The Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero: the record-breaking airliner that became Italy’s deadliest torpedo bomber

Begin with a fast, elegant civil transport that shattered world speed and distance records in the mid-1930s, give it a military nose, a bomb bay and a distinctive humped back, and you arrive at the Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero — the three-engined "Sparrowhawk" that became the single most important, and most feared, Italian aircraft of the Second World War.

The SM.79 did not start life as a weapon. In the autumn of 1934 Alessandro Marchetti’s design bureau at Savoia-Marchetti flew a sleek, low-wing, three-engined monoplane intended as a fast eight-passenger airliner and mail carrier. It was a product of the golden age of Italian aviation, when Italo Balbo’s mass formation flights across the Atlantic had made Italian air power a matter of national pride, and speed records were pursued as instruments of prestige. The little transport delivered handsomely: through 1935, 1936 and beyond, specially prepared SM.79s set a string of recognised world records for speed over distance carrying commercial payloads, and Italian crews flew them on long-distance demonstration flights that made headlines around the world.

The most famous of these triumphs came in August 1937, when a team of military SM.79s painted with a cartoon "Sorci Verdi" (green mice) badge swept the first three places in the gruelling Istres–Damascus–Paris air race, beating aircraft from across Europe over thousands of kilometres. For a fascist regime that treated aviation as propaganda, it was a gift: proof, seemingly, that Italian industry could build aircraft that were not merely beautiful but genuinely fast and reliable over enormous distances. That reputation for speed and endurance was no accident of tuning — it was built into the airframe, and it would shape the Sparviero’s whole military career.

Turning the record-breaker into a bomber meant adding a bomb bay, defensive guns and a crew station for a bomb-aimer, and it was here that the aircraft acquired its unmistakable silhouette. Behind and above the cockpit, Savoia-Marchetti added a raised dorsal position — a hump housing a fixed, forward-firing 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT heavy machine gun that the pilot aimed by pointing the whole aeroplane. That bulging dorsal gondola gave the SM.79 the humpbacked profile that Italian crews affectionately turned into a nickname: il gobbo maledetto, "the damned hunchback," or simply il gobbo, "the hunchback." Few aircraft have ever worn an insult so proudly.

A record-breaking airliner turned bomber, humpbacked and trimotored, that Italian crews nicknamed il gobbo maledetto — the damned hunchback — and flew straight down the throats of the Royal Navy.

Under the skin the Sparviero was a period piece in the best sense: a mixed-construction machine of wood and metal, with a wooden wing and a fuselage of welded steel tube covered in a patchwork of duralumin, plywood and fabric. That construction was cheap, forgiving and easy to repair in the field, and combined with three engines it made the SM.79 famously tough — able to absorb battle damage, fly home on two engines and put down on rough desert strips that would have wrecked a more delicate aircraft. Powered by three radial engines (early SM.79-I aircraft used roughly 780-horsepower Alfa Romeo 126 radials; the definitive SM.79-II adopted more powerful Piaggio or Alfa Romeo units of around 860 to 1,000 hp, though figures vary between sources and sub-types), it was fast for a bomber of its generation and, crucially, hard to catch at low level.

The Sparviero first went to war not over the Mediterranean but over Spain. From 1937 the Aviazione Legionaria — the Italian expeditionary air arm supporting Franco’s Nationalists — flew SM.79s as fast bombers in the Spanish Civil War, where their speed made them difficult targets and confirmed the type as the backbone of Italy’s bomber force. By the time Italy entered the Second World War in June 1940, the SM.79 was the most numerous bomber in the Regia Aeronautica and the aircraft on which Italian bombing doctrine was built.

Numbers tell part of the story. When Italy went to war in June 1940 the Regia Aeronautica had more SM.79s than any other bomber, and the type served on every front the Italians fought: over Malta and the French Riviera in the opening days, across the Western Desert of Libya and Egypt, in the mountains of Greece and Albania, over Yugoslavia, and from the far-flung airfields of Italian East Africa in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Wherever the Regia Aeronautica appeared between 1940 and 1943, the humpbacked trimotor was likely to be there — which is precisely why so much of Italy’s air war is, in effect, the story of the Sparviero.

