One jet against a fleet

On 21 May 1982, as British troops poured ashore at San Carlos Water in the Falklands, a single small jet came in low over the hills. Its pilot, Lieutenant Owen Crippa of the Argentine Navy, had been sent on reconnaissance in an Aermacchi MB-339A, a trainer from Varese. Finding the amphibious force below him, he attacked alone with rockets and cannon and hit the frigate HMS Argonaut before escaping. It was a trainer doing a fighter’s work, which is more or less the story of Aermacchi.

From carriages to seaplanes

The company grew out of Fratelli Macchi, a Varese family business founded in the 19th century to build horse-drawn carriages and omnibuses. In October 1912 the Italian war ministry asked for military aircraft, and on 1 May 1913 Giulio Macchi joined the French Nieuport company to found Nieuport-Macchi on the shores of Lake Varese. It built Nieuport fighters under licence, then flying boats of its own, and by the 1920s, as Aeronautica Macchi, its racing seaplanes were the first to pass 400, 500 and finally 700 km/h. In the Second World War it built the C.200, C.202 and C.205 fighters.

Motorcycles, Harley-Davidson and Walter Villa

Peace brought something unexpected. From 1945 Macchi built a three-wheeled delivery truck, then from about 1951 motorcycles. In 1960 Harley-Davidson bought half the motorcycle division, later all of it, and the Varese racers it funded gave Harley-Davidson its only Grand Prix wins: four world championships in 1974, 1975 and 1976 with the Italian rider Walter Villa. The motorcycle business was sold to Cagiva in 1978. By then the aircraft company had shortened its name, in 1961, to Aermacchi.

The B in MB

Its fortune was made by one engineer. Ermanno Bazzocchi, who joined in 1941, designed the little MB.308 tourer in 1947 and then the MB-326 jet trainer, which first flew on 10 December 1957. The B in the designation stands for Bazzocchi. The MB-326 was meant to take a student all the way from first lesson to near-combat readiness, and more than 800 were built, under licence in Australia, Brazil and South Africa too. One of them set a class altitude record of 15,489 metres in 1961. Its successor, the MB-339, first flew on 12 August 1976 and became the mount of Italy’s national display team, the Frecce Tricolori.

Seven seconds at Ramstein

That connection brought Aermacchi’s darkest day, though the company was not to blame. On 28 August 1988, at the Ramstein air show in West Germany, three Frecce Tricolori MB-339s collided during the pierced-heart manoeuvre and one fell burning into the crowd. Seventy people died, 67 of them spectators, and more than 500 were injured. The whole sequence, from the first collision to the impact in the crowd, took less than seven seconds. The solo pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Ivo Nutarelli, had arrived at the crossing point too early and too low, and he died with two of his team-mates.

The Russian twin and the end of the name

The last great Aermacchi began as a Russian aircraft. In 1992 the company agreed to fund and help develop Yakovlev’s new trainer, which flew in 1996. The partnership collapsed in 2000; Yakovlev went on with the Yak-130 and Aermacchi rebuilt the design with Western engines and systems as the M-346 Master, which first flew on 15 July 2004 and now trains pilots in Italy, Israel, Singapore, Poland and Greece. Finmeccanica took control in 2003, merged the firm with Alenia as Alenia Aermacchi in 2012, and on 1 January 2016 folded it into Leonardo. The name lives on in the aircraft.

Factories

• Schiranna works · Lake Varese, Lombardy — Original Nieuport-Macchi factory and seaplane base on the lake shore
• Venegono plant and Arturo Ferrarin airfield · Venegono Inferiore / Superiore, Varese — Production and flight-test site; legal seat of Alenia Aermacchi; now Leonardo

People

• Giulio Macchi · founder — Co-founded Nieuport-Macchi in 1913 from the family carriage and wheel business
• Ermanno Bazzocchi · chief designer, later chief executive — Designed the MB.308, MB-326 and MB-339; the B in MB is his
• Guido Carestiato · chief test pilot — Flew the MB-326 prototype on 10 December 1957
• Lino Tonti · motorcycle designer — Designed the 1951 Macchi 125 N scooter-motorcycle; later at Moto Guzzi
• Walter Villa · motorcycle racer — Won four world titles, 1974–1976, on Varese-built Harley-Davidson racers
• Owen Crippa · Argentine Navy pilot — Attacked the British landing force in an MB-339A on 21 May 1982, hitting HMS Argonaut

Records and firsts

• MB-326 set the C1D group 1 altitude record of 15,489 m in August 1961
• MB-326 pilot Massimo Ralli set climb and altitude records in 1966, including 15,690 m in horizontal flight
• Varese-built two-stroke racers won Harley-Davidson’s only Grand Prix world championships: 250cc 1974, 1975, 1976 and 350cc 1976