AHC: Improve the Italian military's performance in WW2.
- Thread starter John Dusk
- Start date
Deleted member 1487
Sorry we forgot your opinion was infallible law. For your own sanity you might want to avoid the parts of the discussion you don't approve of.
Anyway, now from a scholarly source:
Some Reflections on the Fighting Power of the Italian Army in North Africa, 1940–1943
Richard Carrier
Department of History, Royal Military College of Canada, Canada
War in History 2015, Vol. 22(4) 503–528
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda_30
Why does any of the above matter? The backbone of the basic element of Italian infantry strength was it's squad automatic weapon, a weapon that had an average rate of fire comparable to an M1 Garand due to it's problems. That isn't a supply issue, that is a design issue, one that compromised the basic ability of the Italian infantry to fight and win an engagement. Having a better weapon/cartridge combination would have dramatically improved the ability of the Italians to fight and win engagements against other infantry, the largest element of any army. It is something that doesn't require any bit of increased supply, just a working weapon. Also by having a 6.5mm cartridge that did it's job effectively, the Italians wouldn't have tried to recaliber their infantry weapons in the midst of a shooting war, which only made the supply situation worse:
Ian_W
Banned
Wiking,
If you send everyone home except for the motorcycle, mountain and parachute troops, the they have lots more "tanks, of anti-tank equipment, artillery, and anti-aircraft defence" to go around between the troops left in the field.
Yes, the Italians had some very good stuff, but you are concentrating on the wrong problem.
They had too many bayonets, and not enough supporting arms.
Get. Rid. Of. The. Useless. Bayonets.
Because it's all about the logