Il Segreto Della Propulsione A Reazione.

The title page reads Il segreto della propulsione a reazione. Come funzionano le V.1, le V.2, i proietti-razzo e gli aeroplani a reazione (“how the V-1s, V-2s, rocket projectiles and jet aeroplanes work”), “con 81 figure e VIII tavole e appendice,” by Ettore Ricci, “Costruttore Aeronautico,” Editore Ulrico Hoepli, Milan, 1945, printed by Industrie Grafiche Italiane Stucchi, Milan. Probably one of the first accounts of Germany’s V-weapons in book form in Italian. The book is dedicated “A mia moglie,” and the title-page verso announces another Hoepli title by the author in press, Dal volo animale al volo muscolare umano.

The Introduction is dated Albizzate (Varese), May 1945, and argues that jet and rocket propulsion will have wide military and civil uses, including fast intercontinental mail. A postscript dated August 1945, added after the atomic bomb, explains the final appendix, “Aero-propulsione atomica a reazione,” on nuclear energy and the prospects for atomic jet aircraft and interplanetary travel. Part One, “Proietti-razzo,” opens with the mechanical principle of the rocket and the construction and working of solid- and liquid-fuel rockets, with sections on Oberth, the Heylandt-Pietsch and Valier-Opel rocket cars, Tiling’s rocket torpedo, and the rockets of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt and the American Rocket Society.

This copy is unopened: the leaves are uncut at the fore-edge and the upper edge, so only the pages that open could be scanned. A loose red-printed publisher’s slip advertising the atomic appendix is tucked in at the back.