documentario eurofighter

Video from the channel Max Bona about Eurofighter Typhoon, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:27. Language: Italian. Video type: Documentary.

Italian-language documentary piece presenting the Eurofighter as heir to a century of Italian fighters and of Italy's participation in European programmes, from the First World War to the current aircraft.

Until the mid-1930s, fighters were biplanes with lattice structures, two machine guns and fixed landing gear, built almost by hand. In the 1920s the ministry gave Fiat the lead in fighters, but the leap to the monoplane around 1936 allowed Macchi, a company of around 250 employees that drew on what it had learned in the Schneider Trophy, to compete again. With German engines built under licence, the Macchi 202 and 205 are considered the best Italian fighters of the Second World War. The 700 km/h of the Macchi 72's record became common in 1945, the practical limit of the propeller and piston engine. After the Caproni Campini came American F-84 fighters for NATO, and the Italian industry moved into cooperative work. From that period come the Fiat G91, with more than 750 units built, half of them in Germany, the licence-built F-104 and the Tornado, which flew in August 1974 and exceeded 900 units.

The video presents the Eurofighter as the largest European industrial cooperation programme, with 100,000 jobs, 24,000 of them in Italy, and extensive use of carbon fibre. A military pilot on the programme since 1993, with about 500 hours on the aircraft, highlights the engine, which allows very rapid changes in altitude and speed. It is operated by Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria and Saudi Arabia.