Elvira tells
Elvira tells: Alfa Romeo Aviation
1 MARCH, 2017
A dip in the sky

From the 1930s until the end of the Second World War, the aviation sector took first place in the interests of Alfa Romeo, although already on 1 November 1910, a biplane, designed and built by the designer Antonio Santoni and the mechanic Nino Franchini, equipped with a 36 hp A.L.F.A. engine, took off from the Piazza d'Armi in Milan.

In 1917, now Alfa Romeo for the entry of Nicola Romeo, the company obtained the first order from the Ministry of War for the construction of engines for the strengthening of bombardment squadrons.

Until 1932, Alfa's activity in this field, although it achieved numerous speed and height records, never unfortunately came out of the economic situation; it was with the arrival of Ugo Gobbato, in 1933, that the real period of Alfa Romeo's aeronautical activity began.

The papers preserved in the Alfa Romeo Historical Archive and in the archives of Ro archives reveal a fierce war between Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Caproni for orders from the Ministry of Aeronautics. It is a fact that Fiat was certainly not happy with the existence of Alfa Romeo, and would have preferred, if not its closure, at least the cessation of its aeronautical activity, which at that time was the most important thing for Fiat because of its turnover. The production of Alfa Romeo prestige cars, on the other hand, did not worry her too much.

Fiat was an economic and social power that escaped quite a bit from the control of the Regime that was accustomed to replacing and hiring all the people it wanted as it had tried to do even at Alfa, according to the papers kept in the archives. With Gobbato's management, things changed: he did not accept any kind of impositions, he did not hire anybody's relatives but only qualified workers and technicians he thought he had to hire. He also tried the road of international agreements with Citroen in 1934, with Daimler Benz and with Man, both for cars and trucks and aviation engines, obviously thinking that nothing could be done with Fiat.

The birth of Avio's experience department dates back to 1941 and, to make you understand how important technological quality was for Gobbato, I will tell you an episode often reported by engineer Giampaolo Garcea, who joined Alfa in 1935 as: "engineer in charge of airplane engine test rooms". :

Engineer Tonegutti, in charge of the service, calls Amleto Bossi (Chief Engineer in charge of the airplane engine test rooms, known as "el Boss" ) on the phone and tells him: "At eleven o'clock she and Garcea in Management, Engineer Gobbato wants to talk to us".

Gobbato is not long in coming, everything lasts just ten minutes, during which standing in front of the three defendants, who are also standing, he communicates his decisions: "The engine test room must test the series engines, but the experimental engines must be tested in a special department. Everything must be checked piece by pieceEverything must be checked piece by piece and in the open, so that anyone who enters it, even the Air Ministry, must be left speechless. At the head of the department I decided to put the man who has the most experience of all, Mr. Bossi, who will be helped by engineer Garcea because I have noticed that they get along well. So practice combined with grammar. Your task is to take great noses because we are all ignorant and blind, so after a nose on one side and a nose on the other, you must show us the right way."

The secret of success, Gobbato had understood it: order, method, systematicity and the right men.

The aviation department was not far from the first of the gatehouses in Via Traiano, it was located at the end of a long corridor between the two workshops "Trento" and "Trieste". Once through the large sliding door, the noise that reigned there was unbearable, the wall opposite the entrance was practically non-existent, it overlooked a large lawn and could be closed with shutters. Here, airplane engines were roaring day and night, and here, in the summer of 1943, the Alfa 135 double star engine (the last is the most perfect of the double star engines ever built in the world) was ready for mass production. The Germans subjected one of them to a massacring standard test to which the French Gnome-Rhone engines, the Germans BMW and the Americans dismantled from downed planes, all of them taken out within 5 hours of the test, while the Alfa 135 stopped after 29 hours. An order of 500 engines per month followed, but by the end of the war only 50 engines had been produced. Meanwhile at Portello, the aviation sector was demobilized to make way for the production of cars, the drawings of this engine were sent to Pomigliano where someone ordered them to be pulled down, while the 50 engines in stock were destroyed, except fortunately the prototype on display at the Museum.

Most of the 16,000 aircraft engines produced under Ugo Gobbato's management were under Bristol licence. In addition to the engines, the propellers with duralumin blades were also built, both with fixed and variable pitch in flight, which reached a total production of 6,000 units in the various types.

