The Tebaldi-Zari was an Italian
fighter prototype of 1919. The
Breda company later acquired the rights to it.
Design and development
An engineer named Tebaldi designed the Tebaldi-Zari, which was a single-seat wooden
sesquiplane with heavily staggered
wing
A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is e ...
s and a
Isotta Fraschini V.6, water-cooled 6-cylinder in-line engine, driving a two-bladed
tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...
propeller. Its fixed, tailskid
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 ...
was of very unusual configuration; the main gear was of very wide track and had oversized main wheels with their
axle incorporated into the lower wing.
The Zari brothers' factory in
Bovisio Mombello,
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 ...
, manufactured the Tebaldi-Zari prototype in 1919, but Breda soon bought both the prototype and the design rights to the aircraft from Zari. Breda re-engined the prototype with a
Hispano-Suiza HS-42 V-8 water-cooled engine. In 1922 and drafted an agreement with the Italian government to produce three more aircraft, but no production order followed.
Undaunted, Breda modified the original prototype by arming it with two fixed, forward-firing
Vickers machine-gun
The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The gun was operated by a three-man crew but typically required more men to move and o ...
s, modifying its upper wing so that it had a longer span and narrower
chord, reducing the wing stagger, increasing the gap between the upper wing and
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 increasing the angle of the outer struts so that they attached to the axle of the main wheels allowing the outer wing panels to be removed whenever a desire existed to test the Tebaldi-Zari as a sesquiplane. After these modifications were complete, Breda set about another redesign of the aircraft, this time increasing the size of the
ailerons and the chord of the upper wing and removing the outer panels of the lower wing permanently.
Thus modified, the original Tebaldi-Zari prototype was entered in the Italian 1923 fighter contest. The ''
Regia Aeronautica'' (Italian Royal Air Force) took no interest in a production order, and no further aircraft were built.
Operators
;
Specifications (with HS-42 engine)
See also
References
{{Portal bar, Italy, Companies, Aviation
Tebaldi-Zari
1910s Italian fighter aircraft
Sesquiplanes
Single-engined tractor aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1919
Biplanes with negative stagger