Nieuport 11 & 16, part five. The 'Bébé' in Italy.

 

Italy employed the Nieuport 11 in large quantities to supplement and replace the outdated Nieuport 10. Italian aircraft manufacturer Macchi, which initially was a subsidiary of Nieuport,  built the Nieuport 11 locally. In fact, a total of 450 'Bébés' were manufactured in Italy, plus additional 93, out of 200 originally ordered, by the Officine Elettro-Ferroviarie in Milan. 
The Nieuport 11 was initially employed in Italy in 1916 by 70a Squadriglia (a squadron-sized unit), based at Santa Caterina, north-eastern Italy. The unit was rebased to Udine, where the supreme command was located. When destined in this area, 70a Squadriglia performed offensive patrols over the frontlines. By December 1916 the majority of the 56 enemy airplanes downed by Italian fighters were dispatched by Nieuport 11s. By this time, Italian pilots complained about the Lewis gun, which was difficult to reload while in flight, and the Nieuport 11 could just carry a small number of additional magazines. By late 1916 some few 'Bébés' were equipped with the Le Prieur rocket system to attack enemy balloons.
During 1916 there were four squadriglias employing the Nieuport 11; 70, 71, 75 and 76a.
By early 1917 there were six additional squadrons: 77, 78, 79, 80, 81 and 82a, plus 83a Squadriglia based at Kremain, Macedonia, 85a Squadriglia at Piskupi, Albania and the Sezione (Section - a flight-sized unit) Nieuport at Belluno. These two last squadriglias were, in spite of their name, also flight-sized.
During 1916 and 1917 Macchi was able to produce between 35 and 45 aircraft per month, being Nieuport 11 most of them. However, by early 1917 they were being replaced by the Nieuport 17 in production lines, so by October 1917 only nine squadriglias still had the Nieuport 11 in active service: 70, 71, 72, 75, 76,  78, 79, 82 and 85, this last one still operating from Piskupi, in Albania. 
By late 1917 the number of Nieuport 11-equipped squadriglias was reduced to six: 71, 72, 75, 76, 82 and 91. 
The Nieuport 11 was, by 1918, outdated and being replaced by the better Nieuport 17 as it became available, so the Nieuport 11 was reassigned to training units. By February 1918 there were just 22 Nieuport 11 in service, with 85a Squadriglia, in Albania, being the last operator of the type as they kept it until 4th November 1918.

Sources:
1st Flying Machines Press - French Aircraft of the First World War
2nd https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieuport_11 (translated)
3rd https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/70ª_Squadriglia_caccia (translated)
4th https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/71ª_Squadriglia_caccia (translated)
and so on for every squadriglia.

Macchi M.14

The Macchi M.14 was an Italian single seat fighter that had the honour to be the first land based fighter developed by the Italian firm.
It was designed by Alessandro Tonini who designed it to be a single-seat wooden sesquiplane with Warren truss interplane bracing. It was armed with two forward firing synchronized Vickers 0.303in machine guns.
It had a fixed landing gear and was powered by a single 110hp LeRhône 9J engine.
Macchi started the testing in the spring of 1918 but the prototype was destroyed a bit later, in June 1918. However Macchi built another ten airplanes which were tested at Guidonia's test centre less than one year later, in 1919. In spite of not having being ordered and not being therefore massed produced, the ten ones served as advanced trainers and apparently one of them was sold to a private owner and flew with the registration I-BADG.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchi_M.14
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters.

Macchi M.7 & M.7ter

The Macchi M.7 was an Italian flying boat fighter that was designed both by Alesandro Tonini and manufactured by Macchi. It was similar in most aspects to the earlier M.5 but it featured an slightly modified hull and it was powered by an Isotta Fraschini V6 engine. The first airplane rolled out from the factory in mid-1918, so, due to the end of the World War I only 17 of them served with the Italian Navy.
As the war ended and they had a surplus of airplanes, they sold two to Argentina (who re-sold their ones to Paraguay), other two to Sweden in 1919 and some years later, in 1921 Brazil bought three of them.
In 1920 a new racing version, named M.7bis was designed, featuring a lighter structure and a smaller span-wings. It came foruth at the 1922 Schneider trophy that was hold in Naples.
There was also a third version, the M.7ter which featured a redesigned strengthned hull, a better wing configuration and a new tail. As it was thought to be an airplane designed to operate from seaplane tenders (in fact, it operated from the Giuseppe Miraglia seaplane tender) a version with foldable wings, named M.7terAR was built. It became the standard Italian flying boat fighter during the 1920s as, in 1924 six Italian naval squadrons were equipped with them and more of 100 of them were built, some of them serving until the early 1940s in private flying schools.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchi_M.7
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters

