good fighters and consolidate manufacturing around them? Always found it curious that they produced such similar aircraft with very similar capabilities. It can arguably be said that the Italians built one liquid cooled fighter, but made sure that they had at least three or four different sets of non interchangeable parts to build it from. (edit) After writing this, I suddenly got the feeling that I'm asking a question that's been pondered a thousand times before.
Thank the Royal italian air force minister of that..First in 1933 stop the further development of in line engines, so Italy had to start from scratch with radial engines..when in 1939 the gap was almost filled they changed back in line engines,but must be V inverted engines..no wonder they had problems.. even so,they could had made the damlier benz on licenze to all the industry ,not only piaggio.. however,the radial engines xii could had been used for fighters and even the piaggio XV ,but should be improved reliability
A gazillion tourists visit Italy's art museums but practically none of them visit the obscure air museums there. I have seen most of the five series fighters there.
Italy at the time did not have the industrial capacity at the time to turn out their brilliant designs in any significant quantity. Further, by the time they started producing modern fighters, the allies were bombing what little production capacity they had out of exitance. Then they surrendered - sort of- and that was the end of the war for Italy.
@@chriscarbaugh3936 They required a lot of man hours to build compared to the 109 and stop. EVERY WWII fighter required a lot of man hours to build compared to the 109. Man-hours required to build Italian fighters were perfectly comparable to British and American fighters. IE, the FIAT G.55, costed 15.000 man/hours at the start of production, May 1943. It was planned to reduce it to 9000 man/hours with the 1000 sample and at a production rate of 200 samples/month. In Jan 1943, a P-47 costed 22.100 man/hours. In Jan 1944, 9.100 man/hours (at a production rate of over 500 samples/month). In Jan 1943, a P-38 costed 14.800 man/hours (less than the P-47, because it had been in production for more time). In Jan 1944, 9.600 man/hours.
I know that aerodynamics, and era kind of determine the look of a lot air craft....but doesn't the F5 look a lot like an A6M5 'zero'? It also seems have the parallel armament as the Japanese fighter also.
Probably for the best that these interesting aircraft were never developed, Italy had enough logistics problems and adding another aircraft type would have made it worse . But they clearly built some beautiful aircraft.
Yea Caproni had more success with their bombers, and other 2 engine constructions. Shame that still not a single Caproni plane is represented in Warthunder (or any Italian float-plane for example), despite quite the few models to pick from. Maybe a Hungarian Ca.135bis one day...
I know, italian 😂 words are hard... Vizzola has 2 zz and 1 l... (Vizzola Ticino is a place near Varese where Malpensa international Airport MXP is located today...). al the best.
Italy and Germany really should have combined their talents. Italy designs the airframe and Germany drops in the engine because it was Italian engines that let their WWII aircraft down. Just look at what they came up with for a 1940 fighter; lets use the Macchi MC200 one of the more common sight in Italian hands for the years 1940-42, key years of the war for the fascists in both Germany and Italy. Firstly, they only managed to build 1100 and second the plane had a whopping 870 HP radial LOL IN 1940 !! No wonder losses were high. Had they put in DB 601's from the start and come up with the MC202 right away and never bothered with the low powered radial, Italian fighters would have had much more success and much fewer losses.
For some obscure reason of any fighter engine usually is stated the emergency or takeoff power. For the FIAT A.74 is stated the normal power. The emergency power of the A.74 was 960hp, and it was pretty conservative, since the manual stated it could be mantained for half an hour. The difference between the 960hp of a FIAT A.74 and the 1200hp of a P&W R-1830 (that powered the first line of American fighters still in 1942), was that the P&W engines used 100 octane fuel. The Axis one had to use 87 octane one. More than engines, it was the Regia Aeronautica decisions about engines that "let their WWII aircraft down". Traditionally Italian firms designed inline engines (both FIAT and Isotta Fraschini had built over 1000hp commercial aerial engines already in the '20s) but at the beginning of the '30s (exactly when DB, Rolls Royce and Allison started the development of the most famous inlines of WWII) the Regia decided to switch to radials, forcing the designers to work on a field they didn't know. They however managed to close the gap, and in 1939 was homologated the radial 1500hp Piaggio P.XII. A world class engine at the time. But at that point the Regia already decided to switch back to inlines, but they didn't want traditional V, only inverted V, so cutting off existing Isotta Fraschini engines and forcing FIAT to redesign the 1400hp A.38. That's why Alfa Romeo had to acquire the licence to produce the DB601.
