[MOC] Schneider Trophy - Savoia S.12bis (Venice 1920)

[Hod Carrier]

<-- Sopwith Schneider Trophy (Monaco 1914)

With the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, competition for aerial supremacy took on a new and more lethal form and the Schneider Trophy went into a hiatus. It wasn’t until 1919 that the next race meeting took place, but sadly it was not a glorious return as it was marred by accident, disorganisation and bad weather.

As the previous meeting had been won by Britain, this first post-war event would be held at Bournemouth with a course set out over the Solent. The weather that greeted the competitors on the day of the contest was poor, as the Solent was blanketed in a thick mist. It was decided to delay the start, but when the mist started to lift word came that the start time would be brought forward. The French team, who had taken the opportunity to carry out repairs to their entries which had been damaged en route to the event, decided they would not be ready in time and withdrew.

The British team fared little better. Harry Hawker in the Sopwith Schneider (a totally different design to the 1914 contest winner) and Vincent Nicholl in the Fairey III gave up on the first lap after Nicholl narrowly avoided colliding with a ship’s mast and another aircraft due to poor visibility. The team’s third entry, Basil Hobbs flying the Supermarine Sea Lion, had alighted in Swanage Bay, fearful that he would fly into the cliffs in the poor visibility. He attempted to fly back to the start to get his bearings and start again but struck an object in the water and holed the hull which caused the aircraft to flood and invert when he made his first mandated alighting.

In the meantime, Italian air force pilot Sgt Guido Jannello in a Savoia S.13 flying boat continued to pound around, but it was noticed that his lap times were too fast compared to what was known about the speed of the aircraft. He was advised to fly an additional lap to ensure that he had covered the correct distance but was concerned that he had insufficient fuel to comply with this. Sure enough he was right and ended up stranded out in the Solent waiting for a rescue boat to find him.

Jannello was initially disqualified for failing to complete the course, a fact confirmed by the crew of the marker boat at the Swanage turn who said they had not seen him at all. When asked to indicate on a map where he had turned, Jannello indicated a location in Studland Bay where a reserve marker boat had been moored. When the Italian team protested, the committee decided to award Jannello the win after all, but this decision was overturned by the FAI. The race was declared void, but Italy was awarded the right to host the next event.

If the 1919 Schneider Trophy meeting had been a farce, the 1920 meeting at Venice was a damp squib. The inevitable post-war economic downturn meant that there were no entries from Britain while France entered only a single aircraft. When the French entry was inevitably withdrawn before the race, just the Italian team was left.

The Italians had a choice of four designs, but technical problems ruled out all but one from competing, a Savoia S.12bis flying boat specially prepared for racing and flown by naval pilot Lt. Luigi Bologna. This relatively large aircraft had been the prototype for a seaplane bomber but the design had not been taken-up by the Italian military, making it available for modification as a racer. The span of both the mainplanes and tailplane were reduced and power came courtesy of a 550hp Ansaldo-San Giorgio 12-cylinder engine. Its size made it well suited to a new rule introduced by Italy which required all entrants to carry 300kg of ballast to represent a payload.

Although the event had become a “fly over,” high winds and rough seas still provided a challenge to be overcome, but the large Savoia proved equal to these and completed the race distance without incident.

Image from Wikimedia.

Macchi M.7bis (Venice 1921) -->

Edited April 14 by Hod Carrier