Lessons Learned Pre-WWII Conflicts (1 Viewer)

[Boom]

Much is made of the fact that the Luftwaffe went to war in 1939 with highly skilled aircrew, courtesy of the experience gained in the Spanish Civil War.

British accounts especially make much of this, perhaps as a way of explaining away Luftwaffe successes in tactics in the early part of the war. And perhaps to emphasize how good the RAF was to defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle Of Britain.

Either way, it is fair to say that the Luftwaffe did develop highly efficient tactics in fighter and ground attack.

But Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union too fought in several conflicts pre war. The Regia Aeronautica fought in Libya, Ethiopia, Spain and Albania prior to WWII.
Japan fought in China and Mongolia.
The Soviet Union fought in Spain, China, Khalkhin Gol and Finland.

Japan learned lessons from those conflicts to effectively employ them very successfully at the start of the Pacific War.

But Italy and the Soviets seemed to have missed a golden opportunity. The VVS especially, given it's combats against skilled adversaries.

Why is that?

 

[buffnut453]

I think the USSR's pre-war lack of adaptation had more to do with Stalin's purges than anything else. He gutted senior military leadership and even aircraft design teams. The replacements were relatively inexperienced and, unsurprisingly, fearful for their futures and so they tied the line…which doesn't exactly promote innovation.

The Italy situation is more interesting because they entered the war still with biplanes as their primary fighters when EVERYONE else was into monoplanes. It's definitely a topic worth discussing.

 

[Shortround6]

I think we can cut the Italians a bit of slack.
In 1939-40 several other air forces were still using a number of biplanes.
Soviet Union built over 3400 I-153 biplanes between 1939 and 1941.
Japanese army did go to monoplanes but insisted on either biplane maneuverability or near biplane maneuverability and they sacrificed firepower and protection to get it.

A problem for the Soviets was a lack of training. Not only in basic levels but in ongoing training in service. Some accounts say that pilots in active-duty squadrons that were not in combat (fighting the Japanese in Manchuria?) only flew around 30 hours per year (?). Which is barely enough to keep currant on a Cessna and not a high-powered fighter.
Soviets were obsessed with numbers (how many aircraft of each type; fighters, bombers, recon, etc) and not with actual effectiveness.
Italians also fought poorly equipped opponents during most of the 30s. A lot of biplane vs biplane combat. Or biplane vs no aircraft.

British may have been doing a bit of covering their own asses in some of their assessments. British got a lot things right in the 1930s. Training and tactics were not on the list. Being able to fly in tight formation was placed ahead (well ahead) of air-to-air gunnery. British spent a lot time figuring out how to not train pilots in air-to-air gunnery. Turret fighters and zero allowance shooting sucked up a lot of time and effort.

Italy also had major problems with production. Of aircraft, tanks, artillery and even rifles. Italy industrial base was well under 10% of Germany's it was hard to change over anything once they were in WW II. Italy had 3 monoplane fighters in development/production in 1939 but stopping CR 42 production in order to switch over might have meant the loss of 100-200 planes during the changeover in production. The other problem was that 2 of the monoplanes used the same engine as the CR 42 so they weren't that good even in 1940. 290-300mph monoplane vs 270-275mph biplane?