Campini Caproni CC.2
The Campini Caproni was the brainchild of Secondo Campini, an Italian engineer born 28th August 1904. In 1931 he wrote a proposal for the Italian Air Ministry and demonstrated a jet-powered boat in Venice in 1932. The support of the Italian Air Ministry led to the construction of the thermojet powered Campini Caproni CC.2 which flew for the first time in 1940 powered by a 900hp Isotta Franchini piston engine. In the thermojet rather than an impeller and ordinary piston engine is used to compress the air which is then mixed with fuel and ignited. It was still however a true jet since it was the reactive force of the burning exhaust gases that pushed the aircraft along. The design was an interesting development in a country not usually associated with early jet aircraft.
What Campini did in his thermojet was to place a piston engine within an enclosed duct as shown above. The engine drove three propellors behind the engine, two to compress the air and the third to direct the flow and reduce turbulance. The compressed air was mixed with fuel via a ring of kerosene injectors then ignited and exhausted out of the jet pipe. It is actually conceptually similar to adding an afterburner to a piston engine. Though the engine was an interesting inovation its performance reduced significantly as altitude increased, it was also much heavier and more complex than a turbojet, the aircraft did however include a fully pressurised cockpit for its two man crew.
It was capable of 200 kph on cold thrust and 400 kph with the burners active, had resources been available it would have been capable of much greater speed and altitude if a higher performance supercharged engine had been fitted, instead resources were directed toward wartime operational designs. At the end of WWII Campini moved to the United States and worked on a number of military projects including the YB-49 flying-wing bomber, he died in Milan in February 1980.
Two aircraft were built, one of these is preserved at the Vigna di Valle Air Force Museum, near Rome.
Modelling the Campini Caproni
There is only one kit of the Campini Caproni available. It was produced by Delta in 1:72nd scale and is now nearly thirty years old. A review of the kit can be found on the Modelling Madness website posted by Scott Van Alken. It is apparently a typicall 1970's kit with lots of realistic surface detail and overly thick canopies which you can't see much through. The kit can be modelled in two different schemes and comes with a booklet on the aircraft's history.