Roberto Longhi, one of the most prominent
Reggiane aircraft designers, in a letter to the Italian aviation magazine JP4, dated May 1976, stated that
Regia Aeronautica Major Antonio Ferri asked him to study an engine option for the
Reggiane Re.2005. The requirement was to install a supplemental
Fiat A.20 engine behind the cockpit, driving a compressor, in order to improve the
Daimler-Benz DB 605 main engine output, giving the airplane a speed of above . It was also planned to use a tail exhaust to achieve more thrust, effectively creating a
Motorjet The proposal was filed as "Re.2005 R" by Regia Aeronautica, but remained only a paper project, as, according to Longhi, the aircraft would have had problems with its
center of gravity. Unfortunately for Reggiane's designers, the engines were purchased by Angelo Ambrosini, another Italian aircraft manufacturer. These drawings were speculative reconstructions derived from a Reggiane engineer's description. but are now considered highly improbable. Most modern scholars now consider the Re.2007 to not have been a real design; instead being merely a "phantom" of sorts, cobbled together from various projects by faulty recollection. == Variants ==