Italy 1914-1918 Caproni Bombers

Gianni Caproni's Heavy Hitters

The Italian designer Gianni Caproni produced arguably the most influential bombers of the war. They were the standard others were measured by. They were powerful, versatile, reliable and structurally tough.

Italian Heavy Bomber Development

Italian Bombers - 1918

Caproni Ca.3 - 1914

The Caproni three-engined Italian heavy bomber of World War and the post-war era. The Caproni Ca.3 was the definitive version of the series of aircraft that began with the Caproni Ca.1 in 1914. The production version, equipped with three 100 hp fixed in-line Fiat A 10 engines entered service in the summer of 1915, and it was the most effective bomber of any air force, except for the Russian Sikorsky.Ilya Mourometz.

Italian Bombers - 1918

Caproni Ca.4 - 1918

Caproni Ca.4 Series was patterned along the lines of the Caproni Ca.3 series of biplane bombers, the larger triplanes of the Ca.4 series were designed to be more effective in combat. Sometimes armed with up to eight machine guns, these cumbersome bombers were capable of accurately delivering large payloads of bombs to distant enemy targets. Although mainly used at night, they took part in daylight raids towards the end of the war. Of thirty-two Ca.42s manufactured in 1918, six of them were used by the Royal Naval Air Service.

Caproni Ca.5 - 1918

The Caproni Ca.5 was an Italian heavy bomber of the World War I and post-war era. It was the final version of the series of aircraft that began with the Caproni Ca.1 in 1914.

By late in World War I, developments in aircraft technology made older bomber designs unable to penetrate targets defended by modern fighters. Caproni's response to this problem was to significantly uprate the power on the existing Ca.3 design, with some versions of the Ca.5 eventually carrying engines with nearly five times the total power that the first Ca.1 had.