Origins
General Valle (Chief of Staff of the Regia Aeronautica) initiated the "R-plan" - a program designed to modernize Italy's air force, and to give it a strength of 3,000 aircraft by 1940. In late 1934 a competition was held for a bomber with the following specifications:
- Speed: 330 km/h (210 mph) at 4,500 m (14,800 ft) and 385 km/h (239 mph) at 5,000 m (16,000 ft).
- Rate of climb: 4,000 m (13,000 ft) in 12½ minutes.
- Range: 1,000 km (620 mi) with a 1,200 kg (2,600 lb) bombload.
- Ceiling: 8,000 m (26,000 ft).
The ceiling and range specifications were not met, but the speed was exceeded by almost all the machines entered. At the end of the competition, the "winners" were the Ca.135 (with 204 aircraft ordered), the Fiat BR.20 (204), the Piaggio P.32 (144), the Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 (96), the CANT Z.1007 (49), and the Piaggio P.32 (12).
This array of aircraft was proof of the anarchy, clientelarism, and inefficiency that afflicted the Italian aviation industry. Worse was the continuous waste of resources by the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force). Orders were given for aircraft that were already obsolete. The winners of the competition were not always the best - the BR.20 was overlooked in favour of the SM.79, an aircraft which was not even entered in the competition.
Read more about this topic: Caproni Ca.135
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)