But it was one particular mission that made the Sparviero legendary. As a conventional high-level bomber the SM.79 was competent but unremarkable — like every medium bomber of its day, dangerous to the enemy only when escorted, and vulnerable to fighters when not. What transformed its reputation was the aerial torpedo. From 1940 the Regia Aeronautica developed specialist torpedo-bomber squadrons, the reparti aerosiluranti, and the strong, fast, low-flying SM.79 proved the ideal mount. Skimming the waves toward British convoys and Royal Navy warships in the teeth of anti-aircraft fire, the SM.79 crews pressed home attacks with a determination that won the grudging respect of their enemies. Through the convoy battles for Malta, off the North African coast and across the central Mediterranean from 1940 to 1943, the aerosiluranti damaged and sank merchant ships and warships and made the Sparviero the most respected Italian aircraft of the war.

The armistice of 8 September 1943 split Italy in two, and the Sparviero with it. In the German-occupied north, torpedo units of Mussolini’s fascist Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana (ANR) flew on against Allied shipping; in the Allied south, SM.79s served the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force, mostly in transport and maritime roles. Like several Italian aircraft of its generation, the Sparviero thus ended the war flying, in effect, on both sides of a divided nation. Abroad, export and licence versions had already spread the design well beyond Italy: Yugoslavia, Romania and Iraq all operated Sparvieros, several in twin-engined export forms with different engines, and after the war Lebanon and Spain flew surviving aircraft on as transports well into the 1950s.

Roughly 1,300 to 1,350 SM.79s were built in all — the exact total is disputed between sources — making it by a wide margin the most-produced Italian bomber of the war and one of the most numerous trimotor combat aircraft ever built. That production run, its long record-breaking prelude and its deadly torpedo-bomber career together explain why the Sparviero, alone among Italian bombers, is remembered as a genuinely important aircraft rather than a footnote.

Today only a handful survive, all of them static museum exhibits — there is no airworthy SM.79 anywhere in the world. The pages that follow trace how a fast airliner became a bomber, how the humpbacked "Gobbo" was designed and armed, the low-level torpedo war that made its name, the way it came to fly on both sides after 1943, and where the last few Sparvieros can be seen today.

The Savoia-Marchetti SM.79’s war: Spain, the Malta convoys and the Mediterranean torpedo battle

From its combat debut in Spain to the desperate convoy battles for Malta and its service on both sides after the 1943 armistice, the Sparviero was at the centre of Italy’s air war — above all as the low-level torpedo bomber that made the Mediterranean deadly for Allied shipping.

The SM.79 went into action for the first time over Spain. From 1937 the Aviazione Legionaria, Italy’s expeditionary force fighting for Franco’s Nationalists, operated Sparvieros as fast day bombers. Their speed made them hard for Republican fighters to catch, and the Spanish experience confirmed the type as the Regia Aeronautica’s standard bomber and shaped the tactics and confidence its crews carried into the wider war that followed.

When Italy entered the Second World War in June 1940, the SM.79 was the most numerous bomber in Italian service, deployed from Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Libya and the Italian East African empire. In the war’s opening phase it flew conventional bombing raids: against Malta, against French targets, and in the East African campaign against British forces in Sudan, Kenya and the Horn of Africa. In these operations the Sparviero performed like any competent medium bomber of 1940 — effective against undefended targets, but increasingly vulnerable as British fighter strength grew, and unable on its own to force a decision.

The turning point was the aerial torpedo. Italy had experimented with air-dropped torpedoes before the war, and in the summer of 1940 the Regia Aeronautica stood up its first specialist torpedo-bomber unit. The strong, fast, low-flying SM.79 proved an almost ideal torpedo aircraft, and over 1940–41 the reparti aerosiluranti grew into the most effective strike force Italy possessed. Their hunting ground was the central Mediterranean, and their quarry was the lifeline of British sea power there: the convoys fighting through to the besieged island of Malta, and the Royal Navy warships that escorted them.

The mechanics of the campaign were unforgiving. Italy and the Axis needed to run fuel, tanks and men across the Mediterranean to sustain Rommel’s army in North Africa, while starving the British garrison on Malta; Britain needed to do the reverse, and to keep Malta alive as a base from which to attack the Axis convoys. The sea between Sicily and Tunisia became one of the most contested stretches of water in the world, and the SM.79 aerosiluranti were among the sharpest instruments either side possessed for closing it. Operating from Sardinia, Sicily and North African strips, they could reach far out to sea, and their speed and low-level approach gave defenders little warning.

