Fiat CR.42 Falco
A biplane fighter built by Fiat Aviazione, the CR.42 Falco was the last biplane fighter to enter production — remaining on the line until 1943 — and became the most numerous Italian fighter of the Second World War; the RAF Museum counts 1,709 built between 1938 and 1943. First flown on 23 May 1938, it fought for Italy across the Mediterranean and North and East Africa, joined the Battle of Britain from Belgium in 1940, and was exported to Belgium, Hungary and Sweden. Four complete examples survive in European museums, one of them under restoration to fly in England.
Why It Mattered
The Fiat CR.42 Falco was the last biplane fighter to enter production, and Fiat kept building it until 1943, long after monoplanes had become the standard fighter elsewhere. It was built in greater numbers than any other Italian fighter of the Second World War. The RAF Museum judges it the best biplane in service in 1940, and its manoeuvrability earned it respect from the pilots who flew it. It remained in service in some capacity from the beginning of the war to its end, fighting across the Mediterranean, North African, East African and Middle Eastern theatres.
Design Notes
Fiat's designer Celestino Rosatelli developed the CR.42 from his CR.32, a fighter that had seen extensive combat in the Spanish Civil War, still convinced that a biplane could be a champion given the right engine and aerodynamics. The wings formed a sesquiplane cellule, the upper wing wider than the lower, around a fuselage of welded steel tube covered with sheet metal panels from the engine to the cockpit and doped fabric aft of the cockpit. Power came from a Fiat A.74 radial engine. Armament was the weak point: two machine guns, no more than a First World War fighter carried, and the RAF Museum notes the type was unable to inflict major damage on its opponents. Eric Brown, the British test pilot who flew a captured example, called it brilliantly manoeuvrable, an "acrobatic gem", but under-gunned and very vulnerable to enemy fire.
Operational History
The type's combat debut came with Belgium, whose 30 export aircraft met the German invasion of May 1940; Belgian pilots were credited with up to five aerial victories before their country surrendered. Italy declared war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940, and the CR.42's first Italian combat followed in the brief two-week campaign over southern France. That autumn Mussolini sent the Corpo Aereo Italiano to Belgium for the Battle of Britain, a deployment the RAF Museum attributes to national pride and political prestige rather than military necessity. The corps included 50 CR.42s within a force of some 203 aircraft, yet the fighters could operate over England for only about ten minutes at a time. On the corps' largest operation, the daylight raid on Harwich of 11 November 1940, the Italians lost three bombers and three fighters; no RAF aircraft were lost. The type's wider war was fought around the Mediterranean, from Malta to Iraq and from Greece to Libya and Ethiopia, while Hungarian pilots flew it against Soviet fighters and bombers in Ukraine. In East Africa, Capitano Mario Visintini was credited with 16 victories flying CR.42s over Eritrea, which Vintage Aviation News identifies as making him the top biplane fighter ace of the Second World War. Sweden, the largest operator outside Italy, took 72 aircraft as the J 11 and retired them in March 1945. By 1942 newer monoplanes had largely replaced the CR.42 in Italian front-line service, but it flew on in Luftwaffe night-harassment raids and anti-partisan sorties and as a two-seat trainer. A Luftwaffe-operated CR.42 reportedly shot down a P-38 Lightning over Croatia on 8 February 1945, which may well have been the last combat victory claimed by a biplane.
Afterlife
Four complete CR.42s survive in Europe, and none currently flies. The best known is the RAF Museum's MM5701 at Hendon in London: the aircraft that force-landed on the shingle beach at Orfordness in Suffolk on 11 November 1940 after a broken oil pipe overheated its engine. Evaluated by the RAF as BT474 and set aside for preservation during the war, it went on permanent display in the museum's Battle of Britain Hall in October 1978. The Swedish Air Force Museum, at Malmen near Linköping, displays J 11 Fv 2543, the most intact Swedish example, which has been used as a reference in the restorations of two other aircraft. At Vigna di Valle, the Italian Air Force Museum unveiled its reconstructed CR.42 on 12 May 2005: a nine-year rebuild around the remains of a Swedish J 11, with up to 60 per cent original parts, painted as MM5643 of the Rhodes-based 162a Squadriglia. The fourth survivor, another Swedish J 11 that crashed in April 1942 and was recovered by helicopter in 1983, is being restored to fly by The Fighter Collection at Duxford as G-CBLS; the collection regards it as a long-term project and will not speculate on a completion date.