Targeting a METEOR

    The genesis of the Meteor P0

    The first modern Italian drone 

    by Carlo Siardi (translated by L. Pavese)

    The word “drone” is now familiar to nearly everyone, surrounded as we are by news of these unmanned aircraft, often portrayed as novel, highly innovative, and somewhat mysterious. Yet drones also have a history—one largely unknown but well worth telling.

    Surprisingly, Italy was a cradle of European drone development. And, since the beginning,  the country has produced unmanned aircraft ranging from high-performance, radio-controlled aerial targets capable of high-transonic speeds to multispectral reconnaissance and surveillance drones able to remain aloft for up to twenty-four hours.

    This article traces the little-known origins of the Meteor P0, the ancestor of all Italian drones.

    Sixty-seven years ago, the first Meteor P0 made its inaugural radio-controlled flight over the Gulf of Panzano near Monfalcone, in the province of Gorizia. This achievement grew from the vision of a larger-than-life figure: Furio Lauri.

    Furio Lauri was a World War II Italian fighter pilot credited with eleven victories, and a recipient of the Gold Medal for Military Valor for a daring mission behind enemy lines. In 1947, he founded METEOR SpA, an aerial services and aircraft manufacturing company based in Ronchi dei Legionari (in the province of Gorizia). Today his heritage is continuing in a modern production facility on the Ronchi dei Legionari airport as a specialized division of the LEONARDO group.

    Nearly three years of research in Meteor’s historical archive, still preserved at Leonardo’s Ronchi dei Legionari facility, uncovered only a few uncaptioned photographs, limited documentation, and an undated film excerpt of test flights over the water that I digitized—none accompanied by further information. This article therefore reconstructs the P0’s history by cross-referencing interviews with the few surviving eyewitnesses, letters, photographs, and drawings, some of which did not even explicitly identify the aircraft.

    The first Italian “drone”

    METEOR’s development, beginning in 1947, embodies Italy’s postwar economic miracle: with little capital and a small workforce, the company built an industry that eventually gained worldwide prominence. Avvocato Lauri, as he preferred to be addressed, initially aspired to design and build a family of light aircraft for training and aerial services—and to test-fly them himself.

    A turning point for the Avvocato was in 1953, when his friend Francis Lombardi ceded him the production rights of the aircraft of AVIA of Vercelli, the manufacturer of the famous FL 3.

    (On this blog you will find a detailed history of METEOR’S light aircraft production: “Furio Lauri’s Meteors,” L. Pavese)

    Although Lauri’s aircraft achieved modest success in Italy and abroad, sales leveled off at about forty as the postwar market contracted. The Italian Defense Administration in Rome also showed little interest because the U.S. Marshall Plan aid had made surplus American aircraft widely available.

    At a meeting in Rome, the Italian Defense Administration proposed a radically different path as METEOR’s only opportunity to secure government work, save the company, and protect its fifty employees’ jobs. The government’s proposal was directly tied to the construction of the Poligono di Armamento Aeronautico in Salto di Quirra, Sardinia (Aeronautical Weapons Firing Range). In 1959, the firing range became a joint armed forces facility (today known as PISQ), one of only a few such facilities in Europe.

    Central to the plan was the widespread use of radio-controlled unmanned aerial targets, which until then had been supplied exclusively by the United States.

    To keep his company afloat, Furio Lauri accepted the costly, high-risk challenge of entering the entirely unfamiliar field of unmanned aerial vehicles. It must be said that the military assured METEOR that if its radio-controlled target demonstrably outperformed its American competitors, even by a small margin, it would be certainly considered for the aerial fleet being assembled at the Salto di Quirra firing range.

    For METEOR’s technical staff, the challenge was to shift from building conventional light aircraft to designing unmanned aerial vehicles, today commonly called “drones”. In the mid-1950s, this transformation was revolutionary for the small northeastern Italian company and its workforce of former C.R.D.A. (Cantieri Riuniti dell’Adriatico) employees.

