Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 099" video.

wrt the good gun, bad mount, question: it wasn't just the Italian 8", their 6" and 4.7" also apparently suffered excessive dispersion from the guns being mounted too close together. You would think they would have learned from the first misadventure?
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@NoNameAtAll2 The Italians starting going to the destroyer swarm model in the 20s. Overall, Italy lost about 9 DDs in WWI, but received 10 ex-Austrian and German DDs as war reparations. They also built 35 more during the war. From the end of the war to 1925, Italy scrapped or sold 17 old DDs. So Italy had a net gain of 19 vs prior to 1915, so no shortage of DDs at all. While the RM was pleading poverty, cancelling the Caracciolo class BBs, scrapping all their pre-dreadnoughts and abandoning the salvage of da Vinci, leaving them with only 5 BBs, they were constantly building more DDs. Their DD building program laid down 3 in 1919, 4 in 20, 5 in 21, 2 in 22, 3 in 23, 4 in 24 and 8 in 25. 26 was the only year of that decade when the RM did not lay down more DDs, all the while pleading poverty, economic recession, and social unrest. They didn't lay down a new cruiser until 25, and they didn't use their 1927 and 1929 battleship construction windows offered by the Washington treaty until they laid down the first two Littorios in 34. The light Italian units appear to have been plenty busy during the war, as most of them were sunk, while the BBs mostly sat in harbor.
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Weren't we kicking around the Italy joins Central Powers idea a week or two ago? One of the respondents on that thread talked about Italy invading southern France, and there was discussion of Italy's territorial ambitions wrt some of the area held by Austria motivating Italy to side with the UK and France. So, the question is what is in it for Italy? Italy had territorial ambitions in Africa, had gone to war with Turkey in 1911-12 to seize Libya. Rather than Italy invading southern France, what if Italy saw entering the war on the side of the Central Powers as an opportunity to push out of Libya toward either Suez or Algeria. Taking Suez might not go down well with Turkey, so more likely Italy pushes west through Algeria and Morocco, while the Turks push west to Suez. That would create a lot of naval conflict in the Med as France, UK and Italy duke it out to keep their North African operations supplied. An eventual Allied victory would see Italy stripped of Libya, which eliminates the North African campaign in WWII.
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@NoNameAtAll2 I happened upon a video that gave numbers for the strength of the RM vs what the Brit and French navies had assigned to the Med in June of 40m and shows how overweighted the RM was with DDs: BBs: Italy 4, UK 5, France 5. CAs: Italy 7, UK 0, France 7. CLs: Italy 12, UK 9, France 7. DDs and torpedo boats: Italy 126, UK 35. France 57. Subs: Italy 113, UK 12. France: 46. Italy had more DDs/torpedo boats and subs in the Med than the UK and France combined. Then France surrendered, and the Brits were really outnumbered by the Italian destroyer swarm.
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