These planes seems all to be bigger than needed to receive adequate engine, weapons and fuel, and also to suffer a lot from excessive drag. So, after all the italians were right in just... ignoring them, rs
As Col. Claire Chennault reported back to Washington about the "War Lord's" of China's Air Forces' being superior to Chang's "The Eye-Tie Fighters go like STINK when they RUN!!! Unfortunately, they don't run very often." Chang bought a few of them, to Chennault's dismay (Chang also "Lend-Leased" some Bf-109's at least 3). The Chinese could hardly keep the radial engine version of the Curtiss Hawk 75 operating properly. With battle damage and normal wear and tear, liquid cooled in-line engined fighters were beyond Chinese mechanics. "Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosey" was hard to teach to Chinese who had MAYBE dealt with an OX before.
Also the Japanese used the FIAT BR.20 bombers in 1938-1939. The Japs had several complains about the aircrafts (mostly range and defensive armament), but, curiously, none about the FIAT A.80 engines, that instead the Italians often considered problematic.
Unfortunately, much of the Italian military of the WWII period have suffered from a genuine lack of capability. This was due to their involvement in highly unpopular wars in Northern Africa, and of which WWII seemed but an extension. Thus, an Italian prisoner of war was a happy man. This should not reflect upon the great aviation traditions of the nation.
@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters well, i can't speak for them but I would say you did not upset. It is just that when we hear such things is a bit like when you scratch a school board with your nails: very annoying to here. Appart from that, great video as always! Cheers!
The Italians do four things very well. They produce beautiful women, they produce beautiful cars, they produce beautiful airplanes and they surrender very well.
The Italians built some truly beautiful aircraft.
Same w/ their automobiles. Reliability is a different matter.
Beautiful motorcycles as well.
Truly some of the most aircraft of all time.
@@shauny2285 They had some solid aircraft
Beautiful women to just saying, along with all the other good things
The G in Reggiane and Regia is soft, closer to a J. like the G in in "agitated" or "ginger". The hard G in Italian is followed by an H, same as the C and CH. Examples of an hard G and hard C in English that use the same spelling would be words like gherkin and orchestra.
I didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing
Ah not quite.
In Italian; any g is only soft if it is prior to an e or an i. If a g is before an a, an o or a u; it is a hard g. And yes to get a hard g before an e or an I; it requires an h. This is analogous with the letter c in Italian; any c sounds like a “ch” if it is prior to an e or an i and if a c is prior to an a, an o, or a u then it is a hard c, and to get a hard c before an e or an i requires to be followed with an h.
These are the same rules in French, and in the French words that are loaned to English, except there is no possible hard g nor c prior to an e nor i in French, and the soft c is the same as an s. Example; the words centre and colour.
It is also the same rules in Spanish, except they also have no hard g nor c before an e nor an i. And their soft c is a “th” sound and their soft g is a hard guttural “h” sound.
Ed, I’ve been an avid aviation nerd for 40+ years, especially interested in piston engines aircraft and I always thought I knew quite a bit. However I always look forward to your videos as you almost always teach me something I either didn’t know, or give an angle I hadn’t considered. Your work is well researched, your supporting images not something that are often seen but I especially like presentation style: it’s like chatting with your best, well informed, funny mate. Keep it up please.
Yes - couldn’t have put it better myself.
only thing i'd add is - down the pub.
@@acomingextinctionI know. My best mate works in marketing. Lovely bloke, but totally useless if I want to have a beer and talk about aircraft. Ed should start a nerd pub crawl.
@@robmidgleyLet me know when and where. Although up in Scotland I would travel south for a pub session.
The Ki-61 was mistakenly believed to be a copy of one of these, which is why the Allies gave it the code name Tony when it first appeared.
In reality it was an evolution of the Bf109 (that the Japanese had the occasion to examine), but the Japanese used many solutions that were also used on Macchi fighters (large landing gear, NACA five-digit airfoil, positioning of the weapons, positioning of the fuel tanks...) so it was visually much more similar to a Macchi C.202 than to a BF109. An example of convergent evolution.
However, some particular (IE the quite complex positioning of the four fuel tanks, that's not obvious, and was identical in the Ki-61 and Macchi C.202) seems to indicate the Japanese had access to the Italian design as well.
I think the Ki61 resembles the Heinkel HE100D.
