Savoia-Marchetti S.73

The Savoia-Marchetti S.73 was an Italian three-engine airliner that entered service in March 1935 and flew through the 1930s and early 1940s. Savoia-Marchetti developed it in only four months by combining the wing of the S.55 flying boat with a much more conventional fuselage, in parallel with the SM.81 Pipistrello bomber version. It was a mixed-construction monoplane with a steel skeleton covered in wood and fabric, a wooden three-spar wing, a braced tailplane and a fixed undercarriage, and its cabin could hold 18 passengers in two rows. The prototype first flew from Cameri on 4 June 1934. The production run was 48 aircraft, four of them exported to Belgium for SABENA and seven others built by SABCA, while the main customer was the Italian airline Ala Littoria.