Macchi M.6

The Macchi M.6 was an Italian flying-boat fighter prototype that was completed in 1917 in order to compare it to the Macchi M.5 which differed from it in having a modified wing cellule. It had also Vee-type interplane bracing struts plus an sloping auxiliary vee struts that supported the upper wing making that way the parallel struts to be placed further outboard.
It was also powered by the Isotta-Fraschini V.4b that powered most of the versions of the Macchi M.5 and was armed with two Vickers 0.303 machine guns.
After comparative trials were performed between the M.6 prototype and an standard M.5, the results showed that the M.6 had not any advantage over the M.5 whatsoever, so it's development was abandoned and no more M.6s were built. The fate of the prototype is unknown.
Also, as there aren't any blueprints or profile drawings of this airplane, only black & white photos, so we decided to leave undrawn.

The only known pic of the Macchi M.6

Sources:
1. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchi_M.6

Macchi M.5 - Italian users

The first prototype of the Macchi M.5, which was labelled as the type flew for the first time in 1917 and was developed by engineers Buzio & Calzavera. Based directly on the previous Macchi M.3, it consisted on a single-step hull with an open cockpit placed forward on the wings, three more prototypes were tested, designated "Ma", "M bis" and "Ma bis" and the production version, finally was named as "M.5".
Like it's prototypes, it was powered by an Isotta-Fraschini 4Vb engine placed in a pusher configuration that could deliver 160hp of power. The first units were handed over to the Aviazione della Regia Marina (Aviation of the -Italian- Royal Navy) in the summer of 1917. A later sub-version was produced with redesigned wingtip floats and a more powerful engine, an Isotta-Fraschini V.6, placed also in the pusher configuration and delivering the respectable amount of 247hp of power. In total 244 of them were produced, 200 by Macchi itself and other 44 of them by Societá Aeronautica Italiana (SAI).

It was operated by the Royal Italian Navy's naval squadrons during The Great War with very satisfactory results. Some of them served also in the seaplane carrier Giuseppe Miraglia before they were scrapped after the creation of the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) in the successive years.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchi_M.5
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters

Ansaldo A.1 "Balilla" - Italian Users

We finish the series of posts dedicated to this Italian fighter by covering its' native users.

The Ansaldo A.1 "Balilla" (which named after a Genoan folk hero) was an Italian fighter locally produced in Italy during the closing stages of the World War I.

The A.1 was the result from Ansaldo company to create a true fighter, given that the SVA proved to be not suitable for that role. The Ansaldo's designer Giuseppe Brezzi revised the design of the SVA in order to increase the size of the lower wing and redesigned the interplane strut configuration. Those two redesignments created more drag but at the same time the stiffness of the wing structure was increased and the stress in the airframe was reduced. It was powered by a powered-up version of the SVA engine, the SPA 6A piston engine and a safety system to jettison the fuel tank through a ventral hatch was installed.

The first prototype was completed in July 1917 but it wasn't accepted in the Corpo Aeronautico Militare until December. That reluctance to accept it was because the test pilots weren't enthusiastic when evaluating and, even if they found it to be better than the SVA.5, the type still wasn't as maneouvrable as the French fighter of those years. That's why the prototype was furtherly modified, in order to enlarge the wings,  the rudder and to increase slightly the power of the engine. Apparently that elevated the modified prototype to Corpo Aeronautico Militare standards and it was accepted, named Ansaldo A.1 bis. It was assigned in the 91ª Squadriglia to be evaluated.

The reports about its' performance were fixed, while some of them praised its' high speed, other deemed it difficult to manoeuvre and in general to control it. However as the Italian fighter pool was becoming obsolete, it was ordered anyway.