@@neutronalchemist3241 I don’t think that’s true at all that the Ki-61 was any evolution of the Bf 109.
@@danieleyre8913 I wouldnt call it necessarily an evolution to the Bf109, its just that it looked alot like it because it used the same engine. Even the Allies saw the Ki-61 alot more like the Italian Macchi C.202 than the Bf109. The Ki-61 was an entirely domestic design but its designers studied under Messerschmitt before the war so they would naturally arrive to the same design "flavor" even if they never got their hands on a Bf109.
@@mosesracal6758 You are correct.
Except on one minor point: The Japanese army air force did in fact buy & receive at least one Bf 109E in 1940 (for testing purposes).
Well done Ed. Once again you have thrown not one but two aircraft that I have never heard of before. I used to think I was a WWII aviation buff. Maybe not.
Always saw kits of these and thought they were quite interesting. Damn that F.5 looks really pretty with the bubble canopy in its initial config
I'm always annoyed with how the bubble canopy was dropped
Great story on these interesting aircraft. Can I offer some minor points on Italian? 'Regia' has a soft 'g' as in Reggie Perrin, so it's pronounced 'Reh-jee-uh', with the emphasis on the 'jee'. 'au' in Italian is pronounced as in 'ow!' or 'now', So Aeronautica is 'Aero-now-tickah'. Also, in 'Isotta Fraschini' 'sch' has a hard ch as in 'ski', to give 'fra-ski-knee'. British people tend to make the same error when ordering bruschetta as a starter in Italian restaurants, although I'm sure twaiters are used to it.
Has the look of a Gloster F5/34 and bit of Mitsubishi A6M
Would love to see a video on the Piaggio P108
There's quite a number of Italian oddballs that deserve their day in the light.
I don't know if it's mentioned in the video, but the Piaggio P108, which looks a lot like a B-17, is the plane that one of Mussolini's sons was killed in. After hearing about it, Mussolini was messed up for a while, not that he wasn't messed up anyway.
@@fredferd965 Yup, I knew about that👍
Thanks Ed, these fighters always get saddly forgotten by history.
Considering 90% of the planes mentioned here never flew or were never produced (therefore never seen.) its not a surprise, to me at least...
Fascinating! I really didn't know much about Italian fighters of the era.
I didn’t know that the name Caproni would be associated with fighter development, even if nothing came of it….
Great video
Caproni built some of the first dedicated fighter aircraft at the start of the First World War and the first dedicated anti Zeppelin fighter, their designs were outstripped so they moved to bombers and flying boats. Caproni aircraft during WW2 comprised mostly light bombers and close support/ fighter bombers. Breda had a similar situation for it's aircraft designs. These designs explained here in this video were inferior designs for fighter aircraft that were in service because of the amount of political pull the other Designers and Company owners had has with Mussolini.
I forget who coined the rule of thumb, but there's an old saying about airplanes and if they fly well, they normally look like it, and vice versa.
I'm well-conditioned: Seeing those 2 rows of exhausts on that X engine made me flinch, ha!
0:52 About that. In the immediate postwar period when the Aeronautica Militare received P-47Ds and P-51Ds, the Italian pilots had mixed feelings. They loved the firepower, but in terms of flight performance they considered the American planes a downgrade.
Very interesting, Italy had some beautiful fighter designs.
8:29 interestingly testing for the Isotta Fraschini Zeta was conducted by mounting it in the nose (central position) of the three engined SM79 sparviero
Once more great coverage of less kown Italian combat planes from WWII. Thank you, Ed!
Now that you have started down the Caproni path, how about a video in the Flying Canneloni (Shipa)? Seems tailor made for you.
Great video on a series of planes that didn't know about, though I knew the design office. Thanks Ed!
Thank you. I'm always surprised that you succeed in showing me WW2 airplanes which I never heard about!
The Italians had a problem with power plants. The 2 and 5 series aircraft used licensed built Daimler Benz engines.
Compare the Reggiane aircraft with the Seversky/Republic aircraft as several engineers that worked for Seversky returned to z Italy and Reggiane. The tails and wings show the heritage. Put the R.E. 2000 and the Seversky P-35 are very similar. Again, a license built engine was used.
You can thank the Regia Aeronautica decisions about engines.
Traditionally Italian firms designed inline engines (both FIAT and Isotta Fraschini had built over 1000hp inline commercial aerial engines already in the '20s) but at the beginning of the '30s (exactly when DB, Rolls Royce and Allison started the development of the most famous inlines of WWII) the Regia decided to switch to radials, forcing the designers to work on a field they didn't know.
