The jet that was briefly first

On 30 November 1941 a strange, fat-bodied aircraft flew from Milan’s Linate airport to Guidonia near Rome, swept low over the capital and was received by Mussolini. The Caproni Campini N.1 had first flown on 27 August 1940, and the FAI recorded it as the first jet flight, because nobody outside Germany knew that the Heinkel He 178 had flown a year earlier to the day. The N.1’s motorjet used a piston engine to drive its compressor, and its performance was unimpressive, but for a while it made Caproni the most famous name in jet propulsion.

An engineer from Austria-Hungary

Gianni Caproni was born in 1886 at Massone, then in Austria-Hungary, studied civil engineering in Munich and electrical engineering in Liège, and built gliders with Henri Coandă. In 1908 he founded his factory at Taliedo in Milan and opened a test field near the Cascina Malpensa, today’s Malpensa airport. His first powered aircraft, the Ca.1 biplane, flew on 27 May 1910 and survives at the Volandia museum.

Bombers for three armies

Caproni’s fame came from bombers. In 1914 he tested Italy’s first multi-engined aircraft, a three-engined biplane, and in the First World War the Ca.3 family, between 250 and 300 built, bombed for the Italian Army and Navy and for the French, with more licence-built in France. The strategic bombing theories of Giulio Douhet were said to have been shaped by the use of Caproni bombers.

Nine wings over Lake Maggiore

After the war Caproni turned to airliners, with grim results. A Ca.48 airliner crashed near Verona on 2 August 1919, Italy’s first commercial aviation disaster. In 1921 came the Ca.60 Noviplano, a 100-passenger transatlantic flying boat with eight engines and three sets of triple wings. It flew once over Lake Maggiore, proving stable but tending to climb; on its second flight, on 4 March 1921, it was destroyed. Caproni and his wife Timina meanwhile founded the Caproni Museum in 1927, Italy’s oldest aviation museum.

Records, a conglomerate and the end

Between the wars the company became a conglomerate, the Società Italiana Caproni, with subsidiaries including Caproni Bergamasca, Caproni Vizzola and the engine maker Isotta Fraschini. It built about 700 Ca.100 trainers, more than 500 Ca.133 colonial transports and the Ca.310 family of twins. In a Ca.161bis, Mario Pezzi climbed to 17,083 metres on 22 October 1938, a world altitude record. The group did not survive peace: it ceased to exist in 1950, and Caproni Vizzola lasted until Agusta bought it in 1983. Caproni himself died in 1957 and reappeared in 2013 as a dream figure in Hayao Miyazaki’s film The Wind Rises.

Fábricas

• Taliedo works · Taliedo, Milan — Main plant near Linate
• Caproni Vizzola · Vizzola Ticino, near Malpensa — Survived until 1983

Gente

• Gianni Caproni · founder — 1886–1957; Count of Taliedo
• Secondo Campini · jet propulsion engineer
• Mario Pezzi · pilot — Altitude records 1937 and 1938
• Mario de Bernardi · pilot — Flew the Campini N.1

Récords y primicias

• World altitude record 15,655 m, 8 May 1937, Ca.161, Mario Pezzi
• World altitude record 17,083 m, 22 October 1938, Ca.161bis, Mario Pezzi
• Campini N.1 recorded by the FAI as the first jet flight in 1940, before the earlier He 178 flight became known