The American Kirkham Product Corporation had been secretly preparing a plane to take part in the race, to be powered by a 24-cylinder, 1,250-hp X-2775 engine that was expected to give it a maximum speed of 300 mph. But the engine was not ready as time for the competition drew nigh, and the United States withdrew, leaving the race essentially a contest between Italy and Britain.

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Britain’s entries included the Short Crusader, a biplane powered by an 860-hp Bristol Jupiter 9-cylinder radial engine, which crashed and killed its pilot, H.M. Schofield. Also present were two Supermarine S.5 monoplanes and three Gloster IV biplanes, all powered by 875-hp Napier Lion VIIB V-12 engines.

The 200,000 spectators who crowded Lido beach were in for a disappointment, as all of the Italian contenders dropped out of the race due to engine failure. The winner was Royal Air Force (RAF) Flight Lt. Sidney N. Webster in a Supermarine S.5, with an average speed of 281.65 mph, followed by Flight Lt. O.E. Worsley. Mario Castoldi had met his match in Supermarine’s Reginald Mitchell, and from then on the Schneider Trophy races would be essentially a competition between those two designers.

The 1927 race also turned the Schneider Trophy into the most prestigious aerial competition in the world. Webster had outpaced most land aircraft, demonstrating that the long, streamlined floats of Schneider contenders created less drag than the wheeled landing gear of many conventional aircraft. The point was brought home further when de Bernardi test flew an M.52 at 297.83 mph — a little more than two miles per hour short of the 300 mph mark.

In 1928 Jacques Schneider died and the race was canceled for the year, to resume on September 7, 1929, in the waters off Portsmouth, England. France built three aircraft for the 1929 race, but they did not stand a chance and were not entered. Germany had begun to take an interest in the competition, but the one design it had in mind never got beyond the model stage.

The principal Italian entry, Castoldi’s Macchi M.67, was similar in general layout to the M.39, but its structure had been beefed up to take a much larger engine, the 1,800-hp, 57.26-liter Isotta-Fraschini Asso 1000 V-18. The Italian public was highly vocal in its concern that the hot new engine had not undergone sufficient testing before being committed to the 1929 race. But the government — especially Mussolini’s ambitious Air Minister Italo Balbo — favored the M.67 as its best bet to win. Three M.67s were built for the race, and no fewer than 27 of the Asso engines were made available for the event, some of which exploded during testing. Another unusual aspect of the M.67’s design was that one float carried more fuel than the other, so that its weight would counter the torque of the M.67’s three-bladed propeller — an arrangement that proved dangerous when the plane was struggling to take off. During a trial run over Lake Garda in August 1929, Captain Guiseppe Motta reached a maximum speed of 362 mph but suddenly fell into a dive and crashed. Motta did not survive.

Fiat planned to enter one C.29 floatplane, powered by a 1,000-hp AS-5 engine, but that aircraft also crashed during testing. Savoia-Marchetti’s S.65 mounted two 1,000-hp Isotta-Fraschini engines in tandem, with the tailplane supported by a pair of booms and extended rear floats. Finally, there was the Piaggio-Pegna Pc.7, a shoulder-wing monoplane whose most remarkable feature was that instead of floats it had a set of hydroplanes. The plane’s 1,000-hp AS-5 engine was connected by a long metal shaft to a two-blade propeller with automatically adjustable pitch — and, by means of a second shaft, to a smaller propeller, similar to that of a motorboat, under the tail. Before takeoff, the Pc.7 floated up to its wings on its watertight fuselage. For takeoff, the pilot started the engine, then a clutch engaged the tail screw and the plane started to move. It was raised above the water’s surface almost instantly by the high-incidence hydroplanes. At that point, the pilot opened the normal carburetor air intake and gave full power to the engine, at the same time engaging the flight propeller, which automatically went from feathered to flight pitch. Then the pilot, straining to see through the spray from the hydroplanes, would take off. Freed of the drag and weight of floats, the Pc.7 was supposed to reach a projected maximum speed of 434.7 mph. There were allegedly some takeoff attempts, but the drive train was plagued with problems, and many pilots were unwilling to fly the Pc.7.

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