Re.2005 vs G.55
This is not a duel between enemies. It is a contest between two Italian fighters that shared an engine, an armament, and a moment — and it was decided not in the air but on the factory floor.
By 1943 the Regia Aeronautica finally had what it had lacked for the whole war: a first-class engine. The German DB 605A, licence-built by Fiat as the RA.1050 RC.58 Tifone, gave Italy’s designers 1,475 hp to work with, and three superb fighters answered the call — the Macchi C.205, the Fiat G.55 Centauro and the Reggiane Re.2005 Sagittario. This is the story of the two purpose-built newcomers, tested against each other at Guidonia in early 1943.
The comparison is unusually pure. Both aircraft used the same engine and carried the same guns — three 20 mm MG 151/20 and two 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT. Strip those away and what remains is a straight argument between two airframes, and between two philosophies of what a fighter in 1943 needed to be: the best machine, or the one you could actually build.
| Reggiane Re.2005 Sagittario | Fiat G.55 Centauro | |
|---|---|---|
| Engine | Fiat RA.1050 RC.58 · 1,475 hp | Fiat RA.1050 RC.58 · 1,475 hp |
| Armament | 3× 20 mm MG 151 + 2× 12.7 mm | 3× 20 mm MG 151 + 2× 12.7 mm |
| Max speed | ~628 km/h at 6,950 m | ~620 km/h at 7,400 m |
| Service ceiling | ~11,000 m | ~12,700 m |
| Range | ~1,250 km | ~1,200 km |
| Wing area | 20.40 m² | 21.11 m² |
| First flight | 9 May 1942 | 30 April 1942 |
| Ease of production | Most complex Italian fighter | Built for mass production |
| Units built | ~48 | ~274 |
With the same engine the numbers are close, and where they diverge they trade blows: the Sagittario was marginally faster low down at about 628 km/h, the Centauro reached higher, with a ceiling near 12,700 m against the Reggiane’s 11,000. But at the Guidonia trials in early 1943 the verdict was not split — the Re.2005 was judged the fastest at altitude and the best of the three in a dogfight. On flying qualities alone, the Reggiane was the aeroplane the test pilots wanted.
Here the Sagittario was in a class of its own. Its elliptical wing and light, clean airframe gave it a turn radius of about 195 m clean and 148 m with flaps — pilots reckoned it turned almost as well as a Spitfire Mk IX, the highest praise a 1943 fighter could earn. The British ace Duncan Smith, who flew a captured example, called it simply “a superb, potent aeroplane.” The G.55 was a fine, steady gun platform; the Re.2005 was a thoroughbred.
And this is where the thoroughbred lost. The Re.2005 was intricate, small and demanding to build — one of the most expensive fighters Italy ever attempted, and slow to leave the factory. The G.55, designed by Giuseppe Gabrielli around Fiat’s large production capacity, was only marginally inferior as a fighter and far easier to mass-produce. When the Regia Aeronautica chose which of the Serie 5 to build in quantity, it chose the Centauro — the right decision on every ground except the quality of the aeroplane.
The gap in the only column that could still matter is stark. About 48 Re.2005s were completed before the armistice; roughly 274 G.55s were built — nearly six to one. Yet even that margin is an illusion of victory: the great majority of those Centauri were assembled after 8 September 1943, under German occupation, for the co-belligerent air force of the Italian Social Republic. The G.55 won the contract, and then the country that placed it ceased to exist.
So the competition has a clear winner and no happy ending. The G.55 was the right choice — buildable, robust, nearly as good, and rated by the Germans who tested it as one of the finest Axis fighters of 1943. On every rational measure of a wartime weapon it beat the Re.2005, exactly as a Sherman beat a Tiger: not by being better, but by being makeable. The Reggiane was the more beautiful and the more capable machine, and that was precisely why it lost.
But the deeper verdict is that it did not matter which won. Both fighters reached the front in 1943, the year Italy left the war, and neither was ever built in numbers that could change anything. The Sagittario ended at 48; the Centauro’s production ran on under occupation, its pilots fighting other Italians in a civil war. Italy spent the whole conflict without a competitive fighter engine, got three superb fighters the moment it finally had one, and then ran out of country. The Re.2005 and the G.55 are the record of that timing — the best Italy could do, arriving exactly too late.
- Chris Dunning, Courage Alone: The Italian Air Force 1940–1943 (Hikoki Publications).
- Jonathan W. Thompson, Italian Civil and Military Aircraft 1930–1945 (Aero Publishers).
- Sergio Govi, I caccia Reggiane 2000-2001-2002-2005 (Giorgio Apostolo Editore).
- Nino Arena, L’Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana 1943–1945 (STEM Mucchi).