Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

LESSONS BEFORE WORLD WAR I1
of Loyalist counterair may have been more a factor than Italian air power.
Still, Aeronauticu officers never departed from the view that war would be
short and decisively influenced by air power applied against the population
and economy of an enemy. If, as one commentator thought, “the force
began its descent from the fairly respectable reputation which it had held
among the air forces of the leading world powers” by the late 1930s, the
reasons related less to doctrine and tactics than to factors beyond the control
of the Italians.’3
Italy lacked adequate raw materials to develop the air armada
demanded by Douhet. In 1940, the Aeronauticu requested 7,200 aircraft,
but industry could provide only 45 percent of that figure. “We are convinced
of the necessity of working toward standardization of material, that
is, of reducing to a minimum the number of standard planes, engines, arms,
equipment,” said one Air Ministry official in 1939. Italy could not support
the concept of a long war, and her answer lay with an air superiority forcein-being.
It could help suppress dissident tribesmen in Africa and deter
aggression from northern neighbors. First-line aircraft like the Fiat CR-32
fighter and the Savoia-Marchetti SM-79 and SM-8 1 bombers provided the
means, even if none of them quite epitomized Douhet’s battleplane. In
1940, the Aeronauticu consisted of skilled and brave pilots and adequate
but aging aircraft. Acceptance of Douhet’s thinking by Aeronautica leaders
produced inadequate cooperation with the Army and Navy in the long run,
and even Mussolini displayed no further interest in aviation other than for
propaganda purposes. Still, given the short-war mentality, the economic
weaknesses of the Fascist state, and the clear limits to aircraft industrial
expansion by the end of the decade, the Regia Aeronautica probably pro-
Savoia-Marchetti SM-79.
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