Alessandro Marchetti (1884–1966) designed the MVT (for "Marchetti-Vickers-Terni"), a single-seat, all-metal
biplane with its
fuselage suspended between the upper and lower wings. The after part of the fuselage itself was flattened to serve as an
airfoil. The semi-elliptical
wings were extremely thin in section and employed
wing warping to allow lateral control, and the aircraft had all-moving tail surfaces. The MVT was powered by an SPA 6a water-cooled engine rated at 164
kilowatts (220
horsepower) driving a two-bladed
propeller, and was armed with two fixed, forward-firing 7.7
millimeter (0.303-
inch)
Vickers machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller.
Vickers-Terni at
La Spezia constructed the MVT, which first flew in 1919. On 9 December 1919, it reached a maximum speed of 250
kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour), an unofficial world speed record which was denied official status because no representatives of the
Fédération Aéronautique Internationale—the world governing body for aeronautics—were present to certify the speed.—SIAI entered it anyway. It met a favorable enough reception for the
Regia Aeronautica to acquire three aircraft for evaluation and make plans to order 12 aircraft, although in the end the 12 were never ordered or constructed. Experience with S.50 in the 1923 contest led Alessandro Marchetti to design and construct a derivative of the S.50, the
SIAI S.52 fighter. ==Variants==