Caproni Ca.331

The Caproni Ca.331 Raffica, meaning gust of wind or fire burst, was an Italian aircraft built by Caproni in the early 1940s as a tactical reconnaissance aircraft and light bomber and also as a night fighter. Answering a 1938 Air Ministry requirement for a tactical reconnaissance aircraft with combat capability, Cesare Pallavicino of the Caproni Bergamaschi subsidiary began designing the Ca.331 O.A. in October 1938, a design innovative for Caproni in being all-metal. The prototype was a twin-engine low-wing monoplane with an unstepped cockpit, a glazed nose, duralumin stressed skin and inverted gull wings, and it first flew on 31 August 1940 at Ponte San Pietro with Ettore Wengi at the controls. Replacing its Piaggio propellers with Alfa Romeo-built ones in 1941 gave performance beyond expectations, and the Regia Aeronautica began official tests that year with good results. The Ca.331 C.N. specification lists a crew of three, two 630 kilowatt Isotta Fraschini Delta IV V-12 engines and a maximum speed of 505 kilometres per hour.