The Piaggio P.2 was an Italian fighter prototype of advanced design built by

Piaggio Piaggio & C. SpA (Piaggio ) is an Italian motor vehicle manufacturer, which produces a range of two-wheeled motor vehicles and compact commercial vehicles under seven brands: Piaggio, Vespa, Gilera, Aprilia, Moto Guzzi, Derbi, and Scarabeo ...

in 1923.

Design and development

In 1923, the Pegna-Bonmartini workshops at

Sestri Ponente Sestri Ponente is an industrial suburb of Genoa in northwest Italy. It is part of the Medio Ponente ''municipio'' of Genoa. Geography It is situated on the Ligurian Sea four miles to the west of the city, between Pegli and Cornigliano. Its ...

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

, Italy, were constructing a fighter aircraft prototype designed by

Ing Ing, ING or ing may refer to: Art and media * '' ...ing'', a 2003 Korean film * i.n.g, a Taiwanese girl group * The Ing, a race of dark creatures in the 2004 video game '' Metroid Prime 2: Echoes'' * "Ing", the first song on The Roches' 1992 ...

Giovanni Pegna around the smallest airframe that could accommodate the 224- kilowatt (300-

horsepower Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. Two common definitions used today are t ...

) Hispano-Suiza HS 42 eight-cylinder water-cooled engine. After the Piaggio company purchased Pegna-Bonmartini that year, construction of the prototype continued and resulted later in 1923 in the completion of the Piaggio P.2. The P.2 was an aerodynamically clean, single-seat, low-wing,

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cant ...

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...

of very advanced design for the time with either a

monocoque Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell". First used for boats, ...

or semi-monocoque

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 aircraf ...

and fixed

landing gear Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called ''alighting gear'' by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin ...

. It was built of wood, with plywood skin and fabric-covered control surfaces, and was armed with two

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) ar ...

s—sources differ on whether the machine guns were of 7.62-millimeter (0.3-inch) or 12.7-millimeter (0.5-inch) caliber—synchronized to fire through the propeller. It had two radiators, one mounted on each side of the fuselage, forward of the open cockpit.

Operational history

Piaggio built two P.2 prototypes and entered the P.2 in the 1923 Italian official fighter contest. The P.2 was probably ahead of its time, however; the Italian

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distrusted monoplanes at the time and the P.2s performance did not meet the level that Pegna had predicted, and for these reasons no production order followed. However, the '' Regia Aeronautica'' (Italian Royal Air Force) purchased one of the prototypes for evaluation, taking delivery of it on 23 March 1924.Green and Swanborough, p. 471.

Operators

; *'' Regia Aeronautica''

Specifications

Notes: *Time to 1,000 m (3,280 ft): 3 min 18 sec

Notes

References

* Green, William, and Gordon Swanborough. ''The Complete Book of Fighters: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Every Fighter Aircraft Built and Flown''. New York: SMITHMARK Publishers, 1994. . {{Portal bar, Italy, Companies, Aviation P.002 1920s Italian fighter aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1923