Ermanno Bazzocchi is one of the most renown Italian aeronautical engineers and designers of all times. Born in 1914, graduated in Engineering at the Politecnico University of Milano in 1938, he had a life long connection with the Aermacchi Company, where he became Chief Designer in 1945 and retired as CEO in 1989. During the WW2 years, the young and already far-looking Bazzocchi started the design of an unconventional “experimental” small aircraft of canard architecture, with tricycle gear and pusher engine, in a few words the grandfather of the VariEze of the Seventies. In war years, both in Italy and abroad the literature about canard-configured airplanes and tricycle gears was very scarce and Bazzocchi had to learn almost everything through experience and…. mistake. He conceived different shapes and dimensions, tested in the Politecnico of Milano wind tunnel at least two promising models and finally the EB-4 design was ready for construction. The Sestetti glider factory was involved in 1944 and by early 1945 the prototype was ready for test flights. Bazzocchi himself was the test pilot and soon a fault in the design of the landing gear became evident: the nose gear was too heavily loaded and, together with the down pitching moment caused by the high position of the pusher engine, made it almost impossible to raise the nose from the ground. Bazzocchi finally took the EB-4 to the air for a short straight flight but upon landing the front gear leg collapsed. It was quickly repaired and a second flight attempted, but the engine crankshaft broke, the little canard landed and was permanently grounded. Nevertheless this experience was extremely useful to Bazzocchi for the design of the landing gear of his next and very successful light aircraft: the Macchi MB-308.
The EB-4 was forgotten for 40 years in a corner of the Varese Aero Club and was restored by Aermacchi in 1985, later preserved at the Aermacchi Historical Centre, then in 1998 presented to the Italian Air Force Museum and always kept in storage. In 2022 the EB-4 has been loaned to Volandia, where many of Bazzocchi’s later and world-famous designs are also preserved (MB-308, MB-326, MB-339).