The convoy battles that followed were among the hardest-fought sea-air actions of the war. Time and again through 1941 and 1942, formations of SM.79s bored in at wave-top height against convoys ringed with anti-aircraft guns and covered by carrier fighters, releasing their torpedoes at close range and breaking away through a wall of fire. The great Malta convoy operations — including the climactic August 1942 battle known to the British as Operation Pedestal — saw the aerosiluranti, alongside German aircraft, Italian and German submarines and motor torpedo boats, inflict heavy losses on merchant ships and their escorts. Italian torpedo crews damaged and sank a range of Allied vessels across the campaign, and though claims and confirmed results (as always in air-sea warfare) must be treated with caution, there is no doubt the Sparviero units were a serious and sustained threat that the Royal Navy had to plan around.

It was in this role that the SM.79 earned something rare for an Axis aircraft: the respect of its enemies. British accounts of the Mediterranean war repeatedly acknowledge the skill and courage of the Italian torpedo-bomber crews, who attacked with a persistence that cost them dearly. Individual Italian aces of the aerosiluranti, such as Carlo Emanuele Buscaglia, became national figures. For all Italy’s wider difficulties in the air, the torpedo-armed Sparviero was a weapon the Allies genuinely feared.

Then came the armistice. On 8 September 1943 Italy signed a ceasefire with the Allies, and the country — and its air force — split. In the German-occupied north, the fascist Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana re-formed torpedo units around surviving SM.79s and continued to attack Allied shipping into 1944, a bitter continuation of the Mediterranean torpedo war now fought against former allies. In the Allied-aligned south, the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force flew its SM.79s mainly in transport and maritime-patrol roles. As with several Italian types, the Sparviero thus finished the war serving, in effect, on both sides of a divided nation.

The SM.79’s story did not end in 1945. Export customers had operated the type before and during the war — Yugoslavia, Romania and Iraq among them — and a number of aircraft survived the conflict in foreign hands or were passed on afterwards. Lebanon flew ex-Italian Sparvieros as transports into the 1950s, and Spain, which had operated the type since the civil war, kept SM.79s in service in secondary roles for years after the war. It was a quiet, unglamorous coda for an aircraft that had been, for three years, the sharpest edge of Italian air power at sea.

Armament & payload

The Sparviero's guns were an afterthought; its torpedo was the best-handled anti-ship weapon in the Mediterranean

The S.79's guns were an afterthought and its bomb bay was a liability, but for two years it carried the best-handled aerial torpedo in the Mediterranean and it is the only reason anyone still remembers the aeroplane. The defensive fit — three 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT and one rifle-calibre gun, all hand-worked, none in a turret, one of them fixed and aimed by pointing the whole aircraft — was adequate against Spanish Republican I-16s in 1937 and hopelessly thin against a 1942 fleet. The offensive fit divides the type in two. As a bomber the S.79 was hobbled by vertical bomb stowage inherited from an airliner, which capped it at 1,250 kg in awkward combinations and barred the large-calibre weapons every other air force adopted from 1941. As a torpedo aircraft it was excellent: fast on the deck, docile at low speed, able to take punishment, and carrying a 450 mm Whitehead weapon from the Fiume works that was genuinely reliable in its first production batches. Fits varied sharply by mark, year and unit: a 1937 Balearic bomber, a 1941 S.79-II of 278a Squadriglia, a 1944 ANR S.79-III with 20 mm guns and no gondola, and a Romanian JRS-79B1 with Jumo inlines and an Ikaria cannon shared a wing and very little else.

