Full scale model of the Sva 9 Ansaldo biplane used by aviator Arturo Ferrarin in the 1920 Rome-Tokyo flight
2025
Wood
Courtesy of Hangar Fusina/Giorgio Bonato

The Project 
Giorgio Bonato, president of Hangar Fusina and president of the Rome Tokyo Hangar Museum Association, began his research on the Ansaldo S.V.A. 9 biplane twenty years ago, collecting over 400 original drawings of the aircraft, which serve as the basis for his meticulous reconstruction of the S.V.A. 
The woods used include North African spruce, Philippine mahogany, Finnish birch plywood, and Slovenian ash.

The First Rome-Tokyo Flight in 1920
After the success of the flight over Vienna in 1918, the idea for the Rome-Tokyo flight came about in March 1919 thanks to the friendship between Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Japanese scholar Harukichi Shimoi.
According to D'Annunzio, the plane was intended to connect the two geographically distant cities, thereby promoting the development of the Italian aeronautical industry and the friendship between Italy and Japan. However, D'Annunzio withdrew from participating in the Rome-Tokyo flight due to his involvement with the Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) expedition, which began on 12 September 1919 and ended on Christmas 1920. 
Between 18 January and 11 March, eleven planes and twenty-two crew members departed from Rome, but due to the challenging flight conditions, only two planes and four crew members reached Tokyo.  The flight concluded after 107 days, covering more than 18,000 km and logging 112 hours of flight time. 
Lieutenant Arturo Ferrarin and Lieutenant Guido Masiero, along with their respective mechanics Gino Cappannini and Roberto Maretto, departed from the Centocelle airfield in Rome. They arrived first in Osaka on 30 May and then, the following day, landed at the Yoyogi plain in Tokyo, where they were welcomed as heroes descending from the sky by approximately 200,000 people, including Empress Teimei. The entire country celebrated for 42 days.

Ansaldo S.V.A. 
Rodolfo Verduzio and Umberto Savoia began designing this biplane in 1916. The name of the aircraft, S.V.A., is an acronym made up of the initials of the two designers’ surnames and the name of the construction company: Savoia, Verduzio, Ansaldo.
With a top speed of 220km/h, the aircraft was significantly faster than its primary Italian and foreign counterparts, surpassing them by up to 40km/h. Approximately 2,000 units were built and sold.
The aircraft had a wooden structure, with a narrow fuselage that ended in an inverted triangular section covered in plywood. The wings and control surfaces were covered in canvas. The upper wing was equipped with ailerons, whose structure was made of wood and metal, as were the two stabilisers and the rudder.