Issue No 21 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 57
because we flew in the stratosphere, we drew
double flight pay!”.
The AQV was never fitted with cameras,
however, and continued its limited flying
programme throughout 1941, reaching 8,000m
(26,247ft) — its highest altitude — on September
- When Oddono was given command of a
squadriglia in Albania, the AQV stopped flying,
its last flight taking place on November 7, 1941.
Lost and found
The RAQ was finally disbanded on July 25, 1942,
but its aircraft lingered on. A comprehensive
list of aircraft withdrawn from use as surplus
to requirements or no longer suited for their
original purpose shows that on June 5, 1943,
the AQV was still at Guidonia, together with a
Ca.137, Ca.160, Ca.161 and several engines. A
memo addressed to the head of the CS, Generale
di brigata aerea (Brigadier General) Guglielmo
Cassinelli, suggests scrapping a Caproni and
asks what to do with the AQV. Although no
decision is recorded, no RAQ aircraft appear in
a German list of aircraft seized at Guidonia after
the Italian armistice of September 1943, nor were
their wrecks found by the Allies in June 1944.
Although Oddono remained in the Italian
Air Force until the late 1950s and Schepisi
until the mid-1960s, memory of the AQV soon
faded. In 1975 the aircraft was omitted from the
first published list of Italian serials compiled
by the Italian Aviation Research Branch of
Air-Britain (IARB), which listed MM.422 as
“type unknown”. More than a decade later the
author discovered the “SCA Guidonia AQV”
in a forgotten ledger in the ITAF Historical
Office, and in the early 1990s the late Baldassare
Catalanotto matched the name to hitherto
unidentified photographs in his collection. The
AQV had returned to take its albeit minor
place in Italian aviation history.
TAH
1 Archivio Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore
Aeronautica (AUSSMA), RAQ unit history and
Forms A and B.
2 Gregory Alegi, article “Alla caccia dell’AQV”,
Aerofan No 71 (1999). The skeletal AQV entry
on the Italian-language Wikipedia website
presents numerous factual errors, possibly owing
to its exclusive reliance on a later commercial
publication rather than primary sources.
3 Bernardino Lattanzi, Vita ignorata del Centro
Studi ed Esperienze di Guidonia, Roma, IBN,- pp11, 158.
4 AUSSMA, SIOS collection, boxes 18 and 258
5 In the Italian designation system, the “S”
indicated a port-turning propeller, but no such P.X
variant is known. Surprisingly, in this case the more
appropriate suffixes “R” (reduction gear) and “C”
(supercharged) were not applied.
6 Giulio Costanzi, “L’apporto italiano allo sviluppo
della Tecnica Aeronautica”, Rivista Aeronautica,
March 1959, pp544–546. Again, Wikipedia
misrepresents SCA as “Società” (company or firm)
rather than Stabilimento (Establishment).
7 Minutes of June 16, 1939, meeting in Archivio
Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Ministero Aeronautica
(MA), Gabinetto (GAb), 1939, f. 2.I.9.
8 Giancarlo Garello, “Guidonia I. Un trimotore da
bombardamento per il concorso del 1938”, Aerofan
No 4No 4No 4 (1983). (1983).
9 Gianni Gambarini and Andrea Curami, Catalogo
delle “Matricole Militari” della Regia Aeronautica
(1923–1943), unpublished typescript, 1992, p83.
10 The logbooks for Pezzi, Di Mauro and Oddono
are in AUSSMA; Paolo Moci kindly granted access
to his personal logbook.
Endnote references
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank
Gianandrea Bussi, Gianni Cattaneo, Giulio C. Valdonio,
Paolo Waldis, the late test pilots Aldo Oddono, Adriano
Mantelli and Paolo Moci and the late designer Ermanno
Bazzocchi for their invaluable research and assistance
during the preparation of this articleAvailable data
suggests that the AQV
logged a total of 36 flights —
three in 1940, the remainder
during January–November
1941 — accruing 27hr 35min
of flying time, flights being
divided into aircraft, climb
and engine tests.
Artwork © 2017
RUGGERO CALÒABOVE The Regia Aeronautica
awarded special wings adorned
with an “S” to pilots who achieved
flights of 12,000m (39,400ft) and higher; flights of 12,000m (39,400ft) and higher;
probably only a mere handful of pilots probably only a mere handful of pilots
ever earned the right to wear them.
VIA AUTHORVIA AUTHOR