Caproni Vizzola F.5

The Caproni Vizzola F.5 was an Italian fighter aircraft built by Caproni, a single-seat low-wing cantilever monoplane with retractable landing gear. It was developed in parallel with the F.4 and shared its airframe, with design begun in late 1937 by a team led by F. Fabrizi, the F.5 standing for Fabrizi 5. The fuselage was a welded steel tube covered with flush-riveted duralumin, and the wings were wooden with a stressed plywood skin. Where the F.4 was meant to have a water-cooled engine, the F.5 used a two-row 14-cylinder Fiat A.74 radial of 649 kilowatts. The prototype first flew on 19 February 1939 and showed very high maneuverability in official testing, which brought an order for a second prototype and 12 pre-production aircraft, most of which went to the Regia Aeronautica. No production models were built because Caproni chose the more developed F.6M instead, although Peru bought a licence in 1939 to build the F.5 at a Caproni subsidiary.