They however managed to close the gap, and in 1939 was homologated the radial 1500hp Piaggio P.XII. A world class engine at the time. But at that point the Regia already decided to switch back to inlines, but they didn't want traditional V, only inverted V, so cutting off existing Isotta Fraschini engines and forcing FIAT to redesign the 1400hp A.38.
That's why Alfa Romeo had to acquire the licence to produce the DB601.
@@neutronalchemist3241 Piaggio had still to license build the Gnome-Rhone Mistral Major 14k as the P.XI RC 40 that led up the engine you mentioned.
There were good engines developed for the Schneider Cup racers which sadly were not followed through.
@@michaeltelson9798 Yet the same Gnome-Rohne wasn't able to evolve their design in something comparable to the P.XII (and later P.XV and P.XXII). The Italian tecnichans DID catch up in radial technology.
Ed, do you have any good references for that Isotta Fraschini RC25 X configuration engine please? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.
On a related note, there has been some good, recent research that suggests the issue with the RR Vulture was more related to the thick section deH propeller having low critical mach number and the associated transonic issues didn’t play well with the constant speed unit and would have put unexpected loads on the engine. It was a similar prop on both the Avro Manchester and the Hawker Tornado, but it’s the engine that took the rap. So it’s interesting to speculate that some X engines might have had a future after all.
I think it is hard to find anything about this prototype engine, even in Italian, apart from what you can find on Wikipedia (a couple of articles) and some photos on google. The only ascertained thing is that it came from the coupling of two I.F. Gamma and retained the air cooling system, a reason for its continuous overheating problems, particularly the back cylinders. The other problem was, similarly to Napier's H engines, its tuning, in this case because of very limited resources, time dedicated and, as for many other italian engines from 1000 hp upwards, the unavailability of good metal alloys.
Amazing that no one else ever figured out the p51 radiator scoop it would have helped so much
Am I alone in starting to visualise Ed as like a sort of sniffer dog which finds obscure and really interesting aeroplanes then compiles a great compact summary?
Good informative stuff, thanks
Yes these were one of many families of very promising airframes from the Italian aircraft industry that never got mass produced nor into service due to bumbling around of Italian air ministry and general lack of production capacity within that Italian aircraft industry and lack of available engines. There was also the A.U.T.18, the SM.91, the Ro.57 & Ro.58, even the Re.2000 fighters only got made due to orders from Sweden and Hungary.
What the Caproni Vizzola (not Vizolla) fighters excelled in was climb speed. A quite important feature (since fighters really don't use simple horizontal speed. They continually exchange altitude for speed and vice-versa). The climb time to 6000m among the first generation monoplane Italian fighters was 603 seconds, for the F.5, 623 seconds for the Reggiane 2000, 629 seconds for the Macchi 200 and 703 seconds for the FIAT G.50.
The Isotta Fraschini Zeta RC25/60 was not intended to produce 1500hp, but 1250hp at 6000m, that's practically the same power than a DB605a at that altitude.
After the first flight, of the F.6Z Ing. Fabrizi (Vizzola's chief designer) was pretty confident the residual cooling problems of the engine could be solved with a simple modification of the annular extractor at the end of the engine cowling, but the armistice blocked any evolution.
The F5 sure looked like a Zero.
Except for the opposite tail
2 vids in a day :)
I have often wondered why Italian aircraft engines were so crummy when they had all that Schneider Trophy experience. Their Macchi M.C. 72 could hit 440 mph in 1934 and had a Fiat AS.6 engine capable of 2851 HP. Even if that engine only lasts two hours that is incredible power for back then.
You can thank the Regia Aeronautica decisions about engines.
Traditionally Italian firms designed inline engines (both FIAT and Isotta Fraschini had built over 1000hp inline commercial aerial engines already in the '20s) but at the beginning of the '30s (exactly when DB, Rolls Royce and Allison started the development of the most famous inlines of WWII) the Regia decided to switch to radials, forcing the designers to work on a field they didn't know.
They however managed to close the gap, and in 1939 was homologated the radial 1500hp Piaggio P.XII. A world class engine at the time. But at that point the Regia already decided to switch back to inlines, but they didn't want traditional V, only inverted V, so cutting off existing Isotta Fraschini engines and forcing FIAT to redesign the 1400hp A.38.
That's why Alfa Romeo had to acquire the licence to produce the DB601.
