The Caproni-Pensuti 2 was a small single-engine sports

triplane A triplane is a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with three vertically stacked wing planes. Tailplanes and canard foreplanes are not normally included in this count, although they occasionally are. Design principles The triplane arrangement may ...

aircraft designed and built in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

just before the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. It had a wingspan of only 4.0 m or a little over 13 ft.

Design and development

The Pensuti 2 was a very compact, low-powered

flown in about 1918. Its first flight, piloted by Lt. Lodovico Montegani, was delayed by the death of its designer and Caproni test pilot Emilio Pensuti in an unrelated aircraft crash. Designed to do in the air "what bicycle icdoes for the man on the road", it was categorised post-

as a small sporting aeroplane. The single-seat triplane had unswept rectangular wings, each with a full span of only 4 m (13 ft 1 in). These were mounted without stagger, each wing braced to the one below by two pairs of vertical, parallel

interplane strut In aeronautics, bracing comprises additional structural members which stiffen the functional airframe to give it rigidity and strength under load. Bracing may be applied both internally and externally, and may take the form of strut, which act in ...

s, one pair out beyond mid-span and the other from the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

sides. The central wing was attached to the upper fuselage and the other two held well clear of it by the struts. There were

aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement around ...

s on each wing. Lodovico Montegani su triplano Pensuti

The Pensuti had a simple rectangular cross-section fuselage, with the open cockpit at the wing

trailing edge The trailing edge of an aerodynamic surface such as a wing is its rear edge, where the airflow separated by the leading edge meets.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 521. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. ...

. A three cylinder, inverted Y configuration Anzani air-cooled engine of 26 kW (35 hp) in the nose drove a two-blade

propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...

. The triplane had a fixed undercarriage of wide track, with a single wheel at each end of a single axle with its extremities attached to extensions of the outer interplane struts. Its

cruciform tail __NOTOC__ The cruciform tail is an aircraft empennage configuration which, when viewed from the aircraft's front or rear, looks much like a cross. The usual arrangement is to have the horizontal stabilizer intersect the vertical tail somewhere ...

had horizontal surfaces mounted on the top of the fuselage; the vertical surface was

trapezoidal A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a convex quadrilateral in Eucli ...

and extended equally above and below the fuselage. A small tailskid was carried on its lower tip. A second aircraft with a redesigned tail,

Anzani 10-cylinder The Anzani 10 was a 1913 10-cylinder air-cooled radial aircraft engine. It powered several experimental aircraft and also the later production versions of the Caudron G.3 reconnaissance aircraft, the Caudron G.4 bomber/trainer and the first pro ...

radial engine and other modifications was built at the Breda factory in Milan as the Breda-Pensuti B.2, (regn. I-BADZ). It gained the second prize at the Italian low-powered aircraft competition held in the summer of 1920 in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Specifications

References

{{Caproni aircraft 1910s Italian sport aircraft Triplanes Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1919