Fiat CR.32 vs Polikarpov I-16
Over Spain the older machine kept beating the newer one. Both air forces believed what they saw, and both were punished for it within five years.
In November 1936 a Soviet ship unloaded the first 31 Polikarpov I-16s in Republican Spain, and the air war changed overnight. The little monoplane had a retractable undercarriage, a cantilever wing and roughly 90 km/h on anything the Nationalists could put up. Republicans called it Mosca, the fly; Nationalist pilots called it Rata, the rat. Against it stood the Fiat CR.32: a fabric-covered biplane with fixed wheels, wire-braced struts and a design already three years old.
On paper the contest was over before it started. In practice the CR.32 fought the I-16 for three years and finished the war with the reputation of the best fighter in Spain. Understanding why — and what each side concluded from it — matters more than the duel itself, because the conclusions shaped what Italy and the Soviet Union flew into the Second World War.
| Fiat CR.32 | Polikarpov I-16 | |
|---|---|---|
| Layout | Sesquiplane biplane, fixed undercarriage | Cantilever monoplane, retractable gear |
| First flight | 28 April 1933 | 30 December 1933 |
| Engine (Spanish-war types) | Fiat A.30 R.A. V12 · ~600 hp | Shvetsov M-25 radial · ~730 hp |
| Max speed | ~360 km/h | ~455 km/h (Types 5–10) |
| Service ceiling | ~7,700 m | ~9,000 m |
| Armament | 2× 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT | 2–4× 7.62 mm ShKAS |
| In the turn | Tighter circle, superb control harmony | Snappy but unforgiving, wider circle |
| In the dive | Stronger — could follow anything down | Weaker — pilots were warned off steep dives |
| Sent to Spain | ~380 | 276 (Types 5, 6 and 10) |
| Units built | ~1,210 | ~10,000 |
The I-16 announced itself on 13 November 1936, when twelve of them intercepted a Nationalist raid on Madrid. The first encounters were expensive for the Italians: the Polikarpov was faster in level flight and in the climb, and its pilots could choose when to fight and when to leave — the single most valuable advantage in air combat, and the one the CR.32 could never take away from them.
After that costly introduction the CR.32 pilots worked out how to handle a faster enemy, and the balance shifted. They stopped chasing. They fought where the biplane was strongest — low, slow and turning — used the Fiat’s superior dive to break off or to fall on an unwary Mosca, and let the I-16’s speed carry it out of the fight it had started. By 1937 the CR.32 was holding its own and better against an aircraft that outperformed it in every measurable category except the ones that were decided by the pilot.
The two qualities the Fiat did own were decisive at close range. Its two 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT guns were heavy-calibre weapons against the I-16’s battery of rifle-calibre 7.62 mm ShKAS — more rounds per second from the Soviet fighter, far more destructive power from the Italian — and the CR.32 was the steadier gun platform of the two. The I-16, short-coupled and twitchy, was a difficult aircraft to shoot accurately from and an unforgiving one to fly; the Fiat was docile, predictable and turned inside it.
Italy concluded that manoeuvrability beat speed and ordered the CR.42 — the last biplane fighter in the world to enter large-scale production, some 1,780 of them, still leaving the factory when the Spitfire was the standard of comparison. The Soviet Union kept the I-16 in production and it was still the most numerous Soviet fighter when Barbarossa opened on 22 June 1941, where Bf 109s destroyed it in numbers. Two air forces watched the same war and each took from it the reassurance that what they already had was enough.
On the merits the I-16 was the more important aeroplane and the CR.32 the better fighter in that particular sky. Polikarpov’s monoplane was the shape of everything that came after — cantilever wing, retractable gear, speed as the governing quality — and roughly 10,000 were built against some 1,210 Fiats. But in the low, slow, swirling combats of Spain, where the turn and a pair of heavy machine guns still decided matters, the older machine won more often than it lost, and it finished the war with the higher reputation.
The real result is what both sides did next. The CR.32’s success was genuine and its lesson was false: it had won a kind of fight that was already disappearing, in a war fought below 4,000 m by aircraft of a generation about to be swept away. Italy read that record and built more biplanes; the Soviet Union read its own and kept a 1933 fighter in the front line until the Luftwaffe arrived. The CR.32 and the I-16 fought each other to a draw over Spain, and their air forces paid for it separately — in Libya in 1940, and over the Soviet frontier in June 1941.
- Håkan Gustavsson & Ludovico Slongo, Fiat CR.32 Aces of the Spanish Civil War (Osprey, Aircraft of the Aces 94).
- Mikhail Maslov, Polikarpov I-15, I-16 and I-153 Aces (Osprey, Aircraft of the Aces 95).
- Chris Dunning, Courage Alone: The Italian Air Force 1940–1943 (Hikoki Publications).
- Jonathan W. Thompson, Italian Civil and Military Aircraft 1930–1945 (Aero Publishers).