Sourcing caveat. Italian armament figures for this type are unusually consistent between sources, but the operational claims attached to them are not, and the two should never be read together uncritically. The 1941 Italian returns give fourteen torpedo squadrons flying 225 sorties and 87 attacks for nine ships sunk totalling 42,373 tonnes and twelve damaged totalling 75,841 tonnes; the 1943 returns give eighteen squadrons, 221 sorties, three ships sunk totalling 12,519 tonnes and four damaged totalling 32,024 tonnes. Those are honest unit returns, but they are claims, and the pattern of the war is that Italian aircrew over-claimed by a wide margin, as did British and German aircrew. The single most decorated S.79 pilot, Carlo Emanuele Buscaglia, was credited at the time with over 90,000 tonnes sunk. Operation Pedestal in August 1942 is the cleanest test available, because both sides' records survive and every loss can be assigned. Fourteen merchantmen and a very large escort went into the western Mediterranean; the carrier Eagle, the cruisers Manchester and Cairo, the destroyer Foresight and nine of the fourteen merchant ships did not reach Malta. Of that list the S.79 torpedo units can claim exactly one: HMS Foresight, hit in the stern on 12 August and scuttled by HMS Tartar the next day. Eagle was sunk by U-73, Cairo and the crippling hits on Nigeria and on the tanker Ohio came from a single salvo by the submarine Axum, Manchester was finished by the Italian motor torpedo boats MS 16 and MS 22, and the merchantman Deucalion — frequently claimed for the aerosiluranti — was crippled by Ju 88 bombs and finished by a German torpedo aircraft. One destroyer, against Italian claims that ran to cruisers and a dozen merchant ships. Two further corrections to the standard S.79 story belong here. The torpedo hit on the battleship HMS Nelson during Operation Halberd on 27 September 1941 is more usually credited to a Savoia-Marchetti S.M.84 of 36° Stormo than to an S.79. And HMAS Nestor, lost on 16 June 1942 and often listed as an S.79 victim, was disabled by bomb near-misses that wrecked her engine rooms, not by an aerial torpedo. What survives all of this correction is still substantial: two destroyers sunk outright by S.79 torpedoes, a sloop, a corvette and an auxiliary anti-aircraft ship besides, and a list of cruisers — Kent, Liverpool twice, Glasgow, Manchester, Phoebe, Arethusa — and one fleet carrier, Indomitable, put out of the war for months at a time. No other Italian aircraft came close. Where the brief calls the S.79 the outstanding Axis torpedo bomber, the honest correction is that it was the outstanding Italian one, and that the He 111H-6 units of KG 26 in the same sea, with radar and a two-torpedo load, have at least as strong a claim.

Variants

The S.79 family split in two: three engines for Italy, two for everyone who wanted a bomb-aimer in the nose

The S.79 began as a racing transport and never entirely stopped being one. Alessandro Marchetti drew it in 1933 and 1934 as a fast eight-passenger machine for the European air-race circuit, and the prototype I-MAGO flew on 28 September 1934 on three Piaggio Stella P.IX radials of 610 CV. What followed was three years of genuine, verifiable record-breaking rather than the usual regime puffery. In September 1935 the prototype carried 2,000 kg over 2,000 km at 389.61 km/h and took six world records at a stroke. In 1937 a Piaggio-engined S.79CS lifted 2,000 kg over 1,000 km at 423.618 km/h and then at 444.115 km/h, with 5,000 kg carried over the same distance at 402 km/h. In August 1937 five of the Sorci Verdi — the Green Mice — entered the Istres to Damascus to Paris race and finished first, second and third, Cupini and Paradisi in I-CUPA ahead of Fiori and Lucchini in I-FILU and Biseo and Bruno Mussolini in I-BIMU. In January 1938 three long-range S.79Ts left Guidonia for Rio de Janeiro by way of Dakar; two arrived the next day after 24 hours 20 minutes in the air at an average of 393 km/h, the third diverting to Natal with a fault and being given to the Brazilian air force. For roughly two years the S.79 really was, by a defensible reading, the fastest medium bomber in the world.

The three-engine layout that made all this possible also crippled the aeroplane as an export product, and the reason is simple: Italy had no reliable engine of 1,200 CV and upwards when the design was frozen, so three medium radials were the only route to the power, and the third of them sat exactly where every other air force wanted to put a bomb-aimer and a nose gun. Marchetti's answer was the twin-engined S.79B of 1936, a redesigned front end with an extensively glazed nose, no dorsal hump gun and no gondola, aimed squarely at buyers who would not accept the trimotor. It sold in tiny numbers — four to Iraq on Fiat A.80 radials, three to Brazil, twenty-four to Romania on Gnome-Rhône 14K engines that proved badly underpowered — but it mattered out of all proportion, because it was the twin-engine airframe that Romania took up, put Junkers Jumo 211 inlines into, and built under licence at IAR as the JRS-79B. Romania, not Italy, made the S.79 into a properly engined two-motor bomber, and went on building it after the Italian line had stopped.