Yes, well that “engine” was basically two V-12s back to back, nothing stellar and rather dangerous. So engine design was not their forte. However the Italians had one of the best if not the best wind tunnel in Europe or even the world.
As a testament to the size of Italy’s aviation industry, the first postwar Vespa scooters were made using leftover cans of paint meant for fighter aircraft.
Didn't it use the suspension of the He 111 tail wheel? Or am I off my meds again?
I never heard that one, I should look into it
excellente!
(one small note; Reggiane has soft g's, so, reg, [as in the short for Reginald] and gee-ahn-nay)
oh nevermind. I see below someone has already given you the note...
always read before you chomp at the bit kid...
One thing that puzzles me is why those Italian fighters with the air-cooled radial engines (Fiat A.74 R.C.78 according to Wikipedia) have those blisters around the cowling. What are they for?
Cylinder head issues, valve train or cooling. A larger cowl could be had, but most likely would have had more drag.
Simply to have tigher cowlings. If you see the engines, the blisters follow the bulges of the valve covers.
The USAF moved toward bubble canopies over the development of the P-47 and P-51. Why did the Italians leave it behind? You could still put some armor behind the pilot's seat and yet let him look over this shoulder ("check six") which is such a vital thing especially for fighters
Could you please do a investigation into Italian planes in the Battle of britain?
it wasn't pretty thats for sure
Ed,
Great job, as always!
I have read pretty much all that is available, in Italian and other languages, on the F series.
There really isn't that much available overall.
A friend of the family was an acquaintance of Ing. Fabrizzi, the young designer of the F-5. Sadly, the young and brilliant engineer was killed in an unrelated air crash around the time the F-5 prototype was to fly, so the design ended up "orphaned".
Perhaps, had the designer survived, the type would have had better luck.
Some of the key advantages of the F5, relative say, to the Macchi, are not related to flight performance: the F-5 was much cheaper to produce, required less strategic materials, which Italy had little, and necessitated fewer work hours...
I have somewhere a 4 or 5 page article (in Italian) where these details are quoted. I can forward it to you, if you wish, and can help with the translation... as well as the pronunciation: Reggia, Reggiane: the "gg" as in "Reggie Lewis"...
And thank you for sharing,
Thanks Ed for all of your fine research and film footed & excellent Picture of these Planes 👍
Shoe🇺🇸
Hard to believe if nowadays you think of Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini but the main obstacle in Italy to produce fighter planes to compete with English Hurricanes or, even more, Spitfires was their inability to develope strong V 12 engines. We are all aware of the outstanding Rolls Royce engines. At that time only Daimler Benz could compete. I think besides the engine problems the Italien fighter planes were aerodynamically outstanding. The best „Five Series“ fighters of Macchi, Fiat and Reggiane all used outright DB or license built Alfa Romeo DB engines.
The chief of aeronautic First in the 1933 put the stop of development of in line engines,so Italy had to start from scratch with radial engines .when in 1939 the gap was almost filled,they changed back of in line,but V inverted engines
Whay about Ambrosini,?
Underrated
Nice!
Excellent.
Why did the three "Series 5" fighters look so similar when they were from three different manufacturers? Convergent evolution, or some other factor?
A bit of both. They used the same engine (DB 605), were produced to fulfill similar requirements and had similar performance.
Now, the Reggiane Re. 2005 has a more peculiar "relative": the P-47.
Good video. Can we have one on the Ambrosini. Dardo and other light fighter types.
I like how the RE.2005, G.55, and MC.205, despite being difficult designs, look extremely similar
Stalin once said that “Quantity was its own Quality” and this holds true for Italian War Manufacturing during WW2.
During that war, Italy produced 13,402 planes of all categories.
Compare that to the U.S. which produced 296,000 aircraft, the Soviet Union 136,000, the British Empire 177,000, Germany 133,000, and the Japanese Empire 64,000.
Talking about Italian warplanes is meaningless as so few were made. That was the Achilles Heel of the Italian War effort. No real Manufacturing Capability.
Case in point, in the Allied Invasion of Sicily at Greta, the Italian Army had to use captured French tanks to fight the Americans soldiers there.
@@richpontone1demential choiches of Regia Aeronautica doomed the production of engines... without enough engines they couldn't male airplanes
Could I ask for the source of the video around 9:34 and 9:50
Interesting.
