To be fair, there was good reason to paint really bright "HEY GAIZ, WE'RE ITALIAN!" stripes on their ships - there was more than one incident where Italian aircraft targetted their own side. Even if it makes you easier for the enemy to hit, preventing friendly fire is a bigger priority.

NWSiaCB said:

To be fair, there was good reason to paint really bright "HEY GAIZ, WE'RE ITALIAN!" stripes on their ships - there was more than one incident where Italian aircraft targetted their own side. Even if it makes you easier for the enemy to hit, preventing friendly fire is a bigger priority.

So it like when the Japanese painted massive red circles on the decks of their carriers.

oberstleutnant said:

So it like when the Japanese painted massive red circles on the decks of their carriers.

It was also to make it easier for pilots to identify and land on the correct carrier.

Knowing which carrier to not shoot and to land on was not an insignificant issue when you had unfamiliar troops being cycled in and out on a monthly/weekly basis.

NWSiaCB said:

To be fair, there was good reason to paint really bright "HEY GAIZ, WE'RE ITALIAN!" stripes on their ships - there was more than one incident where Italian aircraft targetted their own side. Even if it makes you easier for the enemy to hit, preventing friendly fire is a bigger priority.

Well working on ship identification and tighter air sea coordination in planning might be better solutions, but Italy had much the same issue as Britain where the air force controlled basically all aircraft and it was lackadaisical at best with preparing to support naval operations or training in joint operations.

MMaestro said:
It was also to make it easier for pilots to identify and land on the correct carrier.

Actually IIRC that was done via painting a character of their name on the deck in white, the USN used the CVs hull number for the same purpose.

I never considered this, but I seriously doubt that these stripes caused Italian ships to be that more visible.

Friendly fire incidents happened to everyone, and I believe that any belligerent Air Force or Navy had at least one moment when it killed its own; the one at Punta Stilo between the Regia Aeronautica and the Regia Marina was the one that spurred such identification stripes, but it didn't have particularly bad results. Also because the RA had dragged its feet in creating the first torpedo-bomber units, and therefore all that it had then were level bombers, which couldn't do much.

Tk3997 said:

Well working on ship identification and tighter air sea coordination in planning might be better solutions, but Italy had much the same issue as Britain where the air force controlled basically all aircraft and it was lackadaisical at best with preparing to support naval operations or training in joint operations.

I would add Germany as well, as it had similar issues as well, at least for a period. Operation Wikinger was an accident of such kind, and its consequences were decidedly bad (the Kriegsmarine was always short on destroyers, losing one to friendly bombers and then another one to mines in the subsequent confusion must have been a bitter pill to swallow).

But yes, basically the Regia Marina and the Regia Aeronautica were very much at odds, with the former trying to draw attention to some degree of interforce collaboration (but not too much), and insisting on creating dedicated torpedo-bomber units, and aircraft operations on the sea, and the latter unwilling to undertake anything that it perceived would diminish its independence and draw resources away from what it felt was its true focus. And prewar "exercises" were merely low-level passes that aircrafts made on the squadrons. It didn't happen that few people were getting how important such collaboration would be in the forthcoming conflict.

The true collaboration between the two armed forces would start only by mid-1941, when Admiral Giuseppe Fioravanzo and General Umberto Cappa started working on the issue, and formed the basis for concrete interforce cooperation, which was implemented in the following year, which tangibly improved things.

Historynerd said:

I never considered this, but I seriously doubt that these stripes caused Italian ships to be that more visible.

Infact it's a non-issue. Pilots had no problems in spotting ships from above. The wakes were MUCH more visible than the color of their bows.

On the other end, the stripes were effective in avoiding "friendly bombings". Since there were no Italian Navy pilots, A non-specifically trained pilot had no possibility to discern friend or enemy ships from 3000m above.

Tk3997 said:

Actually IIRC that was done via painting a character of their name on the deck in white, the USN used the CVs hull number for the same purpose.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that there was such a case during WW2? The details escape me, but I'm more than willing to admit I could have been fed bullshit.

MMaestro said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that there was such a case during WW2? The details escape me, but I'm more than willing to admit I could have been fed bullshit.

There was some case where some japanese pilots tried to land on an American carrier, and a case of American planes trying to land on a japanese land base. The british, germans and italians had friendly-fire incidents early in the war (Z1 and Z3 sinking for the germans, the near bombing of a light cruiser during the Hunt of the Bismarck by the british, and the near bombing of a battleship in the case of the italians)