The Piaggio P.2 was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 fighter prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...

 of advanced design built by Piaggio

Piaggio Aero

Piaggio Aero Industries is an aircraft manufacturing company born from the former Rinaldo Piaggio SPA, an Italian company. The company is one of the world's oldest airplane manufacturers, and its planes have been well known from the early days of aviation history.Today, Piaggio Aero Industries is...

 in 1923.

Design and development

In 1923, the Pegna-Bonmartini workshops at Sestri Ponente

Sestri Ponente

Sestri Ponente is an industrial suburb of Genoa in northwest Italy. It is part of the Medio Ponente municipio of Genoa.-Geography:It is situated on the Ligurian Sea to the west of the city, between Cornigliano and Pegli...

 in Genoa

Genoa

Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

, Italy, were constructing a fighter aircraft prototype designed by Ing

Ing

-In English:* -ing, a suffix added to English verbs to make a present active participle or a gerund* Ing, a word for a water-meadow-In old Germanic history:* Ing, Ingui or Yngvi, a Germanic god* Ingaevones, a West Germanic cultural group...

 Giovanni Pegna around the smallest airframe that could accommodate the 224-kilowatt (300-horsepower

Horsepower

Horsepower is the name of several units of measurement of power. The most common definitions equal between 735.5 and 750 watts.Horsepower was originally defined to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses in continuous operation. The unit was widely adopted to measure the...

) Hispano-Suiza

Hispano-Suiza

Hispano-Suiza was a Spanish automotive and engineering firm, best known for its luxury cars and aviation engines in the pre-World War II period of the twentieth century. In 1923, its French subsidiary became a semi-autonomous partnership with the parent company and is now part of the French SAFRAN...

 HS 42 eight-cylinder water-cooled engine. After the Piaggio company purchased Pegna-Bonmartini that year, construction of the prototype continued and resulted later in 1923 in the completion of the Piaggio P.2.

The P.2 was an aerodynamically clean, single-seat, low-wing, cantilever monoplane

Monoplane

A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with one main set of wing surfaces, in contrast to a biplane or triplane. Since the late 1930s it has been the most common form for a fixed wing aircraft.-Types of monoplane:...

 of very advanced design for the time with either a monocoque

Monocoque

Monocoque is a construction technique that supports structural load by using an object's external skin, as opposed to using an internal frame or truss that is then covered with a non-load-bearing skin or coachwork...

 or semi-monocoque fuselage

Fuselage

The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section that holds crew and passengers or cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage which in turn is used as a floating hull...

 and fixed landing gear

Landing Gear

Landing Gear is Devin the Dude's fifth studio album. It was released on October 7, 2008. It was his first studio album since signing with the label Razor & Tie. It features a high-profile guest appearance from Snoop Dogg. As of October 30, 2008, the album has sold 18,906 copies.-Track...

. It was built of wood, with plywood

Plywood

Plywood is a type of manufactured timber made from thin sheets of wood veneer. It is one of the most widely used wood products. It is flexible, inexpensive, workable, re-usable, and can usually be locally manufactured...

 skin and fabric-covered control surfaces, and was armed with two machine gun

Machine gun

A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

s -- sources differ on whether the machine guns were of 7.62-millimeter (0.3-inch) or 12.7-millimeter (0.5-inch) caliber -- synchronized to fire through the propeller

Propeller (aircraft)

Aircraft propellers or airscrews convert rotary motion from piston engines or turboprops to provide propulsive force. They may be fixed or variable pitch. Early aircraft propellers were carved by hand from solid or laminated wood with later propellers being constructed from metal...

. It had two radiator

Radiator (engine cooling)

Radiators are used for cooling internal combustion engines, mainly in automobiles but also in piston-engined aircraft, railway locomotives, motorcycles, stationary generating plant or any similar use of such an engine....

s, one mounted on each side of the fuselage forward of the open cockpit

Cockpit

A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. Most modern cockpits are enclosed, except on some small aircraft, and cockpits on large airliners are also physically separated from the cabin...

.

Operational history

Piaggio built two P.2 prototypes and entered the P.2 in the 1923 Italian official fighter contest. The P.2 probably was ahead of its time; the Italian Air Ministry distrusted monoplanes at the time and the P.2s performance did not meet the level that Pegna had predicted, and for these reasons no production order followed. However, the Regia Aeronautica

Regia Aeronautica

The Italian Royal Air Force was the name of the air force of the Kingdom of Italy. It was established as a service independent of the Royal Italian Army from 1923 until 1946...

(Italian Royal Air Force) purchased one of the prototypes for evaluation, taking delivery of it on 23 March 1924.

Specifications

Notes:

• Time to 1,000 m (3,280 ft): 3 min 18 sec