Savoia-Marchetti SM.85 | The Dive Bomber That Couldn’t

There are numerous reasons why an aircraft can fail, ultimately ending its career as merely a footnote in aviation history. The Savoia-Marchetti SM.85 is a short-lived Italian bomber destined to be quickly replaced by the German-built Junkers Ju-87.

During the 1930s, dive bombing emerged as one of the most promising innovations in aerial warfare. It offered a level of precision that conventional bombers, hampered by their crude bombsights, couldn’t match. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps had already proven the value of the tactic in counter-insurgency missions across Haiti and Nicaragua during the 1920s, sparking global interest in the concept.

Inspired by these successes, aircraft manufacturers worldwide began developing their own dive bombers. In Italy, Savoia-Marchetti joined the race with the SM.85. However, the company faced a major setback shared by much of the Italian aviation industry: a shortage of powerful engines. Unable to rely on a single-engine layout, they were forced to use two modest 450hp Piaggio P.VII C.35 engines instead.

The SM.85’s first flight in December 1936 revealed serious shortcomings. Test pilots criticized its sluggish speed and poor climb rate. Still, Savoia-Marchetti believed these flaws could be fixed during production. In April 1937, trials at the Furbara test center, attended by Mussolini himself, resulted in an order for 32 aircraft. By March 1940, 19 of these went on to form Italy’s first dedicated dive-bomber unit, the 96° Gruppo Bombardamento a Tuffo (BaT), comprising Squadriglie 236 and 237.

The Savoia-Marchetti SM.85 was a single-seat, twin-engine monoplane with a cantilever wing and retractable landing gear. Its odd, upward-curving fuselage, rising sharply at both the nose and tail, earned it the nickname “Flying Banana.” The design aimed to give the pilot an excellent forward view, even including a transparent panel in the cockpit floor to help with aiming during dives. It could carry a single 800 kg bomb for short-range missions, but this made its already weak performance even worse, so a lighter 500 kg bombload was adopted instead.

Despite the manufacturer’s optimism, the SM.85 was plagued with problems from the start. It was unstable in dives, prone to uncontrollable spins, and its flaps, intended to serve as dive brakes, barely worked. The underpowered 450 hp engines often failed to reach full output, making it sluggish and dangerously slow to climb after attacks. Armed with only one fixed 12.7 mm machine gun, it stood little chance against even outdated enemy fighters and was highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.

In June 1940, several SM.85s were stationed on the island of Pantelleria, off Sicily, for planned strikes on Malta and the British Mediterranean fleet. But the unit commander, Maggiore Ercolano Ercolani, warned superiors that the aircraft’s performance was so poor that total losses were inevitable. His fears were well-founded- one plane crashed on landing, two more were damaged, and the rest flew only two uneventful sorties before the type was withdrawn in July 1940. It was quickly replaced by German-supplied Ju 87 Stukas, which proved far more capable.