On 1 April 1939 work began on the construction of the new Alfa Romeo aeronautical plant in San Martino, an area between Pomigliano d'Arco and Acerra. An imposing and very advanced complex for those times, and not only on a technical level, but also in terms of functionality and the human and social dimension. Equipped with an airport with an absolutely avant-garde concrete runway, and structured on two floors, the plant was connected by a long tunnel to the Pomigliano railway station, so as to allow covered access to the workers. Houses were built for executives and workers with families and a hotel for bachelors, a nursery school, a cinema, a library, and sports facilities, including a swimming pool.

The decision to decentralize to the south was motivated by the fact that it was feared that northern industries would be exposed to strategic bombardments from France, but this was not the case because the plant was heavily hit on February 14, 1943 while 8,500 workers were at work and was almost destroyed on May 30, 1943 when hundreds of American planes dropped thousands of bombs, starting from Pantelleria, continuing to Naples, a martyr city, and continuing at dawn on Pomigliano as the first shift began, there were deaths and hundreds of wounded. The damage was really huge, very little was saved from the air raids and the systematic destruction carried out by the Germans before leaving Naples.

But also at Portello the bombardments of 14 February and 13 August 1943 caused the death of workers, the loss of work and the burning of a large quantity of historical documents and drawings. The third bombardment on October 20, 1944 stopped the red heartbeat of the Alfa.

After the war, there was no more talk of aviation in Alfa, the large engine test rooms suddenly became silent. Despite all the efforts, the possibility of selling aviation engines was practically nil due to uncertainties about the activity of the National Air Force, both civil and military. Contacts were resumed with Bristol and an agreement was signed with which Alfa became its exclusive representative for Italy for one year. It was also entrusted with the overhaul of Bristol engines sold in Italy, and the production of spare parts.

In order to survive, one had to convert back to the production of cars, of trucks, in short, one had to return to a production of "peace". This happened easily without jolts thanks to the far-sightedness of Gobbato who, in the last years of the conflict, had brought the activities of the other Experience Services into the Avio Experience Service. The designers, enriched with all the aeronautical knowledge, began to experiment engines and chassis of cars, diesel engines, trolley buses, trucks, generators and marine engines.

Almost six months after the last bombardment, on the initiative of Metalmeccanica Meridionale in agreement with the Milanese management of Alfa, the Pomigliano plants slowly began to resume repair work on aviation engines and tanks until 1952, when everything once again passed into the hands of Alfa Romeo. At the end of the 1950s, since the production activity had few prospects, except for the overhaul of engines on behalf of the American Air Force, they began to study the transfer of truck assembly from Portello to Pomigliano, and so in 1962, the production activity of the Campania plant was divided into two sections: Avio and Motor Vehicles and Diesel Engines. The Avio section operated in the sector of major overhauls of aviation engines and in the construction of spare parts. A school was also set up, attached to the plant, for the retraining of workers and technicians. At the beginning of the 1970s, the Pomigliano workshops overhauled engines for 17 types of aircraft and repaired all the turbine engines in operation on Alitalia aircraft, as well as those of other Italian airlines: ATI, Itavia, Alisarda and Vip-Air. For the Italian Armed Forces, Alfa repaired Wright piston engines of the C 119, Rolls Royce turbomotors, and the certification of its work by the Italian Air Force, the Italian Aeronautical Registry, the Civil Registration Board and the Federal Agency, allowed Alfa to operate for any aeronautical body, civil and military, Italian and foreign. In 1982, Alfa Romeo sold 10% of its shareholding in Alfa Avio to the company Aeritalia S.p.A, and a further 60% of the shareholding was sold in 1984 to Aerfer, which also took over the remaining 30% of Alfa Romeo's shareholding in 1986. In 1996, Fiat Avio acquired control of Alfa Romeo Avio which had an annual turnover of over 300 billion lire, an operating profit of 30 and 1,500 employees. The sale was part of Finmeccanica's divestiture plan. In 2003, Fiat Avio, with its 14 plants, 9 research centres and over 5,000 employees, was sold to a consortium formed by the Carlyle Group and Finmeccanica for € 1.5 billion. Thus was born the Avio company, which continues to be managed in the technological field by Fiat even after the transfer to the European fund Cinven, which took place on 7 August 2006. Always working in advance on technical solutions, Alfa Romeo's contribution in the aeronautical sector was truly remarkable, as it was in the car and motor racing sectors.
An occasion to remember a legendary story and all those who contributed to creating the Alfa myth but also to attract and motivate new generations to keep this myth alive in the years to come.