The first machine of the first 100 batch entered in service in July 1918 and most of them were assigned to second line duties performing home defense roles, as the first line fighters were performed by the better and much modern SPAD S.XIII. Before the war ended it only scored one aerial victory against an Austro-Hungarian reconnaissance airplane, and it was during those months that Ansaldo decided to promote the airplane, including the decission of nicknaming it as "Balilla", flying demonstration flights in the major Italian cities and gifting one machine to the Italian aviator Antonio Locatelli in order to perform stunts with it. However it backfired when Locatelli had to make a forced landing behind Austro-Hungarian lines due to a mechanical failure and was taken prisoner. Despite that negative propaganda, the Corpo Aeronautico Militare ordered another 100 of them to be produced, in order to be delivered before the end of the war and, at the date of the armistice, 186 were in service, of which 47 were used for training duties and the remainder were put into storage.

After the war, an Italian aviators association, the Cooperativa Nazionale Aeronautica (CNA) bought 40 of them together with other SVA, Hanriot HD.1, Fokker E.V and some unespecified Aviatik airplanes in March 1921.
When the Corpo Aeronautico was disbanded and replaced by the Regia Aeronautica in 1925, the Balilla was assigned to training duties, together with other outdated Aviatik and SVAs which were operated by the CNA, which in practice was a disguised pilot training association.
The CNA trained more than 400 pilots between 1925-1930 and it's reported that some Balillas were built (or rebuilt) by this association. With the next great reform of the Regia Aeronautica in 1933, the task of training the pilots was assumed by the Regia Aeronautica itself, 12 Balillas were kept in active until March-April 1940, but most probably they had dissappeared some years earlier.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansaldo_A.1_Balilla
2. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters
3. Windsock Datafile 88 - Ansaldo A.1 Balilla

Hanriot HD.1 - Italian users, part three

We couldn't finish the year without finishing the series of entries dedicated to this excellent French fighter, so here it is, the last entry for this airplane. Happy new year everyone!

The Hanriot HD.1 was supplied in small amounts to the Italians who liked the design so much that they started to manufacture it in large quantities and used them to replace not just the already aging Nieuport but also some SPADs S.VII.
They considered it to be the best fighter they had flown, being even better than the SPAD S.XIII becoming that way the standard Italian fighter. In fact 16 of a total of 18 squadrons were equipped with the Hanriot HD.1 by November 1918.

The Squadrons covered in this entry are:

• 70 Squadriglia
• 76 Squadriglia
• 78 Squadriglia

Hanriot HD.1 - Italian users, part two

We keep going with more Italian users for this fighter.

This time, we are covering the next squadrons:

• 70 Squadriglia
• 76 Squadriglia
• 78 Squadriglia
• 82 Squadriglia
• 85 Squadriglia

We know that some of them are repeated, but they were worth it because the paint schemes are different.

Adamoli-Cattani

Another entry, this time featuring a new Italian airplane .

Designed by Adamoli and Cattani (two Italian entrepeneurs) in 1918 it was intended to be the smallest practical biplane in the world fitted with the most powerful engine available back then, the 200hp LeRhône M.

They manage to design a conventional looking airplane, except for the hinged leading edges instead of the conventional ailerons, hence the lack of wires around the fuselage, except for those going from the vertical stabilizer to the horizontal stabilizers.
The Turinese Farina Coach building and Moncenisio offices completed the prototype.

Once the prototype was completed, the testing at the ground revealed that the engine, as it was installed, could only work at the 80% of it's capacity making it greatly underpowered. Testing continued until the end of the Great War when a new fighter aircraft wasn't needed no more.

Hanriot HD.1 - Italian users, part one

Merry Christmas!. We keep going with the Italian users for this fighter which, as we said previously, it was widely employed by the Italian Corpo Aeronautico Militare (Military Aeronautical Corps).

The fighter squadrons (Squadriglia) covered in this entry are:

• 70 Squadriglia
• 76 Squadriglia
• 78 Squadriglia
• 80 Squadriglia
• 81 Squadriglia
• 85 Squadriglia

We will write about the performance during the war later.

SPAD SA Series - Foreign Users

Today we bring you a new French airplane which, despite not being the best that France offered during the war, it achieved some renown when piloted by Russian hands.

The SPAD SA. was a tractor biplane of unorthodox design which, in order to achieve a forward firing airplane (don't forget that when this airplane was designed, neither France nor any of the entente countried had the synchronized machine gun technology) , placed a machine-gun equipped nacelle in front of the pilot placing the engine between the pilot and the gunner.

