Airbone Bunny
Airman
- 24
- May 12, 2009
Great ideas, Airbone Bunny, and welcome.
Thanks for the welcome
Regarding what small countries could do to get their their air forces ready for WWII, I must say that Netherlands has always been a historical sore point for me. Kind of a bitter pill to swallow.
Yep, Netherlands was a small country, but my impression is that it could have made a lot more to improve its air power.
While most small european countries didn't even have a rudimentary aircraft industry, Netherlands had the Fokker and Koolhoven companies, which created some decent products. The Fokker D XXI was not a bad fighter at all, and the Gs1 fighter was a real innovation. Both planes put a short but decent fight against the Luftwaffe. As far as I know, the Koolhoven 58 fighter was not bad too.
So it seems than Netherlands had the necessary tools to build a decent fighting force. However, on May 1940 Netherlands only had available perhaps 30 Fokker DXXI, 20 G1, and no Koolhoven at all. It is still hard to believe how small the dutch air force was considering that they were a country with a decent aicraft industry.
Why Netherlands didn't build a stronger fighter force between 1936-1939?. Why was that? utter stupidity? lack of funds? not enough time? fear of upsetting Germany? political machinations? greedy companies giving priority to foreign customers? fatalism? pacifism taken to the extreme? living in denial?
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