ROMMEL: “The Italian soldier is disciplined, sober, an excellent worker and an example to the Germans in preparing dug-in positions. If attacked he reacts well. He lacks, however, a spirit of attack, and above all, proper training. Many operations did not succeed solely because of a lack of coordination between artillery and heavy arms fire and the advance of the infantry. The lack of adequate means of supply and service, and the insufficient number of motor vehicles and tanks, is such that during some movements Italian sections arrived at their posts incomplete. Lack of means of transport and service in Italian units is such that especially in the bigger units, they cannot be maintained as a reserve and one cannot count on their quick intervention.”
The truth is the Italians went to war with 2143 light tanks (worthless) 954 Med tanks and 147 h tanks. My belief is that if they had focused less on the number of troops and instead had focused on an elite strike force based upon
1. Alpine troops
2. Airborn
3. 7 PZ divisons
4. 25 Inf divisons
They could have been a significant factor in the war. This of course would have meant
1. Good leadership at the top of the military
2. Transfer the cost of 21 Inf to create the 7 Pz divisons at 150 tanks each or a 1050 good med tanks.
3. Good airforce ( they had 1450 milt aircraft )
If there Navy which had the following in 1940
At June, 10th, 1940 (at the very beginning of the war) the Regia Marina was composed by
◊ 6 battleships, two of them of modern 35,000 ton. type
◊ 7 cruisers of 10,000 ton.
◊ 14 light cruisers between 5.000 and 8.000 ton.
◊ 12 flotilla leader destroyers
◊ 28 modern destroyers
◊ 19 old model destroyers
◊ 69 torpedo boats
◊ 117 submarines of varied type and tonnage
Had instead focused on 3 Aircraft carriers instead of the 6 BB and better diving Uboats vs the slow dive Ital craft +++ the inactive use of the navy at the start of the war destroyed moral
Obviously it could not more be sent little units to slaughter, without no escort: consequently the 7 July 1940 great part of the Italian fleet takes the sea in order to escort a convoy of five steamboats directed to Bengasi. It seems an exaggerated deployment of forces, but the facts of the
Espero had made the Italian Command prudent. Also the English fleet is in sea, the battle is unavoidable: it is the first sea battle between battleships in the Mediterranean and it will pass to History as the battle of
Punta Stilo.
The battle, for itself not conclusive, put to knot the insufficient integration between Italian sea and air units, and, beyond that, the inefficiency of the Italian aircraft bombs, weighting only 250 Kg, against naval units (English sailors, after the first experiences, called them "cow shits").
Leaving to a side some smaller episode, the first months of war saw a substantial inactivity of the Italian naval forces, intentional by the orders from the High Command and the government: they were expecting the invasion of England and its defeat; to the contrary, in Navy headquarters there was much displeasing (they used the nickname of "Navy of non-intervention"), because it was wanted to search for a greater battle with English Navy, that, in that time, was numerically inferior.
The indolence of the Italian High Command made that English succeeded to carry out, the 29 August 1940, an operation, called "Hats", that previewed to send reinforces to the island of Malta and transfer some major surface units to the fleet of Alexandria. Now the force ratio was turned over.
