AEROPLANE TO AEROPLANO

            Franco Muscariello, who put the wings on Viberti. by Giuseppe Blini (translated by L. Pavese) The years that immediately followed the end of WWII in Italy saw a resurgence of light aeronautical activity and sport aviation in general. Although subject to the limited economic means of the time, there were in Italy several initiatives to fill the void created by the vicissitudes of the war. One of these endeavors, today almost forgotten, was spearheaded by Franco Muscariello and the Ali Viberti Company. Franco Muscariello was born in 1919 in Verona, where his Neapolitan father Vincenzo, a retired military engineer, worked for the Adige auto-body shops. When the Adige business was bought out by the Viberti company, Vincenzo Muscariello was appointed technical director, and the family moved to Turin. Viberti was a large Turin company, founded in 1922, that specialized in building trailers, road semi-trailers, tanker-trucks, buses and elect...

Savoia Marchetti S.63        The Savoia Marchetti S.63 was an attempt to reduce the catamaran-configured S.55 to a central monohull seaplane, because the h igh command of the Italian Regia Aeronautica, initially, did not like the twin hull arrangement proposed by SIAI.    S.55 (for comparison)           The new seaplane maintained the engines and the wing of its twin hull predecessor , minus the central section and the twin boom tail arrangement.         The mono-hull prototype of the S.63, that was designed for a military purpose, featured a gunner-observer bow hatch with a machine gun. The pilots sat side by side just forward of the leading edge, where the fuselage presented a marked step down, that is visible in the top photograph.         In view of the success that the S.55 was beginning to enjoy, after the military evaluatio...