There was a lot of fighting in the latter years of the war in Italy, although it involved surprisingly few Italians. As such, the post war Italian future would be decided by the Allies who won the campaign. Thus what Italian authority was still around did much to announce it was still here and there was a future to look forward to, with jets! So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
It is pretty bold to suggest Italian air mail would soon be transported on jet aircraft. Italy flew a jet in 1940, but was unable to get any in service before the end of the war. The Italian jet engine design did not produce enough thrust to be an advancement on piston types and later designs were predicated on Germany supplying engines, which they never did. The prototype had made a flight in 1941 from Milan to Rome with a fuel stop in Pisa. This aircraft indeed carried a bag of mail and was met in Rome with much fanfare. So for Italy, jet airmail was more than a dream, but a reality. The surprising part is that it took six years for there to be a stamp commemorating it. Well, it was a busy time.
Todays stamp is issue C114, an 50 Lira airmail stamp issued by Italy from post war 1945-1947, while the country was transitioning from Kingdom to Republic. It was a 9 stamp issue in various denominations showing clasped hands over an artist conception of the Caproni Campini CC 2 aircraft. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents, whether mint or used.
The Italian government switched sides in World War II in 1943 though most of the country was under German occupation. Most of the organized resistance to the Fascists were Communists. Remember it was them that found Mussolini as he fled. See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/03/29/italy-1941-hitler-interviews-mussolini-about-his-future-role-as-a-colonial-governor/ . That was not the Italian government that America wanted. Alcide De Gasperi was from the Italian minority in the Austrian Tyrol region that passed to Italy after World War I. He spoke German with his family at home his whole life. He was part of a small right of center party closely associated with the Catholic Church. He had broke with Mussolini and was subsequently jailed by him. The Church had seen to his release and made a place for him in Vatican City. King Victor Emmanuel II picked him as Prime Minister at the suggestion of the Americans. Unusually for Italian politics, he was the head of many coalition governments for almost 10 years. De Gasperi sought to minimize punishment for Italy having been Fascist and in turn he worked hard to see Communists would not seize power in Italy. He also gave Germans from his old region of Tyrol rights in modern Italy. Over time it became increasingly hard to keep the left out of government. By 1953 De Gasperi was resorting to super majorities to blunt left power and the Catholic Church was declaring it a mortal sin to vote Communist. Many thought this undemocratic and De Gasperi was forced to resign.
The Camproni Campini CC2 was the first successful public flight of an airplane powered by a jet engine in 1940. Germany had flown a jet plane the year before but kept it a military secret. The Italian jet sat two. The indigenous Italian jet design is called a motorjet and combined a ducted fan with an afterburner. They could not get enough airflow through the engine and with the afterburner it was both fuelish and suffered from low thrust. They played around with the idea of a separate piston engine to force more airflow into the motorjet but that wasn’t practical. The design was refined later to take a German turbojet as the Reggiane Re 2007 but Germany refused to supply any of their jet engines. Work of course slowed after 1943. One of the prototypes of the CC2 survived the war but disappeared after being shipped to Great Britain for study. Post war, Secondo Campini emigrated to the USA where he worked with Tucker automobiles on a turbine powered car and Northrop where he worked on converting their experimental flying wing bomber to jet power. Northrop much later built the flying wing B2 stealth bomber. The world remembers the German jet and rocket experts post war, but Italy had a few as well.
Well my drink is empty and there would be quite a wait in 1947 for airmail delivered by jet. So perhaps there is time for another drink. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.