soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Apr 11, 6:26 am, Tiger wrote:
> Considering the Clear advantage in quality in the Luftwaffe's aircraft;
> Why stick with the home grown production?

Producing foreign aircraft isn't easy, it requires the blueprints for
everything including new spare parts etc. For instance, there would be
common parts to all Italian aircraft (wiring, undercarriage etc) which
wouldn't need to change much when a new plane was designed, whereas
producing an entirely different plane would require different
components.

The problem with Italian planes was insufficiently powerful engines so
all that the Italians really needed was a decent engine - which they
eventually got - rather than a complete aircraft. As Bill wrote, there
wasn't much practical difference between an Italian fighter equipped
with a German engine and a 100% German fighter (besides, the Bf 109
was a very dangerous plane and by no means a perfect one) and it made
much more industrial sense to build the former.

An additional problem was getting the Germans to agree to part with
the licence for their top notch equipment, if possible at a reasonable
price. The Germans drove very hard bargains, and were by no means
prepared to play "arsenal of autocracy" by making equipment available
to their partners for free.

A third problem is the question of what to buy and when. Until the
late 1930's, German bombers didn't have a clear qualitative advantage
over Italian ones. Should Italy have purchased a licence for a German
engine, and if so which one? Had it purchased the licence to build an
inadequate engine (e.g. the one equipping the Bf 109D) then it would
have had slightly more capable, but still inferior, planes. It took
time until a given piece of equipment was demonstrably superior and
worth purchasing.

> Why not licence build Fw-190's
> & Me 109's instead of Fiat's And Macchi's.

No point in licence building Bf 109's. The FW was a good fighter, but
the Germans didn't have enough engines for their own use and wouldn't
spare any for the Italians. I'm not sure that the Italian industry
could have produced that engine, that would require extensive
retooling as well presumably as a supply of raw materials that might
not be available. As things were, the Italians were doing all right
with the DB engines that they got, the most you can blame them for is
not getting one earlier.

> While The Germans exchanged
> technology with Japan, How come Italy seems to come up short?

Germany didn't trade that much technology with Japan, except near the
end of the war when everything was lost. Italy got actual German
equipment (e.g. Ju 87's) as well as German troops and a pick on
equipment captured by the Germans (e.g. a lot of French stuff, which
was still competitive by Italian standards).

> Would The
> Med Campaign have gone differntly if Italian Pilots have had first rate
> equipment from their Axis partner?

Probably not. Italy was no industrial powerhouse and wasn't going to
crank out the kind of equipment that would have been needed to make a
real difference.


LC