Very fine Aircraft
Considering their relatively smaller budgets and military industrial output, the Italians were definitely good at producing prototypes. 😉 But was it one of the planes in this video that some have speculated was the inspiration for the Mitsubishi A6M?
The F.4 sure looks similar to the Zero! The F.4 is quite a looker. 👍
2x 0.5" machine guns does not sound too bad. If you scale up proportionally in three dimensions then the ratio is 2x125 / 8x27 when compared to 8x 0.303" machine guns on a Hawker Hurricane. Thing is those Italian .5" machine guns had comparatively low muzzle velocity and rate of fire.
Damn straight!
Oooo 2 vids within 24hrs
Another one I'd never heard of...
I love the Italian aircraft, but Im always left wondering...
Why wouldn't a nation the size and with resources of WW2 Italy just pick one or two good fighters and consolidate manufacturing around them? Always found it curious that they produced such similar aircraft with very similar capabilities. It can arguably be said that the Italians built one liquid cooled fighter, but made sure that they had at least three or four different sets of non interchangeable parts to build it from.
(edit) After writing this, I suddenly got the feeling that I'm asking a question that's been pondered a thousand times before.
Thank the Royal italian air force minister of that..First in 1933 stop the further development of in line engines, so Italy had to start from scratch with radial engines..when in 1939 the gap was almost filled they changed back in line engines,but must be V inverted engines..no wonder they had problems.. even so,they could had made the damlier benz on licenze to all the industry ,not only piaggio.. however,the radial engines xii could had been used for fighters and even the piaggio XV ,but should be improved reliability
The capricious Caproni.
What is the bomber at 4:24 anyone?
Hello, I belive te aircrafts is the prototype of the Ca 135 bomber.
@@giorgiotoso1039 Thank you. 👍
don't know if you've done it already but could you do a video on the Bugatti 100p plz and thank you
A gazillion tourists visit Italy's art museums but practically none of them visit the obscure air museums there. I have seen most of the five series fighters there.
The Vigna di Valle museum of the Air Force, it's even free.
Italy at the time did not have the industrial capacity at the time to turn out their brilliant designs in any significant quantity.
Further, by the time they started producing modern fighters, the allies were bombing what little production capacity they had out of exitance.
Then they surrendered - sort of- and that was the end of the war for Italy.
and their planes were not designed to be mass produced. They required a lot of man hours to build compared to the 109 or something like the Hellcat!
@@chriscarbaugh3936 They required a lot of man hours to build compared to the 109 and stop.
EVERY WWII fighter required a lot of man hours to build compared to the 109.
Man-hours required to build Italian fighters were perfectly comparable to British and American fighters.
IE, the FIAT G.55, costed 15.000 man/hours at the start of production, May 1943. It was planned to reduce it to 9000 man/hours with the 1000 sample and at a production rate of 200 samples/month.
In Jan 1943, a P-47 costed 22.100 man/hours. In Jan 1944, 9.100 man/hours (at a production rate of over 500 samples/month).
In Jan 1943, a P-38 costed 14.800 man/hours (less than the P-47, because it had been in production for more time). In Jan 1944, 9.600 man/hours.
I know that aerodynamics, and era kind of determine the look of a lot air craft....but doesn't the F5 look a lot like an A6M5 'zero'?
It also seems have the parallel armament as the Japanese fighter also.
All the DB601 engined aircraft were identical
Fw 190 please
If Caproni had build fighters, those could have shot down Caproni bombers (after 43).
Probably for the best that these interesting aircraft were never developed, Italy had enough logistics problems and adding another aircraft type would have made it worse . But they clearly built some beautiful aircraft.
Damn the F5 looks alot like the Zero just bulkier
Yea Caproni had more success with their bombers, and other 2 engine constructions.
Shame that still not a single Caproni plane is represented in Warthunder (or any Italian float-plane for example), despite quite the few models to pick from. Maybe a Hungarian Ca.135bis one day...
The first one looks like a Japanese Zero
👍👌
Spicy meatballs they were, eh?
Hey Ed' I love your videos but I find it a little hard to hear your nice voice, Maybe you should get a new mic?
As with their exotic cars...the planes had beautiful lines and performance was good...but reliability was terrible.
Thank the Royal italian force choice of the engines
Good grief, what's that wild-looking twin?
Didn't the Italians design a twin radial engine fighter with the radials mounted mid-ships ??? Sounds like a joke or genius.
Might be talking about the piaggio p.119? Should be a link at the end of this video to my video on that.
