Sunday, 3 May 2015

When Benito met Nessie - an afterthought

As if the Fascist claim to have killed the Loch Ness Monster wasn't bizarre enough, there's one more level of cognitive dissonance here. The non-existence of the Scottish monster isn't the only problem with the idea of Il Duce's air force bagging history's biggest big game trophy.

As far as I know, the only Regia Aeronautica force to attack the British mainland was the Corpo Aereo Italiano (CAI), based in Melsbroek, Belgium. The CAI attacked targets in East Anglia, before being disbanded in early 1941. There's no evidence I can find that they ever ventured anywhere like as far as Scotland.*

I guess, as per Mr Goebbels, the Popolo D’Italia hacks just decided that if they were going to lie, they might as well lie big, safe in the knowledge that wartime censorship along with the temporal impossibility of checking your facts on the Internet in 1941 substantially lowered the chances of being found out.

Unlike the Murdoch's  on-message hacks whose duplicity was outed immediately.
It clearly takes more than the ready access to fact-checking to discourage outrageous propaganda.

*Corrected - I originally stated that their Fiat Br20 bombers lacked the range to fly to Loch Ness and back - re- checking the figures, I think they were theoretically capable of the unlikely trip. But there's no record of them having done so and their fighter escort certainly wouldn't have been able to follow them.

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