AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 66 / 157

Plate 66 of 157 · Second World War · Biplane fighter

Fiat CR.42 Falco

CR.42, painted as MM5701 ‘13-95’, the RAF Museum’s Fiat CR.42 Falco of the 95a Squadriglia, 18° Gruppo, which flew with the Corpo Aereo Italiano from Belgium in the Battle of Britain and force-landed on the shingle at Orfordness, Suffolk, with a broken oil pipe during the raid on Harwich on 11 November 1940, then was tested by the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the Air Fighting Development Unit as BT474, restored at St Athan in 1973–74 and displayed at Hendon since 1978: a single-seat sesquiplane fighter of 31 ft 10 in span with a Fiat A.74 fourteen-cylinder radial in a long-chord cowling, Warren-truss interplane struts, an open cockpit, two 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT machine guns firing through the propeller and fixed main wheels in deep spats, shown standing on its tailwheel: nut-brown upper surfaces with dark olive-green blotches, light grey beneath, a yellow cowling and off-white spinner, yellow ‘13’ and ‘95’ codes either side of the 18° Gruppo badge, a blue squadriglia disc below the cockpit, a white Savoy cross on the rudder, white fasces discs on the wings and a three-blade propeller with pale blue faces.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as MM5701 ‘13-95’, the RAF Museum’s Fiat CR.42 Falco of the 95a Squadriglia, 18° Gruppo, which flew with the Corpo Aereo Italiano from Belgium in the Battle of Britain and force-landed on the shingle at Orfordness, Suffolk, with a broken oil pipe during the raid on Harwich on 11 November 1940, then was tested by the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the Air Fighting Development Unit as BT474, restored at St Athan in 1973–74 and displayed at Hendon since 1978: a single-seat sesquiplane fighter of 31 ft 10 in span with a Fiat A.74 fourteen-cylinder radial in a long-chord cowling, Warren-truss interplane struts, an open cockpit, two 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT machine guns firing through the propeller and fixed main wheels in deep spats, shown standing on its tailwheel: nut-brown upper surfaces with dark olive-green blotches, light grey beneath, a yellow cowling and off-white spinner, yellow ‘13’ and ‘95’ codes either side of the 18° Gruppo badge, a blue squadriglia disc below the cockpit, a white Savoy cross on the rudder, white fasces discs on the wings and a three-blade propeller with pale blue faces. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.0 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the CR.42 modelled here.

History

The Falco

Celestino Rosatelli designed a line of Fiat biplane fighters from the CR.1 of 1923, and the CR.32 had made the reputation of the Regia Aeronautica in the Spanish Civil War. The CR.42 Falco, or Falcon, was its successor: a sesquiplane, its lower wing much shorter than the upper, braced by Warren-truss struts, with a welded steel-tube fuselage, fabric covering and a Fiat A.74 fourteen-cylinder radial of 840 hp in a long cowling. It was armed with two 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT machine guns firing through the propeller. The prototype first flew at Turin on 23 May 1938. Italian pilots, schooled in aerobatics and close dogfighting, still valued agility above speed, and the Falco could turn inside almost anything, so it was ordered in quantity even as monoplanes took over elsewhere.

Belgium, Hungary and Sweden bought it too, and Belgian CR.42s fought the Luftwaffe in May 1940. When Italy entered the war that June the Falco was its most numerous fighter. It fought the French over the Alps, the RAF’s Gladiators and Hurricanes over Malta and the Western Desert, and the Greeks over Albania, and it served in East Africa until the Italian surrender there in 1941. In the autumn of 1940 Mussolini sent the Corpo Aereo Italiano to Belgium to join the Battle of Britain, with Fiat BR.20 bombers, G.50 monoplanes and some fifty CR.42s of the 18° Gruppo, flying from Ursel. On 11 November 1940 the Falcos escorted bombers in a raid on a convoy off Harwich and were caught by Hurricanes; several were lost, and by early 1941 the Italians had gone home.

Outclassed as a day fighter by 1941, the CR.42 was turned into a fighter-bomber with underwing bombs, a night fighter and an escort for convoys, and it flew ground attack in North Africa until 1943. After the Italian armistice in September 1943 the Luftwaffe had production restarted for its night-harassment units in northern Italy, which used them until 1945. Some 1,780 were built in all, more than any other Italian fighter of the war, making the Falco one of the last biplane fighters built in large numbers anywhere.

This airframe

CR.42 “MM5701”

MM5701The airframe modelled

MM5701 went to Belgium in October 1940 with the 95a Squadriglia of the 18° Gruppo, attached for the campaign to the 56° Stormo. On 11 November 1940 Sergente Pietro Salvadori flew it on the Harwich raid; an oil pipe broke, and he force-landed on the shingle at Orfordness in Suffolk, about a quarter of a mile north of the lighthouse, and was taken prisoner. The aircraft was barely damaged. It was flown to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough on 27 November, given the RAF serial BT474 and evaluated there and by the Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, then stored. It was displayed at Biggin Hill from 1964, restored at St Athan in 1973–74 in the colours of the 95a Squadriglia, and has been at the RAF Museum at Hendon since 1978, the only Italian aircraft from the Battle of Britain to survive. The museum notes that the restoration got some details of the camouflage and squadron insignia wrong. The model shows it as it is displayed: nut-brown upper surfaces with dark olive-green blotches, light grey beneath, a yellow cowling and off-white spinner, yellow “13” and “95” codes with black shadows either side of the 18° Gruppo badge, a blue squadriglia disc below the cockpit, a white Savoy cross on the rudder and white fasces discs above the upper wing and beneath the lower. At Hendon the tail rests on a trestle; the model stands on its own wheels.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum London

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Falco in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 157 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.