The Ca.1 was a three-engine
biplane of fabric-covered wooden construction. It had four crew members in an open central
nacelle: two pilots, a front gunner, and rear gunner-mechanic, who manned upper machine guns, standing upon the central engine in a protective cage, just in front of the rear propeller. The Ca.1 had a
tricycle landing gear. Italy and Russia were the first countries to start developing a
heavy bomber capability before World War I. The first heavy bomber, designed by
Gianni Caproni was a twin-boom
biplane, featuring a layout that included three 67 kW (80 hp)
Gnome rotary engines housed one behind the other in a central nacelle, the rearmost driving a
pusher propeller, and the other two driving
tractor propellers mounted on the fronts of the two booms. Referred to by Caproni as the
Caproni 260 hp and retrospectively, after the war, as the
Ca.30), this design flew in a slightly modified form (later called the
Ca.31) in October 1914. Test flights revealed the power to be insufficient and the engine layout unworkable. Caproni altered the aircraft, retaining the pusher engine in its original location and moving the other two engines to the front of the booms, directly driving the propellers. With more powerful
inline engines, the air arm of the
Italian Army became interested in purchasing the
Caproni 300 hp (later known as the
Ca.32), which they designated the
Ca.1. A total of 166 aircraft were delivered between August
1915 and December
1916. Some Ca.1s survived the war to be rebuilt as
airliners, able to carry up to six passengers. This conversion became known as the
Ca.56 in Caproni's postwar naming scheme. There is some variation in published sources over early Caproni designations. The confusion stems, in part, from three separate schemes used to designate these aircraft – Caproni's in-house designations of the time, those used by the Italian Army, and designations created after the war by Caproni to refer to past designs. ==Operational history==