Although Italy’s ambitions were dashed in regard to the Schneider Trophy, Castoldi continued to work on his M.C.72, in which Warrant Officer Francesco Agello finally completed a successful test flight over Lake Garda on April 10, 1933. A series of increasingly fast flights reached their climax on October 23, 1934, when Agello flew four laps in the M.C.72, at a maximum of 442.081 mph and an average of 434.7 mph, setting an absolute speed record that would not be broken until April 29, 1939, when a specially redesigned Messerschmitt Bf-109V-1 reached 469.22 mph, and an official seaplane record speed that would stand until October 1961, when a jet-powered Soviet Beriev Be-10 flying boat flew at 547 mph. Trophy or no trophy, the Italians had the last word on the subject of speed.

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Over the 18 years of its existence, the Schneider Trophy race did much to influence progress in aviation, most dramatically in the increase in speed — from 45.71 mph in 1913 to 340.08 mph in 1931. A.F. Sidgreaves, managing director of Rolls-Royce, declared that it had compressed 10 years of engine development into two years. And yet the heated competition did not really fulfill the original hopes of Jacques Schneider, who had envisioned it as a means of accelerating the development of reliable flying boats for rapid air transport around the world. Instead, by becoming a quest for speed alone, the race had cost the lives of three British, two American and seven Italian pilots, and it ultimately led to the creation of more warlike aircraft than its founder had had in mind. Mario Castoldi applied the lessons he learned from the race to fighters, including the radial-engine M.C.200 Saetta, the sleek M.C.202 Folgore and the superlative M.C.205 Veltro. Rolls-Royce continued work on the engine it had built for the race, which evolved into the Merlin. Among the many great warplanes that would be powered by the Merlin was one that Reginald Mitchell, like Castoldi, evolved from his S.6B seaplane racer — a racy looking fighter that, against his personal preference, was christened the Spitfire.

This article was written by Radko Vasicek and originally published in the September 2002 issue of Aviation History.

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