A seaplane school on Lake Trasimeno

SAI Ambrosini grew from a military seaplane school set up on the shores of Lake Trasimeno in 1916. A repair works for military aircraft followed under the Prampolini group, which sent its engines by rail to Angelo Ambrosini’s workshop in Milan. When the business ran into trouble, Ambrosini, its largest creditor, took a stake in 1933 and the whole company in 1934, moving his engine shop to Passignano. Production began with licence-built Macchi types, then the firm’s own designs by engineers Silva, Preti and Sergio Stefanutti, among them Italy’s first canard fighter, the SS.4.

Stefanutti’s wooden thoroughbreds

Stefanutti’s masterpiece was the wooden SAI.7, a racing and touring monoplane first flown in July 1939. Its fighter offspring, the SAI.207, reached 563 km/h at Guidonia on a single 750 hp engine, and the ministry ordered 2,000 of them plus 12 pre-production aircraft. Only the pre-production batch flew in service, briefly, in the summer of 1943, against Allied raids on Rome. Pilots were unimpressed and the Armistice ended the programme.

From jets to yachts

After the war Ambrosini built accordions and farm equipment before returning to aircraft: 145 post-war S.7 trainers for the Italian Air Force, the Rondone and Grifo, and the jet Sagittario of 1953, whose all-metal descendant flown by Aerfer became the first Italian aircraft to break the sound barrier. Bankrupt in 1958, the works revived to make radar antennas, railway equipment and boats, including the America’s Cup challengers Azzurra and Il Moro di Venezia. SAI closed in 1992.

Fabrieken

• Passignano works · Passignano sul Trasimeno, Umbria — Lakeside site of the former seaplane school

Mensen

• Angelo Ambrosini · owner from 1934 — Engine overhaul specialist from Milan
• Sergio Stefanutti · chief designer — SS.4, SAI.7, SAI.207 and the Sagittario line