    Avvocato Furio Lauri thoroughly reorganized the company to manage this complex, risky, and unprecedented technological leap. He identified its most urgent needs: electronics and radio-frequency technicians; ground control stations and operators to pilot the drones remotely; engines with good power-to-weight ratios; suitable equipment and test areas; and, above all, enough time to develop a reliable, high-performing model. It was certainly a lot.

    To save time and simplify development, the new radio-controlled METEOR P0 drone adopted an aerodynamic configuration similar to that of the American Globe KD6G-2 Firefly aerial target, which the Marina Militare (Italian Navy) used to train its naval defense systems.

    The enterprise faced a potentially fatal technical obstacle: U.S. restrictions on technology transfers prevented METEOR from acquiring the two-stroke inline engines used by its American competitor. Knowing that no equivalent engine was available and willing to risk everything, Furio Lauri decided to develop a two-stroke engine for the P0 in-house. He commissioned Dr. Carlo Gianini to build a prototype. A versatile designer, Gianini was renowned for his work on aircraft engines, including the ubiquitous CNA D4, as well as engines for racing cars and motorcycles. The result was the G 80, a two-stroke, four-cylinder radial engine whose innovative mechanical supercharger set it apart from the American competitors. Novel in this engine class, the system enabled the G 80 to produce 80 hp at altitudes up to 3,500 m (11,480 ft), placing it among the best engines available at the time in its class. As a prototype, however, the new engine presented the usual problems of an unproven design. Its radial configuration also had a larger frontal area than the American Mc Culloch and Kiekhaefer inline piston engines, increasing aerodynamic drag and requiring more power. Together, these issues would soon make the G 80 a source of persistent problems.

The Gianini G 80 engine. 

    Avionics and ground-control electronics—perhaps the drone system’s most critical and mysterious components at the time—posed another challenge. Although Lauri intended to develop the electronics suite in-house, time constraints forced METEOR to refurbish surplus avionics from American aerial targets supplied by the Italian Navy, with assistance from the University of Trieste and the Volta Technical School.

The avionics suite of the METEOR's prototypes: in the foreground the radio receiver. In the center, the battery and the gyroscopic servomechanism of the ailerons. In the background the distribution box. 

    

    The production avionics suite, based on American designs, used relay-based autopilots that limited the drone to manual, visual control within 5 km (3.1 miles). The ground-based pilots had only five commands: pitch up, pitch down, turn right, turn left, and recovery. With no sixth channel for engine-power control, the drone flew every mission at full throttle.

    In just two years, Lauri’s company—by then operating much like a flight-test squadron—built several P0 variants before settling on the final configuration: a mid-wing design, a conical fuselage the shape of which was dictated by the bulky G 80 engine, twin tails, fuel tank and recovery parachute housed in the fuselage.

    METEOR built the P0 drones from wood to capitalize on the former CRDA workforce’s expertise in wooden airframes, as the young company had limited experience with light-alloy metal structures.

    Frequent meetings among Furio Lauri, Stelio Frati, and Dr. Rotondi about aerodynamics reflected Lauri’s chief concern: ensuring the P0 could outpace its American competitors. They therefore decided to increase the Gianini engine’s output to 120 hp before receiving the Milan Polytechnic’s model wind-tunnel test results.

A METEOR P0 prototype on its dolly

    The determined drive of a man of action, Furio Lauri harbored another serious concern: where in Italy could he test an unmanned aircraft? He devised a creative solution: launch the drones from a barge off the Isonzo River delta in the Gulf of Panzano, control them visually, and recover them at sea. The plan was practical and affordable given the Avvocato’s limited financial resources, but it verged on illegality.

    In early 1958, METEOR’s workers hurriedly converted a maona—a large gravel barge used in the upper Adriatic—into a P0 launch platform. They installed a pneumatic catapult and compressor in its spacious hull, along with a basic crane for moving drones onto the deck, two support cradles, and the flight-control terminals astern. The Italian Navy had supplied the type AT-1 launch ramp, clearly demonstrating its interest in the project.

