Shipbucket

Jet Powered Research

Italy, like most major nations, had been working on the potential of jet-powered aircraft through the 1930's. In contrast to the other nations who hid their programmes under blankets of secrecy, the Italian programme was relatively open and well publicised, as Mussolini in his typical style wanted the international acclaim of having the first jet-powered aircraft. This eventually led to the Caproni Campini N.1 being recognised as having undertaken the world’s first jet powered aircraft flight on 27th August 1940, whereas it later was recognised that Germany had already secretly flown the Heinkel He 178 exactly 1 year to the day before.
Secondo Campini started work on jet propulsion in 1931, and in proving his concept in 1932 had inadvertently invented the jet boat. While no orders were received for his marine technology, the design was forbidden for sale outside of Italy and was soon forgotten. Campini was able to attract interest in an aviation application for his engine system in 1934 though, and as an independent designer formed an arrangement with Caproni to develop a pair of prototype aircraft for the Regia Aeronautica. The proposed Caproni N.1 was a large two-seat machine, following on closely from Campini’s earlier CS.500 and CS.600 projects. Campini called his engine system a “thermojet”, although “motorjet” had already been patented in 1917 for this engine type. The weakness in the N.1 was the piston engine chosen to power the system, an Isotta-Fraschini L.121 RC.40, as its relatively low horsepower for the size of the aircraft it was powering led to the N.1’s performance being very poor.
Development progressed smoothly, and the first prototype was able to take to the air under its own power in August 1940. This event was treated with great fanfare and a demonstration of the technological prowess of fascist Italy. But initial testing revealed several issues including the poor performance, most annoyingly a very rapid heat buildup from the engine system, necessitating all flights being undertaken with the canopies open – maybe not a problem for Italian pilots who wanted to feel the wind in their hair anyway.
The second prototype was completed in early 1941, and the two aircraft performed the first jet formation flight soon after. As a part of the victory celebrations following the surrender of Yugoslavia the two N.1 aircraft, repainted in the national colours, overflew Rome in formation showing the world Italy’s technological superiority.



But the aircraft were nothing more than technology demonstrators with little potential for practical development. However, as “proof of concept” vehicles they were very successful, and with Mussolini’s support further development of motorjet aircraft was started at Caproni, while Campini transferred to Reggiane to work on creating a motorjet fighter based on their new R.2001.

Seaplanes

Float planes and flying boats had long been Italy’s strong suit, but even as the 1940’s dawned wood and fabric construction was still the medium of choice in Italy. This of course meant that longevity was not a hallmark of the Italian soft-skinned designs and limited their export potential.
Macchi had made a name for themselves with innovative designs for the Schneider Trophy races, and followed those aircraft up with an enlarged armed 4-man reconnaissance flying boat as the MC.77 in 1935. The type was not accepted by the Regia Marina, but a parallel civil model entered production as the MC.94 for Ala Littoria. Ala Littoria purchased the whole production run of 12 aircraft and used them on their routes to Mallorca and the Adriatic. By 1939 the aircraft were starting to show their ages, and 3 were sold to Argentina. But with Italy adopting a war footing in 1941 state-owned Ala Littoria found itself being impressed into military service, and the seaplane fleet was no exception. The Macchi C.94’s and their big brother C.100’s were formed into the Seaplane Section of the Ala Littoria Communications Unit to conduct patrol and transport duties.



But the impressing of Ala Littoria’s aging fleet had benefits to the airline who had their machines and crew effectively chartered by the Italian military. The requirement for new, replacement seaplane airliners for post-war civil operations was urgent, and Reggiane were able to provide a new 4-engined flying boat from a design they had been working on since the company had been re-established as a Caproni subsidiary in 1937, and that only needed a signed contract to start production. The first of the new Re.415’s took to the air in December 1941, but supplementing the para-military service to Libya, rather than recommencing civil operations.

