Piaggio P.23M

The Piaggio P.23M was an Italian commercial transport prototype that Piaggio designed and built for flights across the North Atlantic. It was a four-engine shoulder-wing monoplane with inverted gull wings and twin fins and rudders, and its fuselage was shaped like a boat hull, an approach Piaggio called avion marin, so that a ditching at sea would be easier although it was not a flying boat. Four 671 kW Isotta-Fraschini Asso XI V-12 engines sat on the wings in two tandem pairs, two driving pusher propellers and two tractor propellers. Piaggio claimed 400 km/h and a range of 5,100 km at cruise. It first flew in 1935, no Atlantic attempt was ever made, and it was disassembled and never flew again. The later P.23R was an entirely new design.