A.1 Balilla

The Ansaldo A.1 Balilla was Italy’s first indigenous fighter to enter mass production after World I. Designed in 1917 by the engineering team of the Milan‑based Ansaldo works, the aircraft made its maiden flight in early 1918 and was adopted by the Regia Aeronautica in 1919. The Balilla was a single‑seat, single‑engine biplane of conventional layout, featuring a wooden frame covered with fabric, a staggered wing arrangement and a fixed, two‑wheel tail‑dragger undercarriage. Power came from a 220 hp (164 kW) inline Hispano‑Suiza V‑8 engine, later replaced by the 300 hp (224 kW) Fiat A.12, which gave it a top speed of about 250 km/h (155 mph) and a service ceiling near 7 000 m. Armament consisted of two synchronized Vickers 0.303 in machine guns mounted on the upper fuselage. Over 500 units were built, serving in Italy and exported to countries such as Spain, Brazil and Japan, where they saw combat in the early phases of the Spanish Civil War. The A.1 Balilla’s simple, robust design and relatively low cost made it a benchmark for interwar fighter development, influencing later Italian biplanes and establishing Ansaldo as a major aircraft manufacturer in Europe.