soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Tiger wrote:

> Considering the Clear advantage in quality in the Luftwaffe's aircraft;
> Why stick with the home grown production? Why not licence build Fw-190's
> & Me 109's instead of Fiat's And Macchi's. While The Germans exchanged
> technology with Japan, How come Italy seems to come up short? Would The
> Med Campaign have gone differntly if Italian Pilots have had first rate
> equipment from their Axis partner?

Well, the Italian -did- license-build German aircraft engines -
specifically the DB 601 and DB 605 which were the same engines used in
the Bf 109s.

And once equipped with the Daimler-Benz engines, Italian fighters were
not noticably inferior to their German counterparts. The Macchi MC 202
and 205, the Fiat G.55, and the Reggiane Re. 2002 and 2005 were
competive aircraft right up until the end of the war. Indeed, after the
Italian surrender, several Luftwaffe units partially or completely
re-equipped with Italian fighters.

Italy's problem was always production capacity - Italy was just barely
an industrialized country and it just didn't have the industrial base to
crank out aircraft in the numbers required by modern war. Retooling the
production lines to produce Bf 109s instead of MC.202s would have
required too much loss of production for very little if any gain in
performance.

Italy went into the war with aircraft which were mostly obsolete in
concept - highly manuverable, open cockpit, wind-in-your-face dog
fighters. They rather soon realized that that concept was obsolete and
made the switch to more suitable fighter aircraft. But the MC.202, for
instance, was placed in production about as quickly as a license built
Bf 109 might have been. Indeed, perhaps sooner.

Cheers,