Fiat G.50 Fighter "Freccia"

Fiat G.50 Freccia

The Freccia (Arrow) was one of the first Italian monoplane fighters. It proved to be an adequately designed, low-wing monoplane with enclosed cockpit and retractable landing gear. Oddly enough the enclosed cockpit was not used on the production aircraft, as can be seen above. The Italians made 780 in total.

Technical Details
The initial production of the G50 was slow (263 mph or 472km/h) with the 625kW Fiat A.74 RC38 radial engine. Due to the lack of a powerful engine the Italians installed in the G.50V a Daimler-Benz DB601 engine. The G.50bis/A variant was a two-seat shipboard fighter-bomber. They, like most Italian aircraft, were underarmed with only two 12.7 mm machine guns in the wings, at a time when many of the British and American fighters were upgrading to eight 0.50 inch machine guns, and some were augmented with two 20 mm cannons.

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