Marchetti MVT

The Marchetti MVT, later renamed SIAI S.50, was an Italian fighter of 1919 and the early 1920s.

Design and development

Alessandro Marchetti (1884–1966) designed the MVT (for "Marchetti-Vickers-Terni"), a single-seat, all-metal biplane with its fuselage suspended between the upper and lower wings. The after part of the fuselage itself was flattened to serve as an airfoil. The semi-elliptical wings were extremely thin in section and employed wing warping to allow lateral control, and the aircraft had all-moving tail surfaces. The MVT was powered by an SPA 6a water-cooled engine rated at 164 kilowatts (220 horsepower) driving a two-bladed propeller, and was armed with two fixed, forward-firing 7.7 millimeter (0.303-inch) Vickers machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller.

Vickers-Terni at La Spezia constructed the MVT, which first flew in 1919. On 9 December 1919 it reached a maximum speed of 250 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour), an unofficial world speed record which was denied official status because no representatives of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale—the world governing body for aeronautics—were present to certify the speed.