The visual similarity between the Re.2000 and the Seversky P-35 is genuine and was remarked on from the outset. Both were low-wing, all-metal monoplanes with fat air-cooled radials, semi-elliptical wings and generous canopies. Roberto Longhi had spent time working in the American aircraft industry, and the design team openly drew on US structural practice — stressed-skin aluminium construction was still relatively novel in Italy, where fabric and mixed construction lingered.

But “influenced by” is not “copied from.” The Re.2000’s multi-spar integral-tank wing was its own invention and had no direct P-35 equivalent; its aerodynamics, undercarriage geometry (the main wheels rotating to lie flat in the wing) and cowling were Reggiane’s work. The honest summary is the one historians tend to reach: the Falco absorbed the American school of construction and married it to distinctly Italian ideas about the wing. It is a case study in how a national industry learns from abroad without simply imitating.

Two things worked against the Falco at home. The first was technical: a directorate report flagged the unprotected integral wing tanks as a fire and battle-damage risk, and self-sealing protection was hard to retrofit into a structure where the fuel was the structure. In an era when opposing fighters increasingly carried self-sealing tanks and armour, that was a real objection — even if the Hungarians and Swedes would fly the type for years regardless.

The second was industrial. Italy’s fighter procurement was already committed to the Macchi C.200 Saetta, and there was reluctance to disrupt that programme by tooling up for a competitor from a different firm. A planned pre-production batch and a much larger production run were curtailed; only a small number entered Italian front-line service. The frequently quoted outcome is that the Falco — arguably the most modern of Italy’s 1939 fighters — was passed over largely for reasons that had little to do with how it flew.

Unlike modern jets, wartime piston fighters like the Falco have no clean, verifiable “cost per flight hour” figure. Italy’s 1939–43 aircraft accounting was fragmented across firms and the state, currencies and economies were distorted by war, and Reggiane’s numbers are further muddied by the licence deals with Hungary and the export sale to Sweden. What we can say is qualitative: the Re.2000 was a relatively sophisticated, labour-intensive airframe for its day, and its Piaggio radial made it expensive to keep serviceable — Swedish and Hungarian crews both complained bitterly about the maintenance burden. For that reason every cost row above honestly reads “not reliably recorded.” Any single lira, pengő or krona figure you may see quoted online should be treated with caution.

The Re.2000’s airframe was too good to waste, and its real legacy is the family it founded. Re-engined with the German inline Daimler-Benz DB 601 (and its Italian licence version), it became the Re.2001 Falco II — a far more capable and widely used fighter. The Re.2002 Ariete was a radial-engined ground-attack development. The line then reached its peak with the Re.2005 Sagittario, powered by the DB 605 and regarded by many as one of the finest fighters any Axis nation fielded — sleek, fast and hard-hitting, though built in tiny numbers as Italy’s war collapsed.

Seen that way, the radial Falco is less a failure than a first draft: the aircraft that taught Reggiane how to build a modern fighter, so that the “Serie 5” could be great.

Denied a big land-based order, the Falco found an unlikely niche at sea. The Regia Marina wanted fighters that could be catapult-launched from its capital ships to provide air cover far from land, and the Re.2000’s good range made it a plausible candidate. A small number of Serie II “Cat.” aircraft were modified for the role and embarked on battleships including Littorio, Vittorio Veneto and, later, Roma.

Like many catapult-fighter schemes of the era, it was more elegant in theory than in practice — a launched aircraft could not be recovered aboard and typically had to divert to land or ditch. In the event the concept was barely exercised: by most accounts only a single catapult launch was ever made in anger, during the destruction of the battleship Roma by German Fritz-X guided bombs on 9 September 1943, days after Italy’s Armistice. It is a poignant, almost symbolic end to the idea — the Falco’s one operational catapult sortie coinciding with the sinking of the ship it flew from.

The two Héja marks are almost different aircraft. The Héja I was essentially a Hungarian-finished Re.2000: Italian-pattern airframe, with added armour, a radio, and an extra self-sealing tank to address the fire worry — though the big wing tanks still leaked. The Héja II went much further. Hungarian industry fitted a locally produced engine of greater power, replaced the Italian machine guns with superior Hungarian Gebauer weapons, redesigned the cowling and propeller, and — the cleverest change — ripped out the large integral wing tanks in favour of a couple of dozen small tanks.

That last modification did two things at once. It reduced the catastrophic fire risk that had so worried the Italians, and by eliminating the sloshing of fuel in big cells it noticeably improved the aircraft’s stability and handling. The irony is sharp: the feature that helped kill the Falco’s Italian career was quietly engineered out by a smaller air force that simply needed the aeroplane to work. By the time the Héja II appeared, though, it was outclassed by the newest Soviet fighters and served mostly in home defence and training.

If the Falco has a villain, it is the engine. The Piaggio P.XI RC.40 was a 14-cylinder, two-row air-cooled radial — itself derived from French Gnome-Rhône practice — producing somewhere around 986 hp. On paper that was competitive with contemporaries; in service it was the type’s persistent liability. Reliability was poor, and the maintenance burden was heavy enough that Italian, Hungarian and Swedish crews all recorded frustration with keeping the aircraft serviceable.

The engine problem is precisely why the Reggiane story got better after the Falco. When the airframe was mated to the German inline Daimler-Benz DB 601 to create the Re.2001, and later the DB 605 for the Re.2005, the result was a far more reliable and higher-performing fighter. The lesson of the Re.2000 is an old one in aviation: a superb airframe with a mediocre engine is a mediocre aeroplane, while the reverse is often survivable. The Falco spent its whole career on the wrong side of that equation.

One of the great what-ifs of the Falco’s history is British. In the tense months around the outbreak of war, Britain — hungry for any modern fighter it could get — is reported to have ordered a substantial batch of Re.2000s, figures around 300 being commonly cited, with the deal firmed up in early 1940. Had it gone through, the RAF or Commonwealth air forces might have flown Italian radial fighters in 1940–41.

It was not to be. Once Italy moved toward joining the Axis war effort, the political ground vanished; German approval for the export was withdrawn, and Italy’s own entry into the war in June 1940 killed the arrangement outright. The episode is a reminder of how fluid the pre-war arms market was, and of how highly the Falco was rated abroad even as its own air force hesitated. A neutral Sweden and a co-belligerent Hungary ended up flying the fighter that Britain briefly wanted.

Survivors of the Re.2000 are genuinely rare, and the details deserve care. The best-documented example is a Swedish J 20 preserved at the Swedish Air Force Museum (Flygvapenmuseum) in Linköping — the aircraft most photographs of a “complete” Re.2000 actually show. Beyond that, an Italian catapult-fighter airframe (often cited by serial as MM.8287) is reported to survive, and recovered wreckage of Falcos lost in Italian waters has surfaced in more recent years, of interest to museums and restorers.

Because sources differ on exactly which airframes exist, in what condition, and where, we deliberately hedge these claims rather than assert a precise count. What is not in doubt is the bottom line: there is no airworthy Reggiane Re.2000 anywhere in the world, and there is no prospect of flying in one. The type lives on in a small number of static museum airframes, in recovered relics, and in the photographic record.