re: #109 Nojay UK

The designs were good though and that’s what was under discussion. Claiming that the Italians were ignorant medieval artificers doesn’t actually make much sense when they did in fact design and produce world-class ships and aircraft. They might not have built enough of them or used them effectively but that’s something else.

Yet that’s what I’m largely discussing, that the Italian military suffered because the economy wasn’t there to support them. They had world-class ships because they concentrated the lion’s share of their prewar military resources into ship production, trying to match French naval build-up in anticipation of competing with them for control of the Med. As a result, the Army and Air Force were treated as the poor cousins, as the Army was largely a police force for Italy’s colonial holdings and French airpower was as backwards prewar as Italy’s was.

But this isn’t an isolated deal, as the British leadership prewar devoted most rearmament spending to the Royal Navy, which meant early war tanks for the Royal Army were archaic trundling monsters and the Royal Air Force was flying fighters still covered in doped fabrics over wooden skeletons.