How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Historical what if discussions, hypothetical operations, battleship vs. battleship engagements, design your own warship, etc.
Djoser
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How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Djoser »

Just finished a fascinating and relatively exhaustive study of the Mediterranean Naval Theater, Struggle for the Middle Sea, Vincent P. O'Hara. Which of course dealt to a large extent with the Italian navy.

As I was reading I realized we didn't have a thread for this yet!
lwd
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by lwd »

Secure more fuel? Pick a better ally? Better training and better officers (for the most part) would help a lot as well.
Seekanone
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Seekanone »

In retrospect, prior to WW2, I would not have rebuilt the four old battleships and in 1936 laid down the 45,000 ton 16inch gunned battleships (four), converted the Aquila in 1936 to an aircraft carrier and built more destroyers and escorts. The battleships built in 1936 would have forced a French response and perhaps a British one as well. Complete two of the Littorio class but not the last two.
lwd
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by lwd »

I guess we should ask what are the constraints? Are you looking for OB type improvements? Or a wider selection? Are the period financial constraints in place? Or are additional funds available if you can justify them? or is it anything goes?
Djoser
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Djoser »

I think the idea behind these threads is not so much to use the science fiction approach and go totally off the wall, but to deal with existing historical restraints and advantages, while positing somewhat different--and possibly much improved--decisions by the leaders at the time.

Any serious student of military history will realize what a tremendous difference small changes in weapons, tactics, strategy, and economic planning can sometimes make.

The fuel problem was indeed bad for Italy--comparable to that faced by Japan. I knew they couldn't have had it easy, if Germany was also going through major problems at the same time. But they were much more severely curtailed in what they could do than I was aware before reading the book. Anything that could have been done to ease this situation would have improved performance.
Keith Enge
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Keith Enge »

I agree, the main problem was oil. It got so bad that they couldn't send out all available forces so that the ships that they did send were often outnumbered. However, they couldn't do anything about the oil so there was no chance of improving the situation. They got the oil via Germany and Germany didn't have any to spare. However, there were two things that they could have done that were possible. The air force could have relinquished some control over planes so that the navy could have more reliable scouting. With British dominating aerial reconnaissance, the Royal Navy could always send out a force larger than the Italian one; it is hard to win battles when always the underdog. The second thing was to insist that the Luftwaffe use Italian codes rather than their Enigma machines. The Germans insisted on using their codes rather than Italian codes when communicating with the Italian Navy. Unfortunately, ULTRA broke the Luftwaffe codes quite regularly and, whenever the Luftwaffe was to coordinate with the Italian Navy, the British knew the battle orders. In fact, that aerial reconnaissance mentioned earlier was sometimes a mere decoy. It "found" the Italian fleet and so the Axis didn't realize that the force had actually been found by code-breaking rather than reconnaissance.
Djoser
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Djoser »

This is more in the nature of alternate history than imagining how the leadership could have improved the chances of the Regia Marina--but imagine that Italy and not France somehow got control of Syria after the Turkish Empire was parceled out by the Allies? Or imagine that the Turkish Empire wasn't parceled out after WW I, and still retained at least some of its oil producing provinces? Maybe no Gallipoli, and thus no need to fight the Allies--maybe Churchill is killed in the Boer War, or earlier at Omdurman?

But let's be conservative (or as much so as alternate history will allow lol!) and say it's just Syria. Look at this comparative map of the world's oil production:

http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=88

Rumania, the main source of Axis oil, produces 122,700 barrels a day. Syria produces three times that much at 380,000 barrels a day. Granted the drilling technology might not have been in place in Syria back then (I have no idea how much it was), but that's still three times as much oil available.

Italian access to Syrian oil, or Axis access (say that three times real fast lol) to intact Turkish controlled oil producing regions would have made a tremendous difference.
Keith Enge
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Keith Enge »

Djoser,

I think that your alternative history using Syrian oil for the Axis needs another change in history. Your map of oil production is for now (close, 2009). However, back at the time of WWII, little of middle-eastern oil had yet been developed. I believe that only Iran/Iraq was producing oil at that time and relatively not much. The heavy producers were the US, USSR, and Venezuela. I don't think that Syrian oil fields had even been found yet much less exploited. Furthermore, Romanian fields back then were producing much more than they are today; Rumanian fields, like many US fields, are pretty much used up now. In 1941, the US had 63% of world production; compare that to today.
Djoser
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Djoser »

Keith Enge wrote:Djoser,

I think that your alternative history using Syrian oil for the Axis needs another change in history. Your map of oil production is for now (close, 2009). However, back at the time of WWII, little of middle-eastern oil had yet been developed.

