SIAI S.8

The SIAI S.8 was a two-seat reconnaissance flying boat built for the Italian navy in the closing years of the First World War. It was the first design of Raffaele Conflenti, whom the Societa Idrovolanti Alta Italia had employed as chief designer, and it was an equal-span biplane that first flew in 1917. Early aircraft used an Isotta Fraschini V4B engine and later ones the more powerful 220 horsepower Hispano-Suiza 44. The Royal Italian Navy ordered 800 aircraft to be built by SIAI and its subcontractors, but production stopped at the end of the war after 172 had been delivered. The type equipped five squadrons of the Regia Marina, and by 1920 only 63 survived, most of them in storage.