The Italian line meanwhile went the other way, towards the torpedo. The S.79-II of 1939 traded the bomb bay for torpedo gear, armour and better engines; the S.79-III and S.79bis of 1943 to 1945 stripped the gondola off, put 20 mm guns and armoured shields in and filled the belly with fuel. After the armistice of September 1943 the type flew for both sides — as transports with the Co-belligerent Air Force in the south, as torpedo aircraft with the Gruppo Buscaglia-Faggioni of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana in the north — which is a fair emblem of the whole Italian air war. It ended as a transport, in Italy until the early 1950s and in Lebanon until 1959.

S.79P prototype (1934, one built)

I-MAGO, first flight 28 September 1934, three Piaggio Stella P.IX radials of 610 CV, laid out as a fast eight-passenger transport with no military equipment at all. Every feature that later defined the bomber — the hump, the gondola, the vertical bomb cells — is a military fitting improvised onto a civil airframe, and the type's virtues and its faults both follow from that.

S.79C, S.79CS and S.79T (1936–38, roughly a dozen conversions)

The record and racing machines. Corsa aircraft on Piaggio P.XI RC.40 engines with the guns stripped out took the 1,000 km and 2,000 km payload records and the first three places at Istres in August 1937; the Transatlantico conversions with extra tankage made the Guidonia to Rio flight in January 1938. Postwar the designation S.79C was reused for VIP transports with the armament removed.

S.79-I (1936–39, the first military series)

Three Alfa Romeo 126 RC.34 radials of 780 CV, three 12.7 mm and one 7.7 mm gun, vertical bomb cells for up to 1,250 kg. This is the Spanish Civil War aircraft: over a hundred served with the Aviazione Legionaria from the winter of 1936–37, the Majorca-based units earned the name Falchi delle Baleari, four were lost in air combat in two years, and about eighty serviceable machines were handed to the Spanish Nationalist air force in 1939, which flew them into the 1950s. Almost 600 S.79-I and -II were on strength when Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940.

S.79-II (1939–43, the bulk of production)

The torpedo aircraft. Bomb bay deleted, torpedo racks fitted, armour for the pilots, self-sealing tank protection, and Piaggio P.XI RC.40 engines of 1,000 CV in most batches with Alfa Romeo 128 in others. Everything the type is remembered for — Kent, Glasgow, Fearless, Manchester, Liverpool, Foresight — was done by this mark.

S.79-III, S.79bis and S.79GA (1943–45, small series)

Alfa Romeo 128 RC.18 engines and 475 km/h, ventral gondola deleted for drag, 20 mm cannon replacing the 12.7 mm guns, open dorsal position, armoured shields and glass for the gunners, flame-damped exhausts for night work, and a 1,000-litre tank in the old bomb bay. Flown by the ANR's Gruppo Buscaglia-Faggioni and used for the Gibraltar raid. The best S.79 ever built, arriving when there was nothing left for it to do.

S.79B and S.79/A.80 (1936–38, prototype plus seven exported)

The twin-engine export answer to the nose problem: glazed bomb-aimer's nose, no hump gun, no gondola, longer fuselage at 16.22 m. The prototype I-AYRE was demonstrated in South America. Iraq bought four with Fiat A.80 RC.41 radials in 1938; Brazil took three. Commercially it was close to a failure and technically it was slower than the trimotor, but it was the ancestor of every Romanian S.79.

S.79K (Yugoslavia, 45 ordered 1938, delivered 1939)

Generally similar to the S.79-I, ordered by the Royal Yugoslav Air Force and delivered before the war. In April 1941 they flew against the German and Italian columns in the Kaçanik gorge with some effect and were then overwhelmed, most being destroyed on the ground or burned by their crews. A handful escaped to Greece carrying King Peter II and his party; four were taken onto RAF charge in Egypt as AX702 to AX705, and at least one was pressed into service by the Croatian Ustaša state.