Granted the drilling technology might not have been in place in Syria back then (I have no idea how much it was)
I knew there could have been differences between production then and now.
Keith Enge wrote:I believe that only Iran/Iraq was producing oil at that time and relatively not much. The heavy producers were the US, USSR, and Venezuela. I don't think that Syrian oil fields had even been found yet much less exploited. Furthermore, Romanian fields back then were producing much more than they are today; Rumanian fields, like many US fields, are pretty much used up now. In 1941, the US had 63% of world production; compare that to today.
But wow these are very good points. Thanks for posting! If I ever write an alternate history of the Regia Marina or the Kriegsmarine, this will help. There would have to have been some oil exploration and drilling going on so they could make use of it.

However didn't the British know there was oil in the Middle East? And weren't they very much interested in retaining access to it (even if as yet undeveloped), due to their enormous, very thirsty fleet? Why else go to all that trouble arranging the disposition of the (potentially) oil producing provinces of the Turkish Empire. I do know they wanted to guard the approaches to India and Egypt, of course, and a great way to do that would be to dominate the otherwise useless, largely arid areas rather than letting some other nations dominate them. And the Eastern Mediterranean coastline was strategically important, no doubt. More things to ponder...

Where did Great Britain get most of its oil? The US? Venezuela?
Mostlyharmless
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Mostlyharmless »

One critical Italian requirement is to be able to protect the fleet from British torpedo bombers. This requires either that the Italians commission aircraft carriers or that they acquire fighter aircraft with sufficient range escort their ships from land bases. In 1940, the Zero and the Bf-110 were the only fighters in service with such range and the Zero's first operation occurred in August. If Mussolini rejected building aircraft carriers on the grounds that Italy was an unsinkable carrier, the RM should have demanded that suitable fighters be acquired and committed to and trained for protecting the RM. As Italian aero engine design also had problems, the simplest solution might have been to buy a licence for production of the single seat version of the Focke-Wulf Fw 187 Falke and equip it with DB 601 engines. 50 of these aircraft could have kept 4-8 aircraft over the fleet during the day and significantly complicated any British aerial reconnaissance or attacks. The other nice feature is that they can talk via Italian codes.
Keith Enge
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Keith Enge »

Djoser,

Great Britain got most of its oil from the Caribbean (Venezuela and Trinidad/Tobago).
lwd
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by lwd »

Djoser wrote: ... However didn't the British know there was oil in the Middle East? ...
I believe that they were aware of the oil in Iraq and perhaps Kuwait and indeed were getting some from there. That's a considerable distance however from the Med especially at that time.
Looked it up and found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Middle_East
Another turning point in the history of the Middle East came when oil was discovered, first in Persia in 1908 and later in Saudi Arabia (in 1938) and the other Persian Gulf states, and also in Libya and Algeria.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/oil.cfm
Oil was discovered ... in Iraq in 1927.
http://www.bookrags.com/research/oil-is ... -scit-061/
In 1944, ...
At that time, the Middle East produced slightly less than 5% of the world oil supply ...
Mostlyharmless
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by Mostlyharmless »

Here are some links to statistics on oil production by regions over 1938-40. One source from Google was the “Oil Economists' Handbook: Statistics” by Gilbert Jenkins http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7KAy ... 38&f=false, especially table 6.2 on page 120 . Another was a thread at Axishistory showing a pie chart http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6&start=30. Also the “Statistical Yearbook of the League of Nations” for 1939-40 at http://digital.library.northwestern.edu ... 0277ah.pdf (page 6).

The message is that capture of the oil producing regions of Iraq without too much damage and obtaining access to Iran might have solved the German and Italian oil problems by roughly doubling their total production if the oil could be moved (piped?) to the Mediterranean coast or moved by train via Turkey.
123, easy as ABC
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by 123, easy as ABC »

Mostlyharmless wrote:Here are some links to statistics on oil production by regions over 1938-40. One source from Google was the “Oil Economists' Handbook: Statistics” by Gilbert Jenkins http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7KAy ... 38&f=false, especially table 6.2 on page 120 . Another was a thread at Axishistory showing a pie chart http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6&start=30. Also the “Statistical Yearbook of the League of Nations” for 1939-40 at http://digital.library.northwestern.edu ... 0277ah.pdf (page 6).

The message is that capture of the oil producing regions of Iraq without too much damage and obtaining access to Iran might have solved the German and Italian oil problems by roughly doubling their total production if the oil could be moved (piped?) to the Mediterranean coast or moved by train via Turkey.
not via turkey, they remained neutral throughout, now a German army on their borders may sway them...

as for the navy itself, may I suggest a base slightly further north? Could the defenses at Taranto have been any better? Oh and sack the admirals, too defensive
lwd
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Re: How would you improve the Regia Marina?

Post by lwd »

123, easy as ABC wrote: ... Oh and sack the admirals, too defensive
Sacking the admirals might still be worthwhile but I believe their defensive attitude was at least in part a reflection of their fuel supply. In this they didn't try to do more than they could reasonably project unlike some other axis forces.
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