In foreign service it was offered to Italy, who rejected it and to Russia, where they received some field modifications like the replacement of skis instead of wheels. Although the Russian spectatives for this airplane were low (since the word spad in Russian means 'Slump' or 'Plummet') at least two crews achieved some success with this airplane. In november 1916 one aerial victory was claimed by the 2nd Lieutenant Vladimirovich and his gunner Bashinskiy.
It's also known that at least one served with the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war before it was retired for being obsolete.

Ansaldo SVA - Italian users, Fifth Entry

We finish the series of entries dedicated to the Ansaldo SVA with an entry dedicated to the domestic users of this airplane.

Initially conceived as a fighter, it was quickly found to be inadequate for that role. However, given it's impressive speed, range and operational ceiling, it was an excellent reconnaissance and/or light bomber airplane. The production continued after the war and continued serving with the Aeronautica Militare (military aeronautics) and also with the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) well into the 20s.

It's most famous action was the flight over Vienna, when the Italian poet Gabrielle D'Anunzio, flying in a modified SVA.10 (it was modified because the pilot and observer posts were exchanged so the pilot position was the observer's one and the observer's one the pilot's one) flew over Vienna on 9th August 1918 escorted by other SVA.5 of the same unit in order to drop propagandistic leaflets calling for the rebellion in the city. The leaflets consisted in three poems all of them written by D'Anunzio himself.

Another famous action of this airplane was the so called raid Rome-Tokyo, which featured a staged flight of 112 effective flying hours from Rome to Tokyo, passing through Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, British Raj, Thailand, French Indochina, China, and finally, Japan, using only Italian airplanes. The first stages were completed using Caproni Ca.40, but the rest were completed using SVAs.

Ansaldo SVA - Floatplanes, Fourth Entry

We continue with the Ansaldo SVA, with it's penultimate entry dedicated to the floatplane sub-variants of the SVA.

The ISVA was the floatplane variant of the SVA.5. It was the ansaldo's response to the DTAM's (Aeronautical Command HQ) decision that the company should confine itself to build seaplanes. The idea was first conceived in February 1917 and by May, Ansaldo enlisted the Maggiore (Major) Alessandro Guidoni to design the floats.

It was first tested in Venice in December 1917 and it was soon followed by a second official series, which change the series name from ISVA to Am (which stands for Ansaldo marino - Naval Ansaldo) in January-February 1918. The naval pilots found it often to be heavy, and difficult to maneouvre both in the air and when taxiing on water.

Some of them served embarked in the seaplane tender Europa during 1918 for operational testing purposes.

A second batch of airplanes were made and these featured some floaters copied and modified from the Sopwith Baby, derived from the Ansaldo's experience in building the Baby under license. However it is not known if those exemplars performed better or not because there's not handling information about them.

SPAD S.VII - Second entry, foreign users vol. 2

Previous note: This is a continuation of this post If you haven't read it, i recommend you to check it out.
We continue with the SPAD S.VII, this time with more foreign users for this French Fighter.

We are covering the next countries this time:

• Imperial Germany: During the very first part of 1918 a single S.VII was captured from the French SPA65 unit. It was heavily repainted by his new owner. 
• Greece: The Royal Hellenic Army Air Service bought some airplanes. The one depicted below served in 1920.
• Kingdom of Italy: Italy used them widely during the Great war and it became very popular since it was flew by various of their best aces like Francesco Baracca or Giorgio Pessi. It was also among the very first planes that composed the Regia Aeronautica (Royal Italian Air Force) with planes carried over from the previous Corpo Aeronautico Militare (Military Aeronautical Corps) during 1923.
• Empire of Japan: The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service employed them, allegedly for domestice defense purposes during the 20s. As we couldn't find any graphical evidence, the drawing are speculative.
• Netherlands: The Luchtvaartafdeling (The Dutch Aeronautical corps) employed some SPAD S.VII. Supposedly they were airplanes that were forced to land in neutral Dutch territory during the Great War, as we couldn't find graphical evidence on this one neither, the colours are speculative.
• Peru: Allegiadly Peru used some Ex-Argentinean planes during the early 20s for evaluation purposes. However they were rejected. The graphical evidence on Peruvian SPADs doesn't seem to exist, so the drawing is considered speculative.
• Poland: One of the main post-war users of the SPAD S.VII and one of the very first airplanes that constituted the Wojska Lotnicze (Polish Air Force) back in 1918. It saw action during the Polish Soviet war.