Ansaldo SVA

SVA
SVA.5 Primo
Role	Reconnaissance aircraft Type of aircraft
Manufacturer	Gio. Ansaldo & C.
Designer	Umberto Savoia and Rodolfo Verduzio
First flight	1917
Number built	1,245

The Ansaldo SVA (named for Savoia-Verduzio-Ansaldo) was a family of Italian reconnaissance biplane aircraft of World War I and the decade after. Originally conceived as a fighter, the SVA was found inadequate for that role. Its impressive speed, range and operational ceiling, with its top speed making it one of the fastest of all Allied combat aircraft of the war, gave it the right properties to be an excellent reconnaissance aircraft and even light bomber. Production of the aircraft continued well after the war, the final examples were delivered during 1918.

The SVA was a conventionally laid-out unequal-span biplane with unusual Warren Truss-style struts joining its wings having no transverse (spanwise) bracing wires. The plywood-skinned fuselage had the typical Ansaldo triangular rear cross-section behind the cockpit, turning into a rectangular cross section through the rear cockpit area, with a full rectangular cross section forward of the cockpit.^[1] Two minor variants were produced, one with reconnaissance cameras, the other without cameras but extra fuel tanks.

The Flight over Vienna propaganda flight, inspired by Italian nationalist and poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, consisting of a flight of eleven models of Ansaldo SVA-series biplanes, was carried out on 9 August 1918 by the 87th Squadriglia La Serenissima from San Pelagio. At least two of the aircraft were two-seat SVA.9 or SVA.10s to accommodate d'Annunzio for the flight he inspired, while the remainder were SVA.5 single-seaters.