CANT Z.1007 Alcione
The CANT Z.1007 Alcione ("kingfisher") was a three-engined medium bomber of wooden construction, designed by Filippo Zappata for CANT, the aeronautical division of Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico, and first flown on 11 March 1937. The original Isotta-Fraschini-powered version disappointed, and the type fought the Second World War mainly as the radial-engined Z.1007bis, over Malta, Greece, Yugoslavia and the Mediterranean, then with both Italian air forces after the 1943 armistice. Published production totals conflict — 476, 560 and 660 are all stated by the sources below — and no example survives.
Why It Mattered
The CANT Z.1007 Alcione — "kingfisher" in Italian — was a three-engined medium bomber built almost entirely of wood, which the Regia Aeronautica took to war in 1940. Filippo Zappata designed it at CANT as a landplane development of his Z.506 Airone seaplane, and the prototype flew in March 1937. Italian Wikipedia records that many authors consider it the best Italian bomber of the Second World War, and it was praised for its flying qualities and stability. Yet the wooden structure that made it distinctive was easily damaged by the climates of North Africa and Russia, and construction was so slow that numbers stayed small: published production totals conflict, running from 476 to 660 aircraft. It fought over Malta, Greece, Yugoslavia and across the Mediterranean, and after the 1943 armistice it served both Italian air forces and the Luftwaffe.
Design Notes
The Alcione was a mid-wing monoplane with a retractable tailwheel undercarriage and a crew of five. Its structure was entirely wooden, assembled like a motorboat hull — longitudinal members first, then transverse frames — and skinned with crossed layers of glued wooden lamellae. The method was extremely slow, and few firms could manage it: besides CRDA itself, only IMAM and, during 1943, Piaggio built the aircraft. The first production batch flew on liquid-cooled Isotta-Fraschini Asso inline engines that proved unreliable, and those aircraft found only secondary employment. Zappata's redesign, the Z.1007bis, put three Piaggio P.XI RC.40 radial engines in a larger airframe with a strengthened undercarriage; the prototype bis flew in July 1939, and later series adopted a twin tail that partly corrected stability problems. The bis carried two 12.7 mm and two 7.7 mm machine guns and up to 1,200 kg of bombs internally. In North Africa and Russia the wooden skin cracked, separated and delaminated, and the deformation added drag. A final version, the Z.1007ter with more powerful Piaggio P.XIX engines, entered production in 1942; the Italian article gives fifty built, the English article around 150.
Operational History
When Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940, two stormi flew Alcioni: the 16°, whose 31 Asso-powered aircraft were declared non bellici, unfit for war, and the 47°, which had just received four Z.1007bis. The type's baptism of fire came on 29 August 1940, when ten bis aircraft bombed Luqa airfield on Malta. Its first large-scale use followed with the invasion of Greece, with 44 on line on 28 October 1940, the invasion's first day; heavy rain there damaged the wooden structure and forced constant repairs. Six bis of the 172a Squadriglia went to Belgium as strategic reconnaissance aircraft for the Corpo Aereo Italiano and were used once, on 11 November 1940, as decoys for the Harwich raid; none was lost over Britain. The Alcione opened the attack on Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, bombing Mostar airfield. On 21 May 1941 the 210a Squadriglia sank the British destroyer HMS Juno. During the Pedestal convoy battle of August 1942, Sardinia-based aircraft flew reconnaissance against the convoy, and three bis bombed it from high altitude on 14 August. Vulnerable to damage and fire, it was increasingly flown at night, and in 1943 withdrawn from the front line for night missions. At the September 1943 armistice, 72 of the 147 bombers remaining to the Regia Aeronautica were Alcioni; the Perugia aircraft flew to Sardinia and on 16 September attacked German vessels carrying troops to Corsica. With the Co-Belligerent Air Force the type dropped supplies to Italian and Yugoslav partisans in the Balkans, until on 14 May 1944 German fighters caught nine aircraft returning from a drop over Montenegro: five were shot down into the Adriatic and 26 Italian aviators were killed. The survivors flew only at night thereafter, while the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana's northern aircraft were used only for training.
Afterlife
At the end of the war the Co-Belligerent Air Force's 88° Gruppo Trasporti still had twelve Z.1007s, eight of them serviceable, and some flew transport and liaison flights into 1945. The peace treaty forbade Italy to possess bomber aircraft, and Italian Wikipedia records that this decreed the trimotors' rapid disappearance, a process their wooden structure made easy. The last example survived at Guidonia airfield until 1948, and was then destroyed as well. No Alcione survives: the Italian article states that not even single parts of these imposing trimotors remain.