Italian Forces

A life extremely brief

IMC Archives

This almost unknown aircraft is the only prototype of the Caproni Ca.355 “Tuffo” (Dive). This aircraft was designed by Ing. Cesare Pallavicino and built at Ponte San Pietro, near Bergamo, by the CAB-Cantieri Aeronautici Bergamaschi (or Caproni Aeronautica Bergamasca), a company of the Caproni Group, for answer to a 1939 Ministry of Aeronautics requirement for a dive bomber of the same class of the German Ju 87 Stuka. The Pallavicino’s aircraft is a single-seat developed from the two-seat Ca.335 “Maestrale” (a combat plane designed for building in Belgium from SABCA) with the 850-hp Isotta Fraschini Delta IV R.C.35 engine and air brakes under the wing, armed with a 400kg bomb. The prototype, military registration MM470, flew for first time on 14 January 1941 at Ponte San Pietro airfield, test pilot Ettore Wengi, and soon after transferred at the Guidonia’s Flight Test Center. But the Ca.355’s life was extremely brief. The test’s result was unsatisfactory for the military authorities and the Regia Aeronautica were in favour of the continuation of the use of the Ju 87. After few flight tests on 23 March 1941 the development of the Ca.355 was abandoned and the aircraft was phased out and very probably dismantled for salvage of strategic materials. Victor Sierra