Bill of Exchange or Credit Title signed by the Silurificio Whitehead di Fiume S.A., 1945

Bill of Exchange or Credit Title signed by the Silurificio Whitehead di Fiume S.A., 1945

Bill of exchange or credit title signed by the Silurificio Whitehead-Fiume S.A, constituted and represented by two Managing Directors (Arialdo Fuchlan and Luigi Nervi) who undertake and subscribe, on its behalf, to the payment of a loan of 5,000,000 Italian Lire granted on 1 April 1945 by the "Consortium for industrial subsidies, autonomous section of the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano", with repayment to be made on 1 August 1945.

In short, this is the last known promissory note signed by the Silurificio Whitehead of Fiume because, following the occupation of Fiume by the Yugoslav resistance forces led by Tito, which occurred on 3 May 1945, Whitehead was merged on 31 July 1945 with the Moto Fides torpedo factory of Livorno, thus transferring its activity to the Tuscan city with the name Whitehead-Motofides, while in Fiume, the now former Whitehead factory, became the seat of a mechanical company with the name "Torpedo".

It is in all likelihood that this sum granted, witnessed by this bill of exchange, allowed Whitehead not to go bankrupt.

Exceptional historical testimony.


The Whitehead Silurificio in Fiume was an important industrial reality in the city of Kvarner that operated for seven decades between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

The origins of the company date back to 1875 when the English engineer Robert Whitehead inaugurated in Fiume, a city then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Torpedo Fabrik von Robert Whitehead, a plant for the production of torpedoes.

In 1856, Robert Whitehead had been contacted to take on the role of director of the Fiume Metal Foundry, which in 1858 would take the name of Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume, where steam engines and boilers among the most modern of the time were produced and installed on the ships of the Imperial Austrian Navy. In Fiume, Whitehead began a collaboration with Giovanni Luppis, a Fiume native and officer of the Austro-Venetian Navy, who, wanting to find a means of defending the coasts from naval incursions, had thought of a wire-guided device that he called (in Italian) salvacoste.

Luppis presented his salvacoste to Emperor Franz Joseph but his invention was not a success. The device was then perfected by the collaboration between Luppis and Whitehead, giving life to the torpedo, a kind of underwater projectile pushed by a propeller set in motion automatically at the moment of launch.

The prototype, presented on 21 December 1866 to an evaluation commission of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was evaluated positively and the two engineers were charged with producing a first batch that would be used for experimental purposes; the Imperial-Royal Navy itself decided to acquire the rights of use and reproduction on a non-exclusive basis of the torpedoes produced in Fiume. In 1871, the British Navy also decided to purchase the Fiume torpedoes and the following year, the French Navy wanted them.

In 1873, the Stabilimento Tecnico Fiumano declared bankruptcy and two years later it was taken over by Whitehead, taking the name "Torpedo Fabrik von Robert Whitehead", the first real torpedo factory in the world, thanks to the advances of the sums from the Imperial German Navy for the construction of 100 381 mm torpedoes and the guarantee that Germany would continue to supply itself with torpedoes, torpedo launchers and compressors from the Whitehead factory for 10 consecutive years. In the same year, Denmark, Sweden and Norway purchased the Whitehead torpedoes.

In 1876, Russia requested Whitehead torpedoes for its Navy and in 1877, requests arrived from Turkey, Belgium, Portugal, Argentina, Chile and Greece.

The company, which in 1878 already had 500 employees, saw its staff increase in a few years, expanding its facilities to become one of the most advanced industrial plants of its time. Inside, the factory was equipped with foundry, boiler, mechanical processing, assembly and testing departments. The factory also had a launching dock to test and test the torpedoes produced, and a small port where the naval units of the purchasing navies were hosted on board which the torpedo tubes were installed. In 1891, the US Navy purchased the Whitehead torpedoes. In addition to selling the rights to use and reproduce its products to various governments, the company established branches, or helped to set up government or private torpedo factories abroad.

In 1891 a branch was founded in Weymouth, UK and in 1892 another was opened in Newport, USA.

the torpedo factory in 1910.

In 1895 the generator used by the German engineer Carl von Linde (Berndorf 11 July 1842 – Munich, 16 November 1934) inventor of the refrigerator, to liquefy air, was built in the factory.

In 1905 the company became a joint stock company taking the name Torpedo Fabrik Whitehead and Co. Geselleshaft. In the same year with the death of Whitehead the Vickers-Armstrong Whitworth group purchased the majority of the shares.

In 1907 the group signed an agreement with the Italian government for the enlargement and completion of the torpedo factory in La Spezia, to make it suitable for the construction of torpedoes based on designs provided by the Whitehead torpedo factory.

In 1910, another agreement was made with the companies “Lessner and Obucoff” for the reproduction of torpedoes in Russia and in 1913 a branch was founded in Saint-Tropez, France.

In 1914, another branch was opened in Naples with the name Società Anonima Italiana Whitehead for the production of torpedo launchers and compressors. The Whitehead Silurificio also granted the right to reproduce its torpedoes to the American company Bliss Leavitt of Brooklyn, which was known for its studies relating to the application of turbines to torpedoes.

