“Centauro”: the story continuing
A couple of Italian Air Force’s Fiat G.55A built after the war from Centauro’s airframe and components still stocked in Fiat’s factory at Turin. The all silver finish typical of post-WW2 Italian military aircraft highlight the beautiful shape of this fine Giuseppe Gabrielli’s plane. Equipped with British and American fighters, Spitfire IX, which had replaced the Spit V of the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force, and P-38 Lightning, and waiting for the P-51D and P-47D, the Aeronautica Militare (AM), the new Italian Air Force born with the Italian Republic, decided, for help the Italian aeronautics industry’s revival, the purchase of a small number of the last generation’s aircraft designed before the end of the WW2 as G.55 Centauro only for training duties. The post-war Centauro was built, using some DB.605 engines still in stock, in two version: G-55A single seat and G.55B two seat, both without armament, for advanced training, whose prototypes flew on 1946. The total number assembled for AM was 19 G.55As and 10 G.55Bs, plus 45 (30 “A” and 15 “B”) for the Argentine Air Force armed with four 0.5in machine guns. Anyway the life of last G.55s in the AM’s fleet was extremely brief. But from the G.55’s design was derived the G.59 with Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in active duty until the end of Seventies. Victor Sierra
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://ww2incolor.com/gallery/italian-forces/45706/%22centauro%22:-the-story-continuing