soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Apr 11, 3:08 pm, Bill Shatzer wrote:
> 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,

Kurt Tank was actually sent to Italy to investigate license production
of Italian fighters in Germany their handling was regarded as
superior. In part this was the fault of the RLM/Luftwaffe
specifications and at the time with the Me 262 looking like the future
of the Luftwaffe investing in an all new piston fighter would have
seemed wasteful if Italian known how could do the job.

The best option for the Germans would have been to shit can production
of the Me 410 and forget about 'germinizing' italian designs and hand
over the DB603A engines to Focke Wulf for use on the Fw 190D-9 (with
DB engine) just as Tank wanted it instead of waiting for surplus Jumo
213. The DB603A engined Fw 190D-9 was built and tested in had far
better high altitude performance than the radial Fw 190A-8 and Me
109G-6 and it could have made that fighter available for earlier.

I like the Me 410, it was a great aircraft, probably the best in its
class and it would have stayed so as the DB605 engine developed. It
could carry 1 ton of bombs 1100 miles, almost the same bomb load as
the 3000lbs of a B-26 Marauder and almost the same distance and it
could drop it accurately. It was just the wrong aircraft for the
Luftwaffes situation.

The Germans, including tank himself evaluated the Italian fighters at
Rechlin in 1942 and they were rated very highly. One test pilot,
Petersen, regarded the G.55 as the best fighter in the axis.