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GIUSEPPE GABRIELLI
1903-1987
BY NICHOLAS J. HOFF
ONE OF THE GREATEST airplane designers of Italy, Giuseppe
Gabrielli died in his adopted home town of Turin in north-
ern Italy on November 29, 1987. Born on February 26,
1903, in Caltanissetta, Sicily, Gabrielli was a southerner,
but he moved north to study aeronautical engineering un-
der Professor Panetti at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin.
Except for short periods of time, he remained in this great
industrial town for the remainder of his life, designing airplanes
at Fiat and teaching airplane design at the Polytechnic.
From the Polytechnic Institute of Turin he went to the
Technical University of Aachen in Germany to continue
his studies under the direction of Professor Theodore von
Karman; the warm friendship that developed between the
two outstanding men lasted until the death of van Karman
in 1963. The Polytechnic of Turin conferred on Gabrielli
the diploma in mechanical engineering in 1925, and the
University of Aachen the doctorate in aeronautics in 1926.
In 1927 Gabrielli was appointed instructor of aircraft de-
sign at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin and was promoted
to full professor in 1949. He remained there until the
retirement age of seventy, teaching and doing research;
one measure of his academic activities is 150 technical papers
published.
Almost simultaneously with the beginning of his academic
115
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116
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
career, Gabrielli received an inclustrial appointment, be-
coming assistant to Chief Designer Giovanni Pegna at the
Piaggio Company in Genova. His assignment was the development
of metal airplane structures; he had studied these in Aachen
and they were also being adopted in the United States at
that time. But Gabrielli did not give up his teaching; although
he was living in Genova, he commuted one day a week to
Turin to give his course at the Polytechnic.
The first great success of the young engineer was the
redesign of the Savoia-Marchetti S.M.S. 55 flying boat in
aluminum alloy; the original wood S 55 became famous
when several squadrons of it crossed the Atlantic in forma-
tion under the command of General Italo Balbo in the
1930s. Gabrielli's metal structure had an ultimate load
factor of 9 against the 7 of the original wood structure, yet
it was I, ~ 68 pounds lighter.
This achievement caught the eye of Giovanni Agnelli,
the almost legendary founder-director of Fiat, the largest
industrial concern of Italy. In 1931 he appointed the twenty-
eight-year-old Gabrielli manager of a new department of
the company. In this department Gabrielli developed a
total of 142 airplanes of which 63 were manufactured and
17 mass-produced. Among them were the G 50 of 1939,
the first Italian aluminum alloy monocoque monoplane fighter;
its successor, the outstanding G 55 of 1943, which reached
a high speed of 385 miles per hour but appeared too late
to have an influence on World War IT; the G 80 of 1951,
the first Italian jet fighter; and the G 9l, which won the
North Atlantic Tread Organization (NATO) fighter competition
of 1957.
When in a reorganization of the Italian airplane industry
Fiat gave up the manufacture of aircraft, Gabrielli continued
his work for the company practically until the end of his
life as chairman of the board of Fiat Aviazione, a builder of
· . · —
airplane engines In Turln.
Gabrielli was very much involved in the activities of na-
tional and international organizations in aeronautics. He
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GIUSEPPE GABRIELLI
117
was Italian delegate to the Advisory Group for Aeronautical
Research and Development of NATO; member of the In-
ternational Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (Paris);
president of the Association Internationale des Constructeurs
de Materiel Aerospatial (Paris); member of various com-
mittees of the National Research Council (Rome); vice-
president of the Italian Navigation Institute; corresponding
member of the Deutsche Akademie de Luftfahrtforschung
and of the International Academy of Astronautics (Paris);
honorary fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (London),
and honorary member of the Societe des Ingenieurs de
I'Automobile (Paris) and of the Association Franchise des
Ingenieurs et Techniciens de I'Aeronautique et de I'Espace
(Paris). He held membership in the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Deutsche Geselischaft
fur Luft- unit Raumfahrt. Gabrielli was corresponding member
of the Deutsche Akademie der Lufffahrtforschung, mem-
ber of the Flight Safety Foundation (New York), member
of the board of directors of the Aerospace Industry Asso-
ciation (Rome), and member of the Daniel Guggenheim
Medal Board of Award.
Gabrielli was elected a foreign associate of the U.S. Na-
tional Academy of Engineering (NAE) in ~ 983.
Among the major honors bestowed on Gabrielli were the
Ludwig Prandt! Ring, the highest honor in aerodynamics
in Germany; the knighthood of the Legion d'Honneur
(France); and the knighthood of the Grand Cross of the
Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy.
Gabrielli is survived by Lydia, his wife of f~fty-one years.
Through her he was a member of the most famous family
of Italian aeronautical engineers, as his father-in-law was
General Arturo Crocco, who had published papers on the
theory of flight and built airships before World War I, and
his brother-in-law was I~uigi Crocco, a great expert on
aerodynamics and rocket propulsion. Luigi was a foreign
associate of the NAE, and his biography was published on
page ~01 of Volume 3 of these Memorial Tributes.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
des ingenieurs