Fiat Airliners

In 1934 most Italian airlines had been nationalised and merged to create Ala Littoria, with the only independent carrier being Fiat’s Avio Linee Italiane. Primarily a domestic airline, by the time of German hostilities in Europe routes had expanded to include most European capitals, serviced primarily by Fiat’s own G.18 airliners and a single DC-2.



With the increase in European tensions and then actual war in the Low Countries, ALI scaled back its northern routes and increased traffic into the Balkans and southern Europe, especially with the closer relations with Hungary and Bulgaria. ALI’s fleet remained civil and independent through the Yugoslav conflict while their competitor Ala Littoria was subsumed into military service, and so with increasing trans-Adriatic traffic and no opposition on domestic routes the next generation Fiat G.12 trans-Alpine airliner was added to the fleet as ALI expanded. The prototype had first flown in 1940 and production now stepped up for Italy’s civil needs.

Italian Trans-Atlantic Airliners

With the outbreak of war in Europe Lufthansa had been forced to relinquish its trans-Atlantic services. In its stead Italy created the airline Linee Aeree Transcontinentali Italiane in September 1939 to take over the South Atlantic routes. Using Savoia-Marchetti SM.75 and SM.83 airliners LATI built a regular service connecting Rome, Spain, Portugal and Brazil. However with the end of Nazi aggression Italy’s monopoly on the route became threatened as a resurgent Lufthansa and an expanding Air France looked to return to Atlantic routes using new giant flying boats.
Keeping Italian primacy over trans-Atlantic traffic was seen as vital for Italian national interests, and so LATI requested Italian manufacturers to provide designs for a new generation of airliners to compete against the new foreign airliners. Savoia-Marchetti was already working on a four-engined replacement to the SM.75 as the SM.76, and now offered an upgraded version as the SM.95C. Being a continuation of SM’s earlier production models the SM.95C was of mixed construction and was very much a low-risk design.
In contrast Piaggio provided 3 models for consideration, 2 of them being developments of the P.108B bomber, itself still in development. The P.108C airliner was a minimal change to the bomber, modifying the fuselage to hold a pressurised cabin. The P.126 was a more significant modification, with the hull further adapted to survive an emergency water landing. But Piaggio’s third design was just the radical, globe-trotting airliner that Mussolini dreamed of presenting to the world, the P.127C.
At Mussolini’s insistence the P.127C was declared a national priority, and at the same time development of civil derivatives of the P.108 were cancelled to ensure that Piaggio's work on the P.108 bomber was not impacted. The SM.95C was very much a short-term solution to the trans-Atlantic airliner requirement, but was able to be entered into production rapidly. By mid 1941 the SM.95C’s were entering service and replacing their 3-engined older stablemates who were returned to European service.



A wooden fuselage mock-up of the P.127C was quickly built, and so the lavish interior layout of Italy’s upcoming world-crossing airliner was prepared while Piaggio’s aeroengineers were still working to create a version of the P.XII engine reliable enough to power Mussolini’s dream.

World Air Speed Record

Italy had established the world absolute speed record in 1933 with the MC.72 Schneider Trophy racer. Germany had captured the record with the Heinkel He 100 in 1939, and then a month later beaten it again in a Me 209 racer at a speed of 755 kph. Italy could not let this stand, and Fiat’s subsidiary CMASA went to work to design a new racer and engine to reclaim Italian glory. By early 1940 aerodynamic tests had validated the airframe design, and the new engine had entered testing, running successfully at 2500hp.
The aircraft was ready for flight at the end of June 1941, and was able to comfortably exceed the German record. After several days of increasing speed tests a final official speed run was undertaken on the 4th of July, establishing a new absolute speed record of 851 kph.



The CS.15 was more than a vanity programme to restore Italian glory. Although as a dedicated racer the CS.15 and its minimal systems had little possibility of evolving into anything else, the Fiat AS.8 engine project had been unexpectedly successful in its development. While the engine’s ability to operate as a racing engine did not equate to the ability to operate in a commercial environment, it proved the validity of the design and allowed Fiat to expedite work on its larger A.38 engine.

The Monroe Amendment

With the strong American public rejection of internationalism and foreign military adventures, one of the first pieces of legislation proposed in early 1941 was a Constitutional Amendment forbidding the deployment of American troops outside of the US’s traditional sphere of influence. Quickly drafted and quickly ratified was what came to be known as the Monroe Amendment, a codifying of President Monroe’s 1823 vision of the Americas for the Americans and Europe for the Europeans.
Across the Atlantic the “Monroe Line” was now drawn, that the US military could not cross, longitude 30° West (with a variation around Greenland to include the coastal waters of the entire island). While any schoolchild could have drawn the America/Europe line, the limit to American advance in the Pacific was more complex with the US’s territories extending as far as the former Spanish possession of the Philippines and including American Samoa nestled amongst the other nations of the central Pacific. Here with a corridor running from Hawaii through Guam to the Philippines the US gave itself a pathway west to its furthest possession, but highlighted the fact that the Monroe Amendment was a one-way policy, preventing the US military from crossing going out, but unable to prevent foreign militaries from crossing going in.
While the Monroe border was of little immediate consequence for non-Americans in the Pacific as it merely was seen as limiting potential US “adventurism” outside their own territories, the US had firmly staked out its policy of non-interference in the affairs of other nations in the area. The message to Moscow, Tokyo and Chongqing was easily read, and likewise London, Paris, Amsterdam and Canberra now also started reconsidering their policies in the Pacific.
But in the Atlantic the American policy behind the Monroe Line was viewed more ominously by the European powers with territories in the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine had been initially formulated to keep European influence out of the Americas, rather than to bottle in the US military, and a strong and isolationist US could very easily seek to sever the political connections of the European possessions and absorb then into a Pan America. Indeed the very awkwardness of the Pacific Line was caused by the eviction of Spain from its foreign territories less than 50 years earlier.

Second Meeting of Consultation of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics

But even before the adoption of the Monroe Amendment, the US had taken steps to isolate the affairs of European nations from the Western Hemisphere in response to the war in Europe.
In late September 1939 delegates from the US and the independent American nations met in Panama and agreed that they would meet again in October 1940 to formally respond to the potential threat to the Americas as a whole. Held in Havana, this second conference became the final major act of pan-American diplomacy from the Roosevelt administration.
Leading the Conference, the US had already publicly stated the policy of “No Transfer”, such that it would not accept transfer of ownership of territories to nations outside the Americas in the event of conquest of governing nations in Europe. This position was initially rejected by the attendees, however sweetening its position with the offer of financial aid to the attending nations, a system whereby a multinational pan-American trusteeship could assume control of any European nation’s territories was adopted. After a week of negotiations a collective policy "Declaration of Reciprocal Assistance and Cooperation for the Defence of the Nations of the Americas" was announced that formalised the concept that an attack on any country in the Americas would be considered an attack on them all, formally uniting the American nations – but specifically excluding Canada and the territories of the British, French, Dutch and Danish colonial empires in the Americas.