SM.79B with Gnome-Rhône 14K and JIS-79B (Romania, 24 from 1937 and 8 from 1940)

Romania was the S.79B's only volume customer. The first twenty-four, on Gnome-Rhône 14K Mistral Major radials, were badly underpowered and disliked. Romania then ordered eight aircraft built in Italy around Junkers Jumo 211Da inverted-V12 inlines of 1,200 PS, delivered in 1941–42 and designated JIS-79B for Jumo, Italia, Savoia. These were transformed aeroplanes, and the Romanians decided to build them themselves.

JRS-79B and JRS-79B1 (Romania, 72 licence-built, 1943–46)

Built by Industria Aeronautică Română at Brașov: thirty-six JRS-79B on Jumo 211Da of 1,200 PS, then thirty-six JRS-79B1 on Jumo 211F of 1,380 PS with a 20 mm Ikaria cannon and an enlarged cockpit for a fifth crewman. JRS stands for Jumo, România, Savoia. Used hard as low-level attack aircraft on the Eastern Front, where they took heavy losses, and production ran on into 1946 — the last S.79s built anywhere were Romanian, and they were the best-engined examples of the type ever made.

S.79 transports and the Lebanese S.79L (1943–59)

After the armistice the surviving Italian airframes were progressively converted to transports and served the Co-belligerent Air Force and then the Aeronautica Militare until the early 1950s. Lebanon ordered four in 1946 and received them in 1949, using them as military transports until 1959; a Lebanese aircraft appears in the 1954 film They Who Dare. This unglamorous coda is the reason any S.79 survives at all.

Production and survivors, precisely. Italian production ran from 1936 to June 1943 at SIAI-Marchetti at Sesto Calende, Aeronautica Umbra at Foligno and Officine Reggiane at Reggio Emilia, in the military serial block MM.21051 to MM.25395, and is usually given as 1,217 to 1,230 aircraft; Romanian licence production added 72 JRS-79B and B1 at IAR up to 1946. Totals in reputable print run from 1,240 to about 1,330, and the round figure of about 1,300 is the safest statement. Figures near 1,370 circulate but are not supported by any factory breakdown that can be checked, and they should be treated as inflation. Now the survivors, because this is where secondary sources are loosest. Exactly two complete original S.79 airframes exist anywhere in the world, both in Italy, and both owe their existence to Lebanon rather than to Italy. MM.24499 is at the Museo dell'aeronautica Gianni Caproni at Trento: built by Officine Reggiane in 1942, flown in action until the armistice, then with the Co-belligerent Air Force and the Aeronautica Militare until 1948, ceded to Lebanon and flown there until 1959, then repatriated. MM.45508 is at the Museo storico dell'Aeronautica Militare at Vigna di Valle on Lake Bracciano, likewise returned from Lebanon and restored into wartime torpedo-bomber configuration in the markings associated with Carlo Emanuele Buscaglia — that scheme is a commemorative one and should not be read as the airframe's own service history. There is no airworthy S.79, no complete example outside Italy, and no example anywhere in Spanish, Yugoslav, Iraqi, Brazilian or Romanian markings, despite all five having operated the type. Volandia at Malpensa displays a further S.79 as a reconstruction rather than an original complete aircraft. Beyond that there are wrecks only: the machine destroyed by the Long Range Desert Group at the western landing ground at Jebel Uweinat, whose remains were still visible in 2003; a wreck in shallow water off Kaș on the Turkish coast; and MM.23881, lost on 21 April 1941 and found in the Libyan desert on 5 October 1960 with a crewman's remains still in the cockpit and the rest of the crew dead in the sand around it. Any claim that a flying S.79 exists, or that a complete one is held outside Italy, is wrong.

The Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero: from record-breaker to torpedo bomber

Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero in photographs

Wartime images and surviving museum aircraft. Click any photograph to enlarge. All images are public domain or Creative Commons, credited in the captions.

Where the Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 flew

Designed and built in Italy; flown in combat by the Regia Aeronautica across the Mediterranean, North Africa and Italian East Africa, in the Spanish Civil War, and — after the 1943 armistice — by the fascist ANR; exported to Yugoslavia, Romania and Iraq and flown post-war by Lebanon and Spain; and preserved today in a handful of museums. Hover (or tap on mobile) a country for details; use the buttons to toggle categories.

Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero: your questions answered

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