During the 1930s, it seemed as though dive bombing had the potential to be a decisive factor in aerial warfare, offering far greater accuracy than could be achieved with the primitive bombsights used by conventional bombers. US Navy and Marine Corps bomber squadrons had demonstrated the effectiveness of the technique in counter-insurgency operations in Haiti and Nicaragua in the 1920s. These successes prompted aircraft companies around the world to design their own dive bombers, including Savoia-Marchetti in Italy, which produced the SM.85.
The company was handicapped by the dire shortage of powerful aircraft engines, an issue that plagued the entire Italian aviation industry. This ruled out a single-engine design and forced the use of two 450hp Piaggio P.VII C.35 engines. The first prototype was flown in December 1936, and test-pilots fiercely criticised its poor speed and rate of climb. But Savoia-Marchetti were confi
dent that these problems could be corrected in the production stage. Trials in April 1937 at the Furbara test centre, north of Rome, were attended by Mussolini himself and led to orders for 32 aircraft, 19 of which formed the first Italian dive-bomber unit, 96° Gruppo Bombardmento a Tuffo (BaT), with two Squadriglia, 236 and 237, in March 1940.
Flying Banana
The aircraft was a single-seat twin-engine monoplane with a cantilever wing and retractable landing gear. It featured a very simple box-type fuselage with a marked upward sweep to nose and tail, earning the SM.85 the nickname of the ‘Flying Banana’. The design was intended to give the pilot the best possible forward view, with a transparent panel built into the cockpit floor to aid target acquisition. A single 800kg bomb could be carried for short-range missions, but this dramatically worsened the aircraft’s already poor performance, so a 500kg bombload was found to be more practical.
