Ansaldo A.1 Balilla

The Ansaldo A.1, nicknamed Balilla after a Genoese folk hero, was the only fighter aircraft of the First World War designed in Italy that went into Italian production. It grew out of the SVA.5 reconnaissance biplane, which Ansaldo engineer Giuseppe Brezzi reworked with a smaller upper wing, conventional braced struts and a more powerful engine. The first prototype was completed in July 1917 and the aircraft entered service in July 1918, but it arrived too late to see real action and was kept mostly on home defence duties. Test pilots found it fast but hard to fly. It found a second career abroad: Poland bought it for the Polish-Soviet War of 1919 to 1921 and built a licensed batch at Lublin, and Soviet Russia also took delivery of examples from Italy.