Caproni Ca.18

The Caproni Ca.18 was a military reconnaissance monoplane built in Italy shortly before the First World War, and the first Italian-designed and Italian-built aircraft to see service with the Italian armed forces. It had a conventional layout with a fixed tailskid undercarriage, and its wings were attached to the fuselage with a bayonet fitting so that the aircraft could be erected and dismantled quickly. It was designed for a government competition in early 1913, but no production order came until the Caproni company was nationalised later that year, when a small batch was built for the 15th Squadron. A crew of two, pilot and observer, flew it with a Gnome rotary engine of 60 kilowatts.