Secondo Campini

Secondo Campini was an Italian engineer, born in Bologna in 1904 and died in Milan in 1980, who is counted among the pioneers of the jet engine. In 1931 he wrote a proposal for the Italian Air Ministry on the value of jet propulsion, and in 1932 he demonstrated a jet-powered boat in Venice. With the Air Ministry behind him he worked with the aircraft maker Caproni on a jet aircraft, the Caproni Campini C.C.2, which first flew in 1940. The engine he built for it, often called a motorjet, differs from the turbojets of later decades: a conventional piston engine compressed the air, which was then mixed with fuel and ignited, and the reactive force of the burning exhaust gases drove the aircraft forward. After the Second World War he went to the United States at the request of Preston Tucker, who wanted help developing a turbine-powered car and a possible Air Force contract, and after the Tucker Corporation folded in 1948 he worked on several military projects, including the YB-49 flying-wing bomber.