Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei

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Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei ( WASS ) was an Italian defense company belonging to the Finmeccanica group. It produced torpedoes , anti-torpedo systems, and sonars . The company's headquarters were last in Livorno , with further production facilities and branches in Genoa , Naples , La Spezia and Taranto . On January 1, 2016, Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei was merged into Leonardo-Finmeccanica .

history

The company's history goes back to the invention of the torpedo by the British Robert Whitehead and the Austrian Giovanni Luppis . Luppis had presented a first torpedo prototype in 1860. In 1864 he agreed with Whitehead in the then Austrian Fiume (now the Croatian Rijeka ) a cooperation for the further development of the torpedo, which was presented in 1866.

Whitehead worked at Stabilimento Tecnico Fiumano at the time, most recently as operations manager. The company that manufactured warships and machinery went bankrupt in 1873. In 1875 he founded Robert Whitehead's torpedo factory in Fiume , which in the years that followed sold its torpedoes all over the world. From 1907 to 1911, Whitehead & Co. was gradually taken over by the British Vickers group . With the outbreak of World War I , Whitehead's foreign branches remained in British hands, while the headquarters in Fiume came under Austro-Hungarian control.

When Italy annexed the Free State of Fiume in 1924 , the Orlando family ( Oto Melara ) took over the remaining production facilities and founded the company Silurificio Whitehead Società Anonima Fiume ("Torpedo Factory Whitehead Aktiengesellschaft Fiume"). In 1934, the subsidiary Moto Fides was founded in Livorno , which was initially supposed to manufacture motorcycles , but was then also integrated into the torpedo construction and from 1941 on was named Silurificio Moto Fides SA . Whitehead built torpedoes for torpedo bombers during the Second World War , which were also procured by the German Air Force .

1945 Yugoslavia occupied Fiume. For this reason Whitehead gave up his factory there and went to Livorno. On the basis of the former subsidiary, the company Whitehead Moto Fides was created there , in which Fiat took over the majority. Fiat had been a Whitehead shareholder since 1935 and now helped the company with subcontracting through the difficult first post-war years until the Italian Navy and foreign forces began ordering torpedoes again.

In 1985 the company was split. Motofides again focused on the civilian market and armaments for land forces, while Whitehead SpA continued the production of torpedoes, such as the A 184 , and other subsea systems. In 1993 Whitehead (50%) founded the EuroTorp consortium with the French Direction des Constructions Navales (26%) and Thomson-CSF (24%) , which manufactures the MU90 and A244-S torpedoes, among other things .

In 1995 the company became part of the Finmeccanica Group under the name Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei SpA (WASS). At the beginning of 2016, WASS merged with other companies entirely in Finmeccanica (now Leonardo ).

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