Engineer Corradino d’Ascanio, Pomilio Industries
collaborator and designer

Pomilio workshops: SP.3 in construction

Pomilio workshops: SP.2 fuselage assembly

1916

1917

1950

2011

Luglio 1929 - The Duchess of Aosta, the Duchess Elena of France and her husband the Duke of Puglia prepare to fly from the
Aeronautica d’Italia airfield

Pomilio S.P3

Pomilio P.D

Ottorino Pomilio

Ottorino POMILIO was born in Chieti on the 8th of October 1887. He gained his degree in Engineering at the University of Naples in 1911 then attended the Higher School of Aeronautics in Paris, obtaining a degree in aeronautical construction.
He was an accomplished pilot, flying widely and setting records. In 1913, he set the Italian height record with PETTAZZI as his co-pilot.
That same year, he moved to Turin and joined the Aviators Battalion stationed at Mirafiori as a designer with the DTAM, where together with his fellow engineer Umberto SAVOIA, he dedicated himself to the creation of the “SP” (Savoia-Pomilio).
He resigned from the Aviators Battalion in 1915 to plan the set-up of his own aircraft construction company.
In May 1915, with the War in full swing, he founded the “Società Anonima Costruzione Aeronautiche Ottorino Pomilio & Co.” in Corso Francia to build the SP.2.
Ottorino POMILIO soon become a world authority in the aeronautics field, and as a result, following the sale of his company to Ansaldo, and on account of the performance of the P.E. aircraft in the USA, he was invited by the American government to contribute to the American aeronautical programme.
Together with his brothers Ernesto and Alessandro, he therefore founded the Pomilio Brothers Corporation at Indianapolis (Indiana) to produce fighters and bombers.
This company was essentially a consultancy company for the US government, producing experimental warplanes in collaboration with the Allison Experimental Works in Dayton, Ohio at the Engineering Division of McCook Field.
POMILIO died in Rome on the 3rd of January 1957.

Corradino D’Ascanio

^{Popoli (PE) 1° february 1891 – Pisa 5 august 1981}

In the aeronautical world, D’Ascanio is well known as being the “father” of Italian helicopters, but more fortunately (economically speaking) he became world famous as the creator of the “Vespa” scooter.
He attended the Chieti technical institute and then, in order to study engineering, he moved to Turin and in 1914 graduated in Industrial Mechanical Engineering from the Turin Polytechnic.
In December 1914 he volunteered for the Engineering Branch of the City of Turin “Aviators Battalion” where he was assigned to engine testing. In 1916 he was discharged and went to work for the Pomilio company where he collaborated in the design and construction of numerous prototype aircraft.
In January 1918 Pomilio sent him to the United States (Indianapolis), but soon relations with the “Pomilio Brothers corporation” deteriorated and D’Ascanio looked for fresh opportunities within the US aeronautical industry, setting up his own company with Engineer Ugo Veniero D’Annunzio (the son of Gabriele D’Annunzio) and the Caproni Airlines designer in Detroit for the construction of an airplane equipped with a Harley Davidson motorcycle engine.
However, the American adventure did not have the desired results and in September 1919 D’Ascanio returned to Italy.

Helicopter

In 1925, following his return to Italy, together with baron Pietro Trojani, he founded a company whose object was the construction of helicopters and on 7 April 1925, patented the D’AT.1 helicopter with two coaxial propellers. The parts were produced at the Camplone workshops in Pescara where the prototypes of both the D’AT.1 and the D’AT.2 helicopters were built.
Both managed to fly for only a few minuts, but despite the lack of success these prototypes would allow D’Ascanio to design a new helicopter, much better than the previous ones, the D’AT.3 that received orders from the Ministry of Aeronautics and was built in the workshops of the Aeronautical Engineers in Rome.
The flight tests were carried out at Ciampino Nord by senior test pilot Marinello Nelli (the first man in Italy to experience vertical flight) at the controls.
“The Domenica del Corriere” dedicated its cover page to the event, while all the newspapers reported the news in their headlines.
In October 1930 the D’AT.3, with a FIAT A.50-S HP90 engine, achieved a number international flight records, including the straight-line distance without a stop and height from the starting point (about 55 feet).
The helicopter was patented in almost all Western countries and in Japan.
Unfortunately, the construction of the helicopter exhausted the capital made available by Baron Trojani, so that, in 1931,with no commercial prospects, D’Ascanio found himself in a state of near poverty.
His dedication to vertical flight was paid for dearly.