Greenland

A quiet global backwater colony of Denmark, Greenland was suddenly isolated from its mother country by the German invasion of Denmark. Britain and Canada had initially planned on seizing the island, as was done with Iceland, but the United States firmly rejected any foreign intervention in line with its “No Transfer” policy.
In Greenland the governors of South and North Greenland, following Greenland’s own governmental law, invoked an emergency clause and declared Greenland a self-ruling territory, and so de facto independent. The Danish Government remained in place in Copenhagen under Nazi scrutiny and continued to send orders to Greenland’s local governmental landsraad, but these communiqués were ignored.
The Greenlanders main concern was for their sovereignty, with worries about the potential of Germany, Britain, Canada or Norway attempting to take control of the island and the potential for a European war to extend to Greenland. Instead the Greenlanders requested protection from the United States who were more than happy to oblige. With their extensive experience on ice patrol duties in the waters around Greenland the US Coast Guard was in a perfect position to provide support, and on 20 May 1940 two Coast Guard cutters arrived and established a consulate, and Greenland became an American protectorate.
With the armistice in Europe the return to conditions ante bellum was a slow process. Both of Denmark’s foreign possessions had found that Danish protection was of little value and the new Danish policy of Search, Rescue and Protection provided even less national assurance. While independence sentiments started simmering in Iceland, the tiny population of Greenland meant that the island’s future would always as a part of a greater nation, and the island’s defence would be reliant on external support. As such the Greenland Landsraad kept their emergency powers in force and maintained their independence against the wishes of Copenhagen, and formalised their arrangements for protection with the United States.

The Greenland Patrol

The German occupation of Denmark in April 1940 had left the 19,000 Greenlanders isolated and unprotected from foreign intervention. Although an otherwise unassuming territory Greenland was the site of the world’s only cryolite mine, a vital mineral required for the electrolysis of aluminium ore. Expanding on their International Ice Patrol duties, USCG cutters were allocated to patrols along both the eastern and western coasts of Greenland to deter the intervention of other nations in Greenland, with special attention to the mine at Ivigtût, the only militarily important location in Greenland, and with the arrival of the US consular staff to Greenland at the Southern Greenland capitol of Godthåb, that town became the de facto capitol of the whole island.
Shortly thereafter the USCGC Campbell discharged a contingent of armed Coast Guardsmen to guard the mine at Ivigtût, and off-loaded a heavy deck gun from the cutter to become a fixed artillery piece. Ivigtût had a history as one of the 3 original Norse settlements, had been the site of engine changes for the 2 Douglas DWC aircraft on their round-the-world flight in 1924, and was the best port facility in Greenland in 1940.



Further Coast Guard cutters patrolled the waters, while their Grumman JF-2 Ducks conducted longer range air patrols. Two separate patrols were established; the South Greenland Patrol responsible for monitoring Greenland’s west and southern coasts with the waters bordering Canada, and the Northeast Greenland Patrol monitoring the oceanic waters. The sudden intense activity allowed the first detailed mapping of Greenland to be undertaken, a process which was expanded to include recommendations for siting of future airfields, meteorological stations and navigation aids.

Norwegian Expansionism

The Nasjonal Samling regime of the Realm of Norway proved itself to not be popular amongst the people of southern Norway, with the majority of the country favouring the return of the monarchy and the reunion of the 2 Norways. Quisling had expected financial support from Germany to buoy the economy, but as a holdover from the old Nazi regime, the new German imperial government had no desire to legitimise or support the Nasjonal Samling.
The Nasjonal Samling party had had an irredentist outlook from its inception, dreaming of a Noregsveldet encompassing all the ancient Norwegian lands from Greenland to northern Russia and even the north and south poles. As late as 1931 Norway had attempted to claim the eastern shores of Greenland as Norwegian territory, but the claim had been rejected by the Permanent Court of International Justice. However Norway still had a seasonal presence of fur trappers and weather reporting in eastern Greenland, trappers who had missed the trauma of their homeland in 1940.
In an attempt to now unite the country behind him, Quisling initiated a plan to mount a maritime invasion of Greenland before the winter freeze in mid 1941, rather than just the usual resupply voyage to the over-wintering Norwegians. Using a task force of four supply vessels and 30 men, the initial expedition was led by Hallvard Devoll, an arctic explorer who had led the Norwegian occupation of 1931. Although officially a military expedition, in reality the mission was a civilian one to expand the isolated stations at Myggbukta and Torgilsbu to become permanent defendable positions from which further missions would expand Norway’s claim to the whole of the eastern coast of “Raudesland”, an unsubtle historical play on the name of Eric the Red and “Greenland”.