    So, in 1958, METEOR launched an experimental campaign from its Monfalcone base that ultimately validated the soundness of the drone project. Under Furio Lauri’s watchful eye, a small tugboat pushed the maona out to sea, while a METEOR’s FL 53 aircraft patrolled the area to ensure no boats were present, effectively clearing the range.

The maona with the catapult, photographed from the FL 53 I-FELV. 
Gulf of Panzano, 1958

    The maona typically carried three P0 drones on each outing. Over roughly two years, the company used these trials to test modifications to the avionics and engines. The lion’s share of the experiments focused on the Gianini engines, including modifying the throttle valves, correcting faulty oil pumps, testing new carburetors, and resolving all the problems caused by installing a more powerful engine.

1959. Furio Lauri, with the sunglasses, on the boat,
during the flight tests of a 120 hp version of the Meteor P0

    Despite these problems, only a few drones, probably just two, were lost. The P0’s performance was ultimately judged satisfactory, particularly that of the version fitted with the more powerful Gianini G 120 engine, which delivered an additional 40 hp. This final version became the basis for series production of the P1 radio-controlled aerial target. The P1 featured an airframe combining light alloy and fiberglass, making it one of aviation’s earliest uses of fiberglass. During the 1960s and early 1970s, it underwent extensive testing at the PISQ in Sardinia and aboard Italian and South African Navy vessels.

1959. A METEOR P0 prototype, mounted on the catapult, during the test-flights

METEOR P0

Radio-controlled aerial target

Technical data:

Dimensions:

Wingspan: 12 ft

Length: 11.1 ft

Height: 2.1 ft

Engine

1 x Gianini G 80 (80 hp) or G 120 (120 hp)

Weights:

Maximum launch weight: 397 lbs.

Weight of the avionics: 33 lbs.

Performance:

Estimated Airspeed: Maximum at sea level between 186 and 248 mph

Stall airspeed: 68 mph

Maximum endurance: up to 60’

Maximum operating distance from control station: 3.1 miles

Flight mode:

Launch: from boat, by pneumatic catapult type AT-1

Control: Visual

Recovery: by parachute at sea

    The discovery

    Unlike the other unmanned aircraft produced by METEOR and LEONARDO over nearly seventy years, the P0 left almost no physical or photographic record and had largely disappeared from collective memory. That changed in 2011, when the owner of a small factory in Sagrado, Gorizia, contacted a group of retired METEOR employees. In the 1950s, METEOR had used the factory to glue wooden components. In one corner lay an old fuselage bearing METEOR’s distinctive red livery. Its wooden construction and sea-recovery hook identified it as part of a P0. It was an unexpected and precious discovery.

The prototype, serial n. 003, found in the factory in Sagrado in 2011

    After restoration and repainting in its original colors, METEOR employees donated the fuselage to the City of Ronchi dei Legionari. The fuselage was briefly displayed in the lobby of City Hall and later it was displayed at Monfalcone City Hall in the 2024 exhibition “Macchine Volanti 2—Storia ed Evoluzione degli Aeromobili a Pilotaggio Remoto” (Flying Machines 2—History and Evolution of Remotely Piloted Aircraft). Today, the fuselage of the P0 is no longer visible, but it is still preserved by the City of Ronchi dei Legionari.

    Given the METEOR P0’s historical importance, I would like to end on a hopeful note: discovering additional surviving components—such as an engine, a propeller, or the wings of the metal-and-fiberglass of its successor, the P1—could make it possible to reconstruct a P0. Though not entirely historically accurate, such a reconstruction would honor the P0, the true forerunner of all Italian drones.

Carlo Siardi

This article was translated and edited from the issue n. 149 of the Italian magazine Ali Antiche. The magazine is published by the G.A.V.S. , an organization dedicated to the preservation of Italian aviation heritage.

Your comments will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Leonardo Pavese