In the Whitehead factories, in addition to the manufacture of torpedoes, a series of related inventions were developed, conceived by the technicians and engineers who worked in the factory. According to the Croatian online newspaper in Italian La Voce del Popolo, among the inventions developed in the factory there would be the first instruments for guided aiming of missiles, the instrument for measuring gas pressure, the compressor for water dripping and the gyroscope and also Diesel would have commissioned an engine, cast in a single block, from the Whitehead factory.

From the beginning of the First World War the Silurificio di Fiume worked exclusively for the Central Powers and following the entry into the war of Italy on the side of the Entente, which occurred on 24 May 1915, the production equipment was transferred from Fiume to St. Pölten, near Vienna, while in the city only the launch range functions remained. The fears proved to be well founded because on 2 August 1916, the factory, which was located a few kilometers west of the city, between the villages of Plase and Cantrida, was bombed by Italian planes. However, the equipment for testing and sea launch tests was maintained in the Fiume plant.

At the end of the conflict, which ended with the defeat of the Central Empires, the factory returned to its original location in Fiume, but the company went bankrupt following the crisis that hit the city. In the Austrian plant in St. Pölten, some shareholders, with a small part of the machinery existing in the factory, founded a small company producing agricultural machinery with the name of Società Whitehead, which however had nothing to do with the old Whitehead Silurificio in Fiume.

Following the Treaty of Rome, signed on 27 January 1924, which sanctioned the passage of the city of Fiume to Italy on the initiative of General Giardino, future Marshal of Italy and governor between 1923 and 1924 of the Free State of Fiume, the plant was refounded with 230 employees.

The General intervened with the Italian business group of Engineer Giuseppe Orlando, who had taken over the management of the Ganz Danubius Shipyards, another large industrial concern in Fiume, so that they also took over the torpedo factory.

In February 1924, the "Società di Esercizio Anonima-Stabilimento Whitehead" was established to manage the torpedo factory, which thus resumed its activity under the direction of the same engineer Orlando, appointed president of the company; between 1924 and 1934, the company, which in 1928 took the name of Silurificio Whitehead di Fiume S.A., was modernized, with the purchase of new machinery, the expansion of the workshops, the construction of a new launch station and a catapult for torpedoes intended for airplanes.

Between 1924 and 1934, 1266 torpedoes of various types were produced not only for the Royal Navy, but also for the navies of Spain, Argentina, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Finland and the Soviet Union. The company, which had a surface area of 35,000 m² of which 22,500 were covered, had 750 workers, mostly specialists, and a hundred technical and administrative employees.

The torpedo factory in Naples was put into liquidation by the British group at the end of 1921 due to debts and in April 1922 Comit, which was the company's largest creditor, took over the factory which was called "Silurificio Italiano". The Royal Navy responded to the company's crisis by proposing the replacement of the 450 mm torpedo with the 533 mm torpedo, which was considered more efficient.

In 1933 IRI came into possession of 40% of the share package of the "Silurificio Whitehead" through the Società Finanziaria Italiana, the financial company of Credito Italiano, and of all the shares of the "Silurificio Italiano" through the Società Finanziaria Industriale Italiana, the financial company of Comit.

In 1937, the Fiume company opened a branch in Livorno, which a few years later took the name of Società Moto Fides and in both cities the war production activity was frenetic due to the arms race that characterized the period before the Second World War.

However, the Livorno plant was not yet able to build Whitehead torpedoes and its activity was initially limited to the construction of parts for the torpedoes built in Fiume and only towards the end of 1941 did the first complete torpedoes leave the plant in the Tyrrhenian city. The Fiume and Livorno plants were supported in the production of torpedoes for the Royal Navy by Silurificio Italiano which had transferred its production to a plant established in 1936 by converting a shipyard in the Campi Flegrei area, using the old plant as a torpedo factory.

During the Second World War, in which the production of torpedoes was significantly increased, in the days preceding the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis on March 31, 1941 with the order of civil mobilization issued by the prefect Temistocle Testa, the workers of the torpedo factory, with the most important equipment were transferred to Livorno and what remained of the Whitehead plant was decentralized to more internal locations, such as Valvasone and Fiume Veneto, with reduced production capacity, while the oil and gasoline of the R.O.M.S.A. refinery were secured in Trieste.

In 1942, 1,170 torpedoes were produced in the plant, while in 1943 the production record of 160 torpedoes in one month was achieved. In Naples, to cope with an increase in production, a new plant was built in the flat area of Fusaro.

Italy, from 10 June 1940, the day it entered the war, to 8 September 1943, the day of the armistice, consumed 3,700 torpedoes, mainly of the new 533 mm type.

Following the proclamation of the armistice, the city was occupied by the Germans, becoming part of the Adriatic Coast operations zone. From the beginning of 1944, the city was heavily bombed by the Anglo-Americans and the Allied bombings caused hundreds of deaths and damaged a large part of the port and industrial structures. Following the occupation of Fiume by the Yugoslav resistance forces led by Tito on 3 May 1945, which would be formalised by the Peace Treaty on 10 February 1947 with the annexation of the city to Yugoslavia, Whitehead was merged on 31 July 1945 with the Moto Fides torpedo factory in Livorno, transferring its operations to the Tuscan city under the name Whitehead-Motofides, while in Fiume the former Whitehead factory became the site of a mechanical engineering company under the name "Torpedo".

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