Yes
I know, italian 😂 words are hard... Vizzola has 2 zz and 1 l... (Vizzola Ticino is a place near Varese where Malpensa international Airport MXP is located today...). al the best.
Fucken love Italian Airframes, they may not have had the best guns or engines but Italy really had the best Airframes early-mid war
The Brits had problems with their Napier Sabra engine, No doubt the Italian attempt must have been worse.
Italy and Germany really should have combined their talents. Italy designs the airframe and Germany drops in the engine because it was Italian engines that let their WWII aircraft down. Just look at what they came up with for a 1940 fighter; lets use the Macchi MC200 one of the more common sight in Italian hands for the years 1940-42, key years of the war for the fascists in both Germany and Italy. Firstly, they only managed to build 1100 and second the plane had a whopping 870 HP radial LOL IN 1940 !! No wonder losses were high. Had they put in DB 601's from the start and come up with the MC202 right away and never bothered with the low powered radial, Italian fighters would have had much more success and much fewer losses.
For some obscure reason of any fighter engine usually is stated the emergency or takeoff power. For the FIAT A.74 is stated the normal power.
The emergency power of the A.74 was 960hp, and it was pretty conservative, since the manual stated it could be mantained for half an hour.
The difference between the 960hp of a FIAT A.74 and the 1200hp of a P&W R-1830 (that powered the first line of American fighters still in 1942), was that the P&W engines used 100 octane fuel. The Axis one had to use 87 octane one.
More than engines, it was the Regia Aeronautica decisions about engines that "let their WWII aircraft down". Traditionally Italian firms designed inline engines (both FIAT and Isotta Fraschini had built over 1000hp commercial aerial engines already in the '20s) but at the beginning of the '30s (exactly when DB, Rolls Royce and Allison started the development of the most famous inlines of WWII) the Regia decided to switch to radials, forcing the designers to work on a field they didn't know.
They however managed to close the gap, and in 1939 was homologated the radial 1500hp Piaggio P.XII. A world class engine at the time. But at that point the Regia already decided to switch back to inlines, but they didn't want traditional V, only inverted V, so cutting off existing Isotta Fraschini engines and forcing FIAT to redesign the 1400hp A.38.
That's why Alfa Romeo had to acquire the licence to produce the DB601.
F-5 tiny little rudder
These planes seems all to be bigger than needed to receive adequate engine, weapons and fuel, and also to suffer a lot from excessive drag. So, after all the italians were right in just... ignoring them, rs
As Col. Claire Chennault reported back to Washington about the "War Lord's" of China's Air Forces' being superior to Chang's "The Eye-Tie Fighters go like STINK when they RUN!!! Unfortunately, they don't run very often." Chang bought a few of them, to Chennault's dismay (Chang also "Lend-Leased" some Bf-109's at least 3). The Chinese could hardly keep the radial engine version of the Curtiss Hawk 75 operating properly. With battle damage and normal wear and tear, liquid cooled in-line engined fighters were beyond Chinese mechanics. "Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosey" was hard to teach to Chinese who had MAYBE dealt with an OX before.
Also the Japanese used the FIAT BR.20 bombers in 1938-1939. The Japs had several complains about the aircrafts (mostly range and defensive armament), but, curiously, none about the FIAT A.80 engines, that instead the Italians often considered problematic.
The Italians produced graceful looking aircraft. But were behind in powerplant development.
The 5 Series produced some of the most beautiful fighters of all time. Get ze Germans to do the electrics though!
OOOOOOOOHHHHHH GAIJIN...........
Unfortunately, much of the Italian military of the WWII period have suffered from a genuine lack of capability. This was due to their involvement in highly unpopular wars in Northern Africa, and of which WWII seemed but an extension. Thus, an Italian prisoner of war was a happy man. This should not reflect upon the great aviation traditions of the nation.
Gaijin plz adds
J! J! J! Ed, it's a J.
I will now add Italian speakers to the long list of nationalities I have upset by butchering their native tongues 😁
@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters well, i can't speak for them but I would say you did not upset. It is just that when we hear such things is a bit like when you scratch a school board with your nails: very annoying to here.
Appart from that, great video as always! Cheers!
Italy in wartime production failure shocker! 👋😉
The Italians do four things very well. They produce beautiful women, they produce beautiful cars, they produce beautiful airplanes and they surrender very well.
Craproni
@EdNashsMilitaryMatters >>> 👍👍