The company name arcs overhead like a flight path, a trimotor crosses a globe drawn as pure meridians, and at the foot the sheet states its one credential as if entering it into a ledger: world distance record in a closed circuit, without landing — Km 12.937,77.
Nothing else needs saying, and the sheet says almost nothing else. The globe is a navigator’s globe, all grid and no countries; the aircraft rides its curve with the three-engined silhouette that Italian aviation had made its trademark. SAVOIA MARCHETTI in heavy letters, the record at the foot, and that is the whole page.
A record as an address
The figure printed on the sheet is the calling card of the S.M.75, the low-wing three-engined transport the firm developed from 1935 and put into service in 1938: in 1939 the type took, among other primati, the world distance record over a closed circuit, a flight of about 12,935 kilometres — the sheet gives the official decimals. The S.M.75 flew Europe and the South Atlantic, and during the war carried out the Regia Aeronautica’s longest transport missions, reaching as far as Tokyo. For a company selling aircraft in the record-obsessed 1930s, one number over one globe was worth more than a page of specifications — and it also dates the sheet: nothing on this page could have been printed before that 1939 flight.
Marks and date
The collector gives the design to Erberto Carboni, placing an EC monogram in the top corner; on our scan the mark there is the series’ circular agency roundel with «MILANO» beneath it. Published without an attribution; the record fixes the earliest possible date at 1939.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author. Since the author has not been identified, that term cannot be considered expired, and the image is treated as fully protected. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the sheet, part of the period material he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical sheet is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
Sources
- Savoia-Marchetti S.M.75 — developed from 1935, in service 1938, the 1939 closed-circuit distance record, wartime long-range missions to Tokyo
- The sheet itself, for the record figure and the agency roundel.
