The Aerfer

Aerfer

Aerfer was an Italian manufacturing company created in 1955 by the merger of IMAM and Meridionali. The name is a contraction of Costruzioni Aer onautiche e Fer roviarie ....

 Leone (Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 for Lion) was a fighter

Fighter aircraft

A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets...

 designed in Italy in the late 1950s. It was a final attempt to develop the Aerfer Sagittario 2

Aerfer Sagittario 2

|-References:* The Aeroplane, December 21, 1956, p. 924* Giuseppe Ciampaglia, Dal SAI Ambrosini Sagittario all'AERFER Leone, January 2004, IBN editore, with English translation by Stephen Richards-See also:...

 into a workable aircraft.

Like other European fighter prototypes of the era, it was planned to use a rocket engine

Rocket engine

A rocket engine, or simply "rocket", is a jet engineRocket Propulsion Elements; 7th edition- chapter 1 that uses only propellant mass for forming its high speed propulsive jet. Rocket engines are reaction engines and obtain thrust in accordance with Newton's third law...

 to provide additional thrust, just as its predecessor, the Ariete

Aerfer Ariete

-See also:-References:* Swanborough, Gordon. Air Enthusiast, Volume One. London: Pilot Press, 1971. ISBN 0-385-08171-5....

 had used a secondary turbojet. However, the project was abandoned before a prototype could be built.

See also