The Reggiane Re.2007 was a purported

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft (early on also ''pursuit aircraft'') are military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air supremacy, air superiority of the battlespace. Domina ...

concept designed in 1943 by Roberto Longhi.

Design

Roberto Longhi, one of the most prominent

Reggiane Officine Meccaniche Reggiane SpA (commonly referred to as Reggiane) was an Italian industrial manufacturer and aviation company. Reggiane was founded during 1904 by its parent company Caproni, which was in turn owned by the aeronautical enginee ...

aircraft designers, in a letter to the Italian aviation magazine JP4, dated May 1976, stated that

Regia Aeronautica The Royal Italian Air Force (''Regia Aeronautica Italiana'') (RAI) was the air force of the Kingdom of Italy. It was established as a service independent of the Regio Esercito, Royal Italian Army from 1923 until 1946. In 1946, the monarchy was ...

Major Antonio Ferri asked him to study an engine option for the

Reggiane Re.2005 The Reggiane Re.2005 ' (, Sagittarius) was a monoplane fighter and fighter-bomber designed and produced by the Italian aircraft manufacturer Reggiane. It was principally operated by the ''Regia Aeronautica'' during the later years of the Second ...

. The requirement was to install a supplemental

Fiat A.20 The Fiat A.20 was an Italian aircraft engine, aero-engine of the 1920s. It was a water-cooled V12 engine that was used by early versions of the Fiat CR.20 fighter and the Macchi M.41 seaplane. In 1923, FIAT built the Fiat A.15, A.15, a 430&nbs ...

engine behind the cockpit, driving a compressor, in order to improve the

Daimler-Benz DB 605 The Daimler-Benz DB 605 is a German aircraft engine built during World War II. Developed from the DB 601, the DB 605 was used from 1942 to 1945 in the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, and the Bf 110 and Me 210C heavy fighters. The DB 610, a pa ...

main engine output, giving the airplane a speed of above . It was also planned to use a tail exhaust to achieve more thrust, effectively creating a

Motorjet A motorjet is a rudimentary type of jet engine which is sometimes referred to as ''thermojet'', a term now commonly used to describe a particular and completely unrelated pulsejet design. Design At the heart the motorjet is an ordinary pist ...

The proposal was filed as "Re.2005 R" by Regia Aeronautica, but remained only a paper project, as, according to Longhi, the aircraft would have had problems with its

center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the barycenter or balance point) is the unique point at any given time where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. For ...

. One possible alternative method of propulsion to the motorjet to was to obtain turbojet engines from

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, but despite requests from Antonio Alessio and Count

Giovanni Battista Caproni Giovanni Battista "Gianni" Caproni, 1st Count of Taliedo (July 3, 1886 – October 27, 1957) was an Italian aeronautical engineer, civil engineer, electrical engineer, and aircraft designer who founded the Caproni aircraft-manufacturing company ...

, the Germans delivered only a wooden mock-up for dimensional tests to Reggiane. After the war, Longhi tried to conduct experiments with two

Junkers Jumo 004 The Junkers Jumo 004 was the world's first production turbojet engine in operational use, and the first successful axial compressor turbojet engine. Some 8,000 units were manufactured by Junkers in Germany late in World War II, powering the Mess ...

engines that were left in

Udine Udine ( ; ; ; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in northeastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Carnic Alps. It is the capital of the Province of Udine, Regional decentralization entity ...

airport after the German defeat. These extremely valuable jet engines were delivered to Italy in 1945 as spare parts for a

Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...

high speed

reconnaissance In military operations, military reconnaissance () or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, the terrain, and civil activities in the area of operations. In military jargon, reconnai ...

flight, equipped with three Arado Ar 234 ''Blitz'', when the nearly impossible to intercept German twin-jet planes participated in the Italian campaign. Unfortunately for Reggiane's designers, the engines were purchased by Angelo Ambrosini, another Italian aircraft manufacturer. Some Re.2007 drawings were made after the war by airplane designer Pellizzola. These drawings were speculative reconstructions derived from a Reggiane engineer's description. The drawings portrayed the aircraft as an advanced jet fighter, complete with futuristic (for 1943)

swept wing A swept wing is a wing angled either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than perpendicular to the fuselage. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigated in Ge ...

s, which only became common on fighter planes in the 1950s, although the Germans had used them on both the

Messerschmitt Me 262 The Messerschmitt Me 262, nicknamed (German for "Swallow") in fighter versions, or ("Storm Bird") in fighter-bomber versions, is a fighter aircraft and fighter-bomber that was designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Messers ...

and

Me 163 The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet is a rocket-powered interceptor aircraft primarily designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt. It is the only operational rocket-powered fighter aircraft in history as well as ...

. Rumours about a partially built airframe with technical sketches, both sent to the United Kingdom and the United States for studies, were published in some Italian books and magazines, but are now considered highly improbable. Most modern scholars now consider the Re.2007 to not have been a real design; instead being merely a "phantom" of sorts, cobbled together from various projects by faulty recollection.

Variants

* Re.2008, a proposed further development of the Re.2007 with a wing sweep of 33°.

Notes

Bibliography

* {{Portal bar, Italy, Companies, Aviation Reggiane aircraft Abandoned military aircraft projects of Italy Motorjet-powered aircraft Low-wing aircraft World War II jet aircraft of Italy