Obscure Italian Aircraft

[red admiral]

Campini CS3. 3 Isotta Fraschini L121 inline engines driving propellors. Outer engines drive burners like CC2. Central engine provides supercharging for others above 5000m.



Piaggio 112. Refined P108 with different nose and tail.



Piaggio 114. P112 with floats.



Piaggio P.133 was a new strategic bomber and the construction of the 1st prototype was 90% finished on 8 Sept. 1943 (the armistice).
engines: 4 x 1,700 hp
max speed: 490 km/h
authonomy: 5,100 km
bombload: 4,800 kg
armament: 4 x 12,7 and 6 x 20 mm (2 dorsal turrets, 2 lateral, 1 tail, 1 ventral and 4 anterior)



Aero P.123 long range bomber



Cant Z.1014 long range bomber. Competitor to P108 and definitely superior. 500kph+ projected speed. 6x20mm cannon. P108 later "won" due to Piaggio halving the price.

Source is mostly Aerofan.

[Salim]

Facinating!

[cheddar cheese]

Hadnt seen a couple of those designs before, nice drawings...

[Aggie08]

I like the last one, the Cant. Very odd the way the tail is set... Neat lookin.

[Wurger]

Salim's opinion + interesting

[kiwimac]

Very nice

[Dogwalker]

The wooden models of P.112 and P.133, were done to be tested in the wind tunnel.
I believe they still exist nowadays.

[Salim]

Piaggio P.133 was a new strategic bomber and the construction of the 1st prototype was 90% finished on 8 Sept. 1943 (the armistice).
engines: 4 x 1,700 hp
max speed: 490 km/h
authonomy: 5,100 km
bombload: 4,800 kg
armament: 4 x 12,7 and 6 x 20 mm (2 dorsal turrets, 2 lateral, 1 tail, 1 ventral and 4 anterior)

Three questions.

1: What exactly is an 'anterior' turret? Also, were the 12.7mm guns on those ones (anterior), and the 20mm on the others?

2: Does 'Authonomy' mean range?

3: Any idea on how much battle damage these babies could take?

I have to admit, the range and bomboad (4.8 tonnes at 5,100 km is quite a bit!) are very impressive, and the defensive armament sounds far stronger than anything the allies ever made. I wonder what would have happened had the Americans developed something like this for their own use!

[Twitch]

Good stuff Red! Always like to see unusual aircraft.

[cheddar cheese]

Anterior is possibly tail, and yes I believe Authonomy is range. As for battle damage ive no idea, since as red said the prototype wasnt even finished. It wouldnt surprise me if it turned out to be an effective aircraft, the P.108 was pretty decent in itself.

[red admiral]

Anterior would be alongside the cockpit. I'd imagine the 4x12.7 are mounted there. There were 2x12.7 in the P108. i'm not entirely sure about the positioning of the other weapons, but remote-controlled barbettes in outer wings would be likely. 1x20mm in nose, tail and ventral(remote controlled). Not sure about the fuselage sides.

Autonomy does mean range. This is probably maximum range, not range with maximum load but I don't know for sure.

Battle Damage. THe P108 was fairly durable. The problem would be getting the engines to work. Fit her with 4xDB605D instead...

[the lancaster kicks ass]

damage depends primarily a few things, what kind of skin did she have? and were their control surfaces fabric or metal? any armour? finally how many ribs did she have/how much bracing?

[SM79Sparviero]

According to "Dimensione Cielo" edizioni bizzarri, 1975 Piaggio P 133 had "tre armi fisse da 12.7 nel muso"=three 12.7 mm fixed machine guns in the nose controlled and aimed by the pilots like the fixed wing machine gun of Cant Z-1018.
It is possible that one further SAFAT were in the nose in a trainable system for one nose gunner/bomber. The alternative hypothesis could be 4 machine guns in one trainable turret style Lancaster tail turret but I have never heard anything about such a device in an Italian aircraft.
It is improbable that two or more gunners were planned in the nose of the bomber.

Port and starboard fuselage: two 20 mm Ikaria Mg-FF guns ( according the same source above) .
Tail: one Mg-151. Fuselage inferior step: one Mg-151.
The wing turrets of P-108 were withdrawn for two conventional and cheaper fuselage turrets.
The bomber is described as "completely metallic" with a heavy armor for the cockpit.

"Autonomia" and "Range" are not always synonimous, if we just take into consideration the parameter of fuel consumption the effective range for a mission of a fighter or a bomber to the target and ( hopely) back home is a little more than one half of its autonomy, for the lower fuel consumption of the lighter aircraft while it is flying back.In a cargo aircraft or in any aircraft in a transfer mission "range" can be the same thing.

A "range" of 2600 Km with 1500-2000 kg and much lower for the maximum bomb load ( six 800 kg explosive weapons which were ready in the arsenals in 1936 but were unrealiable for troubles of the pistol triggers) are more realistic data for the too late planned P133.

Here is something more exotic, still from Aerofan: 4 Piaggio P XXII 1700 HP radial engines, one more DB-605 in the fuselage connected with two centrifugal compressors , one which boosted the 4 Piaggio, one for the pressurization of the cockpit.
Bomb load: 10 500 Kg italian conventional bombs.
Armed with 5-6 Mg-151 or 12.7 mm SAFAT in trainable remote-controlled Breda turrets.

[SM79Sparviero]

Sorry for the bad quality of the picture, the imaged was not good already on the book and my scanner doesn' t work very well.....

Red Admiral, could you please the source where you have found of the extremely interesting motorjet aircraft CS3?

Is there a good plan of the fuselage , in particular the boosting system compressors?I would buy the book.

I found something about Campini projects on Giuseppe Ciampaglia 's Storia della propulsione a reazione in Italia- editions:Ufficio storico dell' Aeronautica militare but the pictures of inner CS3 fuselage and motorjet helicopter are, again, very small and mediocre

[red admiral]

The CS.3 is from Aerofan No. 2 in 1978. The project was dated 31st March 1939.

Could you try to post the CS.5 ramjet-helicopter and any information on it please?