WI: Italian Aquila?

Wouldn't it just be easier and cheaper to have better communication and coordination between land based reconnaissance assets and ships?

Heh, you'd like to think that, but never underestimate the ability of jingoistic ideologues to guard their fiefdoms!! :)

Seriously, Stefano's book documents how divided the Italian military was in the interwar period. The RM recognized the carrier as a useful tool, they just weren't allowed to have one, or even their own aircraft...
 

Driftless

Donor
Wouldn't it just be easier and cheaper to have better communication and coordination between land based reconnaissance assets and ships?

More logical - certainly. Easier to alter bureaucratic minds bent on controlling their own sacred turf - probably not.... ;) (i.e. the Japanese Army's own Navy...)

*edit* ninja'ed
 
Wouldn't it just be easier and cheaper to have better communication and coordination between land based reconnaissance assets and ships?

Heh, you'd like to think that, but never underestimate the ability of jingoistic ideologues to guard their fiefdoms!!

Seriously, Stefano's book documents how divided the Italian military was in the interwar period. The RM recognized the carrier as a useful tool, they just weren't allowed to have one, or even their own aircraft...

More logical - certainly. Easier to alter bureaucratic minds bent on controlling their own sacred turf - probably not.... (i.e. the Japanese Army's own Navy...)

*edit* ninja'ed
I think we need a POD of 1923.

That is the Aeronautica della Regia Marina does not become part of the Regia Aeronautica.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
POD 1912

Utilizing lessons from the Italian-Turkish War, Regia Marina decides to adapt a new build auxiliary into a seaplane carrier completed by 1915. The RM learns additional lessons during Great War with the seaplane carrier and two conversions completed during the war. In mid-1918, the RM start construction on the Leonardo da Vinci, an 18000 ton aircraft landing cruiser using the turbines from two unbuilt Leone class exploratores.
 
Air carriers would have been useful but not decisive for Italy. Much bettwr would have been a decent amount of cooperation between the Regia Marina and Regia Aeronautica, who were barely on speaking terms: respectively the most monarchist and the most Fascist of armed forces. The lack of teamwork between the two was simply ridiculous for a country that pretended to be at war in the Mediterranean.
 
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