Wagons, shells and a count

Reggiane began in August 1901 as a small foundry and machine shop founded in Reggio Emilia by the engineer Romano Righi, his father Policarpo and the local railway chief Giuseppe Menada, who promptly ordered railway wagons from it. By 1912 it was Reggiane Officine Meccaniche Italiane, making locomotives and, during the First World War, artillery shells. The 1930 slump ruined it. The state rescue agency IRI took control in 1933, and in 1935 Count Giovanni Caproni, sensing that Fascist rearmament was coming, bought the majority. At its height the Reggio Emilia plant employed as many as 11,000 people and was the fourth largest factory in Italy.

The Falco and the Sagittario

Under Caproni the works built Piaggio engines and SM.79 bombers under licence, then its own fighters. A team led by Roberto Longhi and Antonio Alessio produced the Re.2000 Falco, which first flew on 24 May 1939. The Regia Aeronautica was unimpressed, so 80 per cent went abroad, to Hungary and Sweden. Its descendants were better: the Re.2001, of which 252 were built, the Re.2002 fighter-bomber, and the DB 605-powered Re.2005 Sagittario, first flown on 9 May 1942. Only 48 were delivered before the September 1943 armistice, but it was widely judged one of the best-looking fighters of the war.

Bombs, bullets and an occupation

On 28 July 1943, days after Mussolini’s fall, thousands of Reggiane workers marched out of the gates to demand the end of the war. Soldiers opened fire and nine were killed, among them a pregnant woman. Allied raids on 7 and 8 January 1944 razed the plant, and in 1945 the aviation division ceased to exist. In October 1950, facing 2,100 redundancies, the workers began the longest factory occupation in Italian history, building a tracked tractor, the R60, to prove the works could make civilian goods. It ended in October 1951 with liquidation. The name lives on in port cranes, today a Konecranes brand.

المصانع

• Reggio Emilia works · Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna — Fourth-largest factory in Italy; razed by Allied bombing 7–8 January 1944

الناس

• Giovanni Caproni · owner from 1935 — Aviation pioneer who bought Reggiane from IRI
• Roberto Longhi · chief designer — Led the Re.2000 and Re.2005 design teams
• Mario De Bernardi · test pilot — Flew the first Re.2000, Re.2001 and Re.2002