hello all my aces I hope that you are having a lovely day I just want to
quickly preface this video by giving a short public service announcement now
when I was filming at the Museo storico aeronautica militare in Italy. I was
very much limited by the equipment that I had microphones cameras and so on and
the audio quality of the video also with the background noise didn't turn out
quite ideal now I tried cleaning it up as much as I can however there are still
artifacts in the background I'm currently looking into getting some more
advanced equipment microphones cameras and so on but all that stuff is quite
expensive so it might take some time until I finally have a good setup I'm
still in the learning phase when it comes to these sort of videos so bear
with me for a couple of videos and I'm sure in the future will be having clear
audio clear visuals and a lot more professional-looking stuff anyway I hope
that all of you will enjoy this free part look at some of the aircraft that
can be found in the Italian Aviation Museum
Hello and welcome to the first part our museum visit to the Museo storico aeronautica militare here at
Lake Bracciano in Italy. I'm standing in front of the Macchi Castoldi 72
or M.C.72 in short. This aircraft stands at the end a long line
of Italian racer designs, seaplane racer designs of the 1920s and 1930s. This
aircraft itself was conceptualized for the 1931 Schneider trophy which was a
very highly regarded competition in the aviation industry at the time. Now the MC
72 is essentially the zenith of (propeller) seaplane racers until this point in time. The aircraft
broke multiple records or being the fastest plane and the fastest sea plane
and in fact it's record for fastest (propeller) seaplane stands until this very day.
Even though this aircraft was designed 1931 Schneider trophy, it was not able
to compete: especially the engine gave the designers more and more troubles
every day and the aircraft wasn't ready until 1933. By this point in time it had
claimed the life of two test pilots. The powerplant of this aircraft is
quite exceptional, it is a Fiat AS-6
which is essentially a supercharged V-24 engine. You can see the engine
in the aircraft, you can see the cockpit and between the cockpit and the
propeller is nothing of an engine. Two V-12 engines essentially set row and
row and these produce a maximum output of up to and slightly over 3,000
horsepower. One of the very interesting features of this aircraft is of
course the propeller: it is a contra rotating propeller which overcomes the
torque of the engine. This way the aircraft will stay in a straight line
instead of drifting to the left or the right because of the engine torque and
this is of course exceptionally handy for a racer airplane, you want to get
maximum performance in a straight line without having to make a few control
inputs of the pilot. Now the 10th of April 1933 the Italians tried for the first
time to beat the existing record. And Francesco
Angelo, the chap that you see right there was responsible of taking this aircraft
into the air and he pushed it up to 682 kilometers/ hour. In miles/hour
that translates to 424 miles/hour. This is a world record and the Italians
could, if they wanted to, rest on their laurels. However, they are convinced
that they can take this aircraft above 700 kilometres/hour and they work
tirelessly on trying to get the problems that they still have with this design
fixed so they can beat that mythical mark. One of the interesting aspects
that you'll see on this aircraft right here is the cooling system which also
allowed the aircraft to essentially have the performance that it has. You'll notice
that when you look at the structure of the aircraft you don't really see any
inlets or big radiator that of course might influence the aerodynamics. In fact
this aircraft uses laminar radiators these are radiators that are situated
around the aircraft even in the floats and in the float struts and that will
cool the coolant of the engine as the aircraft flies through the sky.
Now if you want to know a little bit more about how those kind of radiators
work, check out this video that I made on a German plane that uses a similar
cooling system. Even though they had all these kind of nifty solutions to the
problems that are posed by aerodynamics they still had 700 kilometres/hour to
beat and it did so in 1934. Francesco Angelo once again to took the aircraft up
on the 10th of October and went up to 709 kilometers/hour.
That is 440 miles/hour. This record stands to this day for a (propeller) sea or
float plane. The MC 72 held the record for fastest plane on the planet
for five years until 1939 the German plane took the Heinkel 100, which is also the
plane that featured similar radiators to this aircraft, broke the record.
The He 100 went 746 kph, which is comfortably faster than the Macchi
but then again the Macchi here also has struts and a float attached to it two
folds in fact so you could make an argument that if they both have made
this aircraft into a normal land based aircrfaft, maybe they could have passed
push past the barrier but then again it would have not been that much room for
all these radiators that this engine needed. The record of the He-100 only
held for a couple of months, then the Me 209, another German design
broke it by flying 756 kilometers. However the Macchi, M.C. 72
still is the fastest [propeller] sea plane of the planet. The Italians only tried to
break the record after going 682 kilometers/hour and that
is when they achieve the record of 709 kilometers/hour. After
that they said 'Basta, we are done' and they never took this aircraft up again.
I hope that you enjoyed this look at the M.C. 72, there really is only one version
of this aircraft on the planet and it is here at the Museo storico
aeronautica militare at Lake Bracciano in Italy. So if you're in the
area and if you want to see the true pinnacle of what human engineers can do
with a seaplane come to the museum and check out I hope that you enjoyed this
episode and if you learned something from it. In our next episodes from this
museum here we're going to have a look at some of the aircraft that saw service
service in World War 2. If you enjoy my content if you want to see more
consider checking out my Patreon, even a small contribution each month can go a
long way of helping me create this kind of content,bring it to your living room
and essentially get the equipment that I need. If you want to see a previous episode of
my visit to the Finnish aviation museum in Helsinki, click right here and if you
want to learn how the MiG-21 a Soviet aircraft ended up in the hands
of the Finnish during the Cold War, click right here. As always, I hope you guys have a great day,
good hunting and ciao!