From winding-down to relaunch: The role of the State in Italy's aeronautical industry 1945-2016

Italian state funding played a decisive role in the development of the national aeronautical industry during the interwar years. By 1940 it was estimated Italian manufacturers were producing between 290–300 aircraft and 780–880 engines each month. This industrial performance was largely made possible by the sustained state support for a technologically advanced sector still in its infancy, particularly through expanding military orders and direct financial support. Italy was no exception to the broader international pattern in which military demand drove aircraft production. Despite wartime and interwar successes, the sector collapsed after the Second World War, to the point that aircraft construction was described as virtually non-existent in the immediate post-war assessment of theengineering industry. Drawing on Italian and foreign archival sources, this business history study addresses several key research questions: why most aircraft producerswere liquidated after the Second World War; what role the state played in that outcome; and how Italy resolved its post-war dilemma between noninterventionism and public ownership. The central argument advanced here is that, in line with a long-standing tradition of state intervention in support of Italian industry, public ownership profoundly shaped post-war aircraft manufacturing. This occurred both through the survival of the sector via a protracted process of nationalisation and through its productive and international relaunch. The study also partially challenges the notion that Italy's South remained uniformly underdeveloped and incapable of industrialisation, by reexamining the success of the aviation production district in Campania.