Illustration by Achille Beltrame in “La Domenica del Corriere”

The variable pitch propeller

Thanks to his experience with the helicopter, D’Ascanio became the leading Italian expert in variable pitch propellers and, luckily for him, the invention allowed him to recover his lost economic tranquility.
At that time, due to the increasing power of aircraft engines, the aeronautical industry was beginning to appreciate the need for the variable pitch (or constant speed) propeller.
It was therefore thanks to the skills acquired with the D’AT.3 that the attentions of the aeronautical section of the Rinaldo Piaggio company began to concentrate on D’Ascanio, and beginning from 1932, he became their technical consultant.
The demand for variable pitch propellers increased significantly in the years preceding the Second World War and they were mounted on many Italian planes including those of Macchi and Caproni.
In 1935 D’Ascanio designed a new helicopter for the Ministry of Aeronautics, the PD.2 (Piaggio-D’Ascanio2) followed in 1939 by the PD.3 which had only one rotor and a counter-torque propeller, in a configuration similar to that of modern helicopters.
Its development was slow and came to a complete stop with the outbreak of the Second World War. It was flight-tested only in 1942, but remained at the experimental stage.
In 1951, Piaggio attempted to restart the production of helicopters, and began construction of the P.D.4 (Piaggio-D'Ascanio 4), a twin-rotor machine, but abbandoned the project completely following an accident during a test flight.

The “Vespa”

With the end of the Second World War, the conversion of the factories from war-time to peace-time production was a problem that needed to be solved.
Enrico Piaggio had the brilliant intuition of building a low cost motorcycle, accessible to everyone, and in the summer of 1945 entrusted the task to D’Ascanio who approached the problem from a completely new angle.
D’Ascanio did not like motorcycles, he had never been involved with them from the constructional side and he cared little for them as vehicles. He invented a vehicle for those who had never ridden a motorcycle and disliked the dirt and grime involved with riding them: thus he conceived the “Vespa” (wasp) which made its first official appearance in 1946 at the Milan cycle and motorcycle show and became an immediate success.
But that is another story.

Piaggio Vespa 98CC of 1946

Mario De Bernardi

De Bernardi (born in Venosa, province of Potenza in 1893) enlisted at 18 years of age in 1911 as a volunteer for the Libyan War. During the First World War he joined the 2nd Piedmont Regiment of the Royal Cavalry at Pinerolo, the same regiment as Francesco Baracca, and is credited as being the first Italian pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft (over Verona). He later became a test pilot for Pomilio industries. 

In 1926 he participated in the ninth edition of the Schneider Trophy which was held that year at Hampton Roads, Virginia (United States).

The Schneider Trophy was a race for high-speed sea planes, with the winner usually setting a new world speed record. The race was held over a triangular course. The competition was initially sponsored by the French engineer Jacques Schneider in 1911 with the aim of stimulating technological progress, particularly for aero engines. The first competition took place in 1913.

On November 13 1926, Mario De Bernardi won the competition with a Macchi M.39 which completed the 350 km of the circuit at an average speed of 396.7 km / h setting a new world speed record for seaplanes. A few days later, in the same plane, he was able to improve on his own record.

1917. Commemorative postcard of first experimental postal service Turin-Rome flown by Mario De Bernardi

1917. Air mail experiment

Lt. Mario De Bernardi and his Pomilio P.C.

Mario De Bernardi in his Pomilio after his second landing at Centocelle (Rome) with another load of mail from Turin