ORIGINAL: rtrapasso
The books i read continually would make note that the Italians would often jettison their bombs and return to base when intercepted... not always, but it was enough of a problem that they eventually called for help in the form of the Luftwaffe. Of course, other authors may cite other views.
Unfortunately, many books just scratch the surface and fail victims of easy stereotypes and of the propaganda of the time when it's about describing the history of armed forces of axis minors. For a more in-depth and well researched account I suggest the book "In the Skies of Europe" by Hans Werner Neulen.
At the peak of air war over Malta and in the Med, the life expectancy of the crews of frontline Italian bombers and torpedo bombers was of 3 sorties- not that different form kamikazes. Not surprisingly the flight to Malta became known as the "route to death" - so much for "lack of determination".
The Italian air effort in the Med was always greatly hampered by big problems in the Italian industry, bad logistic and hopelessy outmatched aircrafts. In the last big offensive against Malta (10-20 Oct 42) the Italian Air Force deployed an impressive force of 4 bomber groups, 3 fighter groups and 1 fighter bomber group - in reality the total all bomber groups could field were 18 Cant Z1007bis and 7 Stukas - not much to neutralize the island.
I understand the problem of implementing this in the WITP engine and I want to thank Fremen for his hard work in giving us a beatiful and well-researched mod. I think a way to incorporate these logistic limitations, and to add realism to the mod, would be to reduce the replacement rate of some of the major Italian aircrafts. This way air groups will be depleted in heavy action and the pace of the air war will slow down to a more realistic rythm.
