A biplane in Kabul

In 2010 an Italian-American military team recovered the remains of six Italian biplanes from a boneyard north-east of Kabul. They were IMAM Ro.37bis reconnaissance aircraft, survivors of 16 sold to Afghanistan in 1938, and one went home to Italy for restoration at the Vigna di Valle air force museum. It was a long way from Naples. But the Ro.37 Lince, or Lynx, travelled widely, to Uruguay, Hungary, Austria and Ecuador as well, and it is the aircraft that made a southern Italian railway works into an aircraft maker.

Alfa Romeo’s other business

The works belonged to Nicola Romeo, the Naples-trained engineer best known for founding Alfa Romeo. His Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali built railway rolling stock in Naples and began making aircraft in 1923. It bought a licence from Fokker for the C.V, which became the Romeo Ro.1, and hired the aerodynamicist Alessandro Tonini as chief designer. On 27 October 1934 Romeo spun off the aircraft business as Industrie Aeronautiche Romeo; after the railway works passed to Breda in 1935, the aircraft company followed and became IMAM.

The Lynx goes to war

The Ro.37 first flew on 6 November 1933 and 617 were built. It went to war in Ethiopia in 1935 and to Spain in late 1936, where crews used the unarmoured two-seater for ground attack, and about 280 were still in Italian service in 1940. Alongside it the Ro.41 fighter, 743 built, spent most of its career in the flying schools of the Regia Aeronautica, and served on until 1950.

Floatplanes for the fleet

For the navy IMAM built the Ro.43, a catapult floatplane that first flew on 19 November 1934; 193 were built and they were in service at the battles of Calabria in July 1940 and Cape Matapan in March 1941. The Ro.44 was a single-seat fighter on floats, of which 35 were built. A few Ro.43s, about four at a time, were even flown as fighters by the 161st Squadriglia to protect the Italian-held islands of the Aegean.

Too little, too late

The wartime designs came too late or in too few numbers. The Ro.57 twin-engined fighter reached units in 1943 with about 50 built, and the Ro.63, a short take-off spotter that Italian sources rate as the equal of the German Storch, was built only six times for lack of engines. After the war IMAM joined Aerfer, which built the Sagittario 2 and Ariete jet prototypes; sources date the merger to 1950 or 1955.

Fábricas

• Obras de Nápoles · Naples, Campania — Railway and aircraft works of the Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali

Gente

• Nicola Romeo · founder — 1876–1938; also founder of Alfa Romeo
• Alessandro Tonini · chief designer
• Giovanni Galasso · designer of the Ro.57