Francesco de Pinedo (February 16, 1890 – September 2, 1933) was an Italian aviator. A Regia Marina (Italy's Royal Navy) officer who transferred to the Regia Aeronautica (Italy's Royal Air Force), he was an advocate of the seaplane and is best known for his long-range flying boat flights in the 1920s that demonstrated the feasibility of global air travel.
Early life
Pinedo was born on 16 February 1890 in Naples, Italy, into a patrician family, the son of a lawyer. As a teenager he studied literature and the arts and developed a lifelong passion for music.aeronautica.difesa.it Il portale dell'Aeronautica Militare: Francesco De Pinedo, il trasvolatore
Career
Early career
Pinedo entered the Italian Naval Academy at Leghorn (Livorno) in 1908 at the age of 18. He graduated in 1911 and was commissioned as an officer in the Regia Marina (Italy's Royal Navy). He served aboard destroyers during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912, witnessing Italy's air operations against the Ottoman Empire, the first time that any country had used aircraft in combat. The experience sparked his interest in aviation.
After Italy entered World War I on the side of the Allies in May 1915, de Pinedo again saw action at sea. In 1917, he volunteered for duty in the Regia Marina air service. Entering flight school at Taranto in July 1917, he completed aviation training in only 45 days, and qualified as a pilot in two months. He spent most of the rest of the war flying reconnaissance missions for the Regia Marina.aero-mondo.fr Le Monde de l'aviation De Pinedo Francesco
After the war ended in November 1918, Pinedo returned briefly to sea duty, but soon resumed aviation duties. In the immediate postwar years he made milestone flights from Italy to the Netherlands and in 1921 from Brindisi to Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire. On 16 October 1923 he transferred from the Regia Marina to the Regia Aeronautica (Italy's Royal Air Force) which had been founded that year as an independent service. He entered the new service with a rank of tenente colonnello (lieutenant colonel) and because of his technical and organizational skills was given senior positions as its chief staff officer and the vice commandant of one of its air squadrons despite being only in his early 30s.
Pinedo's cultured background and naturally reserved nature, as well as the orderliness and neatness instilled in him by his naval training, made him atypical of the aviators of his day, who tended to be mavericks and daredevils. He preferred to avoid publicity. Adventurous without being reckless, he became an influential advocate of the seaplane, sharing a belief with many other aviators of his time that flying boats were the key to aviation's future because of their ability to land safely on the sea in the case of emergencies during long flights over water. He also believed that seaplanes were more practical than landplanes because of the proximity to water of most cities and towns. With airports not yet common, Pinedo observed, "Civilization is built on water. The world's principal cities are mirrored by seas, rivers, or lakes. Why not utilize these immense, ready-to-use, natural air strips in place of costly airports?" Pinedo even envisioned a day when people would commute to work each day by piloting their own seaplanes from ponds near their homes to municipal docks in city marinas, where they would moor their planes near their places of employment, then return to them to fly home for the evening.
By 1925, Pinedo's advocacy of the seaplane and its capability to make global air travel feasible led to him being regarded as Italy's leading expert on aviation matters, especially after he presented a paper to the Royal Aeronautical Society in London and published an article in National Geographic magazine.
A promising Regia Aeronautica career as a high-ranking staff officer beckoned to Pinedo, but this did not appeal to him. After only a year working at a desk he requested a leave of absence in late 1924 in order to return to the cockpit to make long-distance flights that would demonstrate the feasibility of long-distance air travel, highlight the superiority of the seaplane in such travel, and show the world that Italy led the way in the pioneering of long-distance aviation. The Fascist leader of Italy, Benito Mussolini, approved of the idea, allowing Pinedo to make the flights that brought him his greatest fame.
1925 Rome-Australia-Tokyo-Rome flight
In 1920, the Italian aviators Arturo Ferrarin and Guido Masiero had made a multi-stop, 11,000-mile (18,000-km) flight from Rome to Tokyo in a pair of Ansaldo SVA-9 trainers. They had overcome various difficulties, including crashes that damaged or wrecked their aircraft, and they had been the only two out of 11 pilots that had begun the journey to complete it. They had left their planes behind in Japan and returned to Italy by ship. Pinedo proposed to explore the idea that a seaplane would have been a better choice for the trip by making a flight from Rome to Australia and Tokyo and then back to Rome again, a journey over three times as long as the 1920 trip. For his flight, he chose an SIAI S.16ter flying boat which he named Gennariello.
On 21 April 1925, Pinedo and his mechanic, Ernesto Campanelli, departed Rome aboard Gennariello. They stopped first at Brindisi in Italy, then at Leros in Greece; Baghdad in Iraq; Bushehr and Chabar in Persia; Karachi, Bombay, Cocanada, and Calcutta in British India; Akyab, Rangoon, Tavoy, and Mergui in Burma; Phuket in Siam; Penang in British Malaya; Singapore; Batavia, Surabaya, Sumbawa, and Kupang in the Netherlands East Indies, and Broome, Carnarvon, Perth, Bunbury, Albany, Israelite Bay, and Adelaide in Australia before reaching Melbourne, where they arrived on 10 June and spent 36 days.
On 16 July, Pinedo and Campanelli flew on to Sydney, where they spent another three weeks. Resuming their flight on 6 August, they visited Brisbane, Rockhampton, Townsville, Innisfail, Cooktown, and Thursday Island in Australia; Merauke, Dobo, Amboina, and Menado in the Netherlands East Indies; Cebu, Atimonan, Manila, and Aparri in the Philippines; Tamsui on Formosa; Shanghai in China; Mokpo in Korea; and Yamakawa and Kagoshima in Japan, before arriving in Tokyo on 26 September.
After a three-week stay in Tokyo, Pinedo and Campanelli began their return journey to Rome on October 17, a 15,000-mile (24,000-km) trip that they made in only 22 days with stops at Kagoshima in Japan; Shanghai in China; Hong Kong; Haiphong and Saigon in French Indochina; Bangkok in Siam; Rangoon in Burma; Calcutta, Benares, Delhi, and Karachi in British India; Bandar Abbas in Persia; Baghdad in Iraq; Alexandretta in Turkey; and Taranto in Italy before arriving in Rome on 7 November. The entire journey, made without special preparations for support at any of the stops and involving two long flights – of and – across the dry land of the Indian subcontinent in a non-amphibious flying boat, had proceeded without major incident and had required only one engine change, carried out at Tokyo. Pinedo and Campanelli had carried a jib sail and boat rudder to allow them to sail their flying boat through unfamiliar harbors in awkward winds, but they never used either the sail or the rudder during their expedition. The aviators had covered about in 370 hours of flight time in 80 stages over the course of 202 days, and a 1925 issue of the magazine Flight described their journey as "the most extensive aerial tour on record."
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale gave Pinedo its highest award, the FAI Gold Air Medal, for the flight, the first time it had awarded the medal. The Regia Aeronautica promoted Pinedo to colonnello (colonel) upon his return from the flight, and Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III made him a marchese (marquis).
1927 "Four Continents" flight
Mussolini suggested that Pinedo next make a flight to the Western Hemisphere to inspire pride in people of Italian ancestry who had emigrated to the Americas. This idea developed into the "Four Continents" flight of 1927, intended to demonstrate the ability of a flying boat to fly from Italy to Africa and across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil, followed by several stops in South America and the Caribbean, a tour of the United States and Canada, and a transatlantic flight back to Europe ultimately ending in Rome.
Pinedo, his copilot Capitano (Captain) Carlo Del Prete, and mechanic Vitale Zacchetti embarked on the "Four Continents" flight in the Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boat Santa Maria under Pinedo's command. Leaving Cagliari, Sardinia, on 13 February 1927, they stopped at Villa Cisneros in Spanish Sahara and Bolama in Portuguese Guinea before attempting to take off from Bolama on 16 February to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil. Sweltering conditions prevented their plane from becoming airborne until they dumped a large quantity of gasoline, forcing them to fly to the Cape Verde Islands instead, where cooler conditions prevailed. On 23 February, they finally made their Atlantic crossing, braving a storm and landing on the ocean near Fernando de Noronha, where the Brazilian Navy protected cruiser met them and towed them into port. The next day, after repairs necessitated by a collision with Almirante Barroso, they flew on to the mainland of Brazil, landing at Natal to begin the South American phase of the flight.
After stops at various cities in South America including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Montevideo, Uruguay, and Asunción, Paraguay, the three Italians began a long leg over the dense jungle of Brazil's Mato Grosso region on 16 March 1927. At one point, a Brazilian river boat had to tow the Santa Maria for along the Paraguay River in search of a suitable takeoff area after a refueling stop, but on 20 March they completed their crossing of the Mato Grosso and landed at Manaós, Brazil. It was history's first flight over the Mato Grosso.
After a stop at Georgetown, British Guiana, and a crossing of the Caribbean with stops at Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, Port-au-Prince in Haiti, and Havana in Cuba, Pinedo, Del Prete, and Zacchetti crossed the Gulf of Mexico and arrived at New Orleans, Louisiana, on 29 March 1927, the first time in history that a foreign airplane had flown into the United States. Pinedo's landing in New Orleans on the Mississippi River inspired the large Italian community, which lined the Mississippi River at his landing. A painting at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport memorializes the event.
They then flew through Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, intending to reach San Diego, California, but during a refueling stop on Theodore Roosevelt Lake in Arizona an accidental fire broke out when a teenage volunteer helping to refuel the Santa Maria carelessly discarded a cigarette that ignited gasoline on the water's surface. The fire quickly spread to the plane and destroyed it; its engines sank to the bottom of the lake and were not recovered until 19 April. The three Italians then flew to San Diego as passengers on a United States Navy plane and traveled by train to New York City, where they arrived on 25 April 1927 to meet a new S.55 shipped there by the Italian Fascist government so that they could continue their flight.