Macchi C.202 Folgore

By 1940 the Regia Aeronautica had a problem it had long foreseen. Its newest fighter, the Macchi C.200 Saetta, was agile and rugged but slow, hamstrung by the broad frontal area and modest output of its air-cooled Fiat radial. Everywhere else the front-line fighter had moved to the sleek, powerful liquid-cooled inline — the Spitfire, the Bf 109, the P-40 — and Italy, lacking a high-power inline of its own, was being left behind.

The answer lay in Germany. Macchi obtained a single Daimler-Benz DB 601 inverted-V12 and, under Mario Castoldi, grafted it onto a refined C.200 airframe. The marriage was transformative: the new nose was slim and pointed, drag fell away, and the aircraft gained nearly 100 km/h. The prototype MM.445 first flew on 10 August 1940 and reached 595 km/h on its early trials — a figure that instantly put Italy back in the first rank of fighter design. It was named Folgore, the Thunderbolt.

The key to series production was securing the engine at home. Alfa Romeo took out a licence to build the DB 601A-1 as the R.A.1000 RC.41-I Monsone, freeing the design from dependence on German deliveries. Around this powerplant Castoldi kept the Folgore's structure beautifully clean, retaining the Saetta's strong wing and adding the characteristic slim, drooping spinner that gave the aircraft its unmistakable profile.

One quirk became famous. The torque of the powerful inline pulled the aircraft persistently to one side, so Macchi built in a deliberate asymmetry — the left wing was made slightly longer than the right to balance the propeller's pull in the cruise. Pilots praised the result lavishly: the Folgore was fast, beautifully harmonised on the controls and superb in a dive, widely regarded as one of the finest-handling fighters of the entire war. Production was shared between Macchi, Breda and SAI-Ambrosini, though the chronic shortage of Alfa-built engines would throttle output for the rest of the conflict.

The Folgore was built in a long run of production series, from the Serie III through to the Serie XII, differing chiefly in equipment and armament detail. Early aircraft carried only two heavy machine guns; from later series a pair of 7.7mm Breda-SAFAT weapons was added in the wings, and tropicalised machines received sand filters and desert equipment for North African service.

The type's most important legacy was what it became. Italy never solved the Folgore's two great weaknesses — feeble armament and, in many aircraft, the absence of a radio — within the C.202 itself. Instead Castoldi took the airframe, fitted the still more powerful DB 605 engine and a pair of 20mm cannon, and produced the C.205 Veltro. The Folgore and Veltro shared most of their structure; the Thunderbolt was, in effect, the prototype generation of Italy's finest fighter.

The Folgore went into action over Libya with the 1° Stormo in November 1941 and was an immediate success. For the first time in the war Italian pilots had a fighter that could meet the RAF’s Hurricanes and Curtiss P-40s on equal terms and often beat them, and that could hold its own against the early Spitfires reaching the Mediterranean. Over the Western Desert, Malta and the convoys, the Folgore quickly became the most respected Italian fighter the Allies faced.

Much of that came down to the German engine. Where earlier Macchis had been strangled by underpowered radials, the C.202’s licence-built Daimler-Benz DB 601 gave it the speed, climb and altitude performance to fight the best of the Desert Air Force on its own terms — and in a tight turning fight, its Italian heritage of superb handling did the rest.

The Folgore equipped the Regia Aeronautica’s most celebrated units and carried its greatest aces — Franco Lucchini, Teresio Martinoli, Adriano Visconti among them — across North Africa, Sicily, the Mediterranean, the Eastern Front and finally the desperate defence of Italy itself.

Yet one flaw dogged it to the end: it was badly under-gunned. Most Folgore carried just two 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT machine guns in the cowling — a fit that had been adequate in 1941 but was hopeless by 1943, when the target was a formation of armoured American four-engined bombers. Some aircraft added a pair of light 7.7 mm wing guns, but it was never enough: Folgore pilots could close, hit, and watch the B-17s and B-24s fly on. The best-handling Italian fighter of the war could rarely deliver a killing blow.

Around 1,150 Folgores were completed, making it one of the most important Italian fighters of the war and the type that restored the Regia Aeronautica's pride after the lean years of radial-engined biplanes and Saettas. In the hands of a good pilot it was a match for almost anything in the Mediterranean theatre, and it remained competitive to the very end of the Italian campaign.

Its tragedy was that Italy could never build it in the numbers, or arm it as heavily, as the moment demanded — the perennial Italian story of fine design starved of industrial muscle. But as a piece of aeronautical engineering the Folgore was a triumph, and as the direct ancestor of the Veltro it secured Mario Castoldi's place among the great fighter designers of the age.

• Håkan Gustavsson & Ludovico Slongo, Macchi C.202/C.205V Aces 1941–45 (Osprey, Aircraft of the Aces 106).
• Chris Dunning, Courage Alone: The Italian Air Force 1940–1943 (Hikoki Publications).
• Jonathan W. Thompson, Italian Civil and Military Aircraft 1930–1945 (Aero Publishers).