In Turin, in Strada Antica di Collegno, for some years now there has been a roundabout that acts as a crossroads with various entrances: coming from Corso Marche, straight towards the neighboring municipality of Collegno, on the right towards the Aero Club, on the left the entry with the Thales Alenia Space factories.
On the roundabout there is a real aircraft, as if it were taking off: it is an Amx fighter with a light blue livery. Because that was the color of the first prototype of that aircraft, a tactical support fighter which was then in service for 35 years, and which debuted with the first tests in 1984. And it is the first of a series of rounds that the most recent municipal administration of Collegno wanted to transform it into an “Urban Aerospace Museum”. And the round one bears the name “Quarantelli”. In memory of one of the best (and courageous) Italian test pilots ever, who due to incredible fate and misfortune lost his life due to an accident that occurred just forty years ago, on 1 June 1984.
Manlio Quarantelli, a pilot with the “right stuff”
Manlio Quarantelli was born in Velletri (Rome) in 1926, but since he became a test pilot for what was then Aeritalia, which later became “Alenia”, he now felt he was Turin by adoption, with his three children who are practically grew up and became adults in Turin (the third child, Mariella, was born in Turin in 1967).
Already as a child, at the beginning of the 1930s, Manlio Quantelli had understood what he would do when he grew up: despite the fact that these were the early pioneering days of airplanes, at an event of aircraft of the time and airships he immediately said to his mother, Silvia Perilli: “When I grow up I want to fly those airplanes.” Aircraft which then, in a few decades, will become increasingly sophisticated and technologically advanced machines. After the scientific high school in Velletri, Quarantelli attended the military college in Milan during the war. At the end of the conflict, after having brilliantly passed the difficult entrance exams, he was admitted to the Nisida Air Force Academy in 1946, spending a good part of his time on the historic ship “Vespucci”. Then, on 22 September 1949, the Officer Student Pilot Manlio Quarantelli began the piloting course on the Stinson L.5 aircraft at the 1st Flight School Group of the Gioia del Colle airport, which ended on 15 December 1949, obtaining the 1 ° patent.
The arrival in Turin in 1963
From there he began an extraordinary pilot career, without pauses, driving many historic jet aircraft and fighters, including the F-104 and up to the European “Tornado”. Up until that unfortunate 1st June 1984, Quarantelli had accumulated 8,778 flight hours, making 9,516 landings and piloting hundreds of different aircraft, including planes, helicopters and gliders, most of them experimental. The classic pilot with the “right stuff”, as the first legendary American test pilots of the US Air Force were called. His arrival in Turin occurred in 1963, when he began collaboration with Fiat Aviazione, and the Caselle Sud plant (in the meantime Alenia and today Leonardo Velivoli). He also began to collaborate with another historical figure: the Turin engineer Pierluigi
Gabrielli, great designer of aeronautical engines. In the ten-year life of a test pilot, and with thousands of hours of flight, not everything is always perfect: he lost an F-104 due to engine failure (the aircraft crashed near Beinasco), and Quarantelli saved himself by ejecting with his ejection seat; but he managed to land broken-down aircraft even on foam-covered runways and in other critical conditions. His colleague Napoleone Bragagnolo himself, the very one who together with Quarantelli flew with the first AMX prototypes from Turin, once confirmed to us that it was more than correct to say that “each of his planes became a dragonfly”, recalling the acrobatics he also performed with massive cargo aircraft, such as the G-222. The Amx (from the initials of Alenia – Aermacchi, Italian companies that designed and built it with the Brazilian Embraer) was in fact a technological jewel that the Italian industry had created as a tactical support fighter and trainer, instead of now obsolete, albeit glorious, G-91. After those first tests, it proved to be a highly reliable aircraft: for 35 years it served the Italian Air Force, and the last ones were retired in recent weeks, while some are still in service with the Brazilian Air Force. Astronauts Luca Parmitano and Samantha Cristoforetti also spent many of their flight hours when they were pilots of the Italian Air Force. But at the beginning, during the first tests, as happened with other military aircraft and fighters, not everything went smoothly.
Cursed tree
The first Amx prototype, the blue one, made its first flight from Caselle on 15 May 1984, piloted by Manlio Quarantelli, for a duration of 50 minutes. The second flight took place on May 17th and was followed by the third. The fourth was carried out by Napoleone Bragagnolo. On the morning of June 1st Quarantelli took off for the fifth test flight, in the presence of industrial and institutional personalities and a Brazilian delegation. Suddenly, what technicians and pilots call “engine failure” occurred: the Rolls Royce engine of the Amx became uncontrollable. To avoid dropping the aircraft on some houses, he made a turn in the countryside between Caselle and Mappano, still attempting to land in an uninhabited green area. The aircraft lands, without undercarriage, and he launches himself with the ejection seat, but due to an unfortunate fate the ejection (always very violent, and moreover on the ground), is stopped by the branches of a large tree, with consequent very violent impact and injuries very serious for the pilot. Immediately rescued, he was transported first to the CTO, then to Molinette in Turin and finally to the Milan Polyclinic where he died, after three months of suffering, on his 58th birthday, 19 August 1984. That roundabout on Strada Antica di Collegno , which sooner or later will become part of the Aerospace City, remembers an unforgettable figure among the great Italian test pilots, who thanks to his sacrifice contributed to making an aircraft safe which, over time, became both a training and operational aircraft, for many, subsequent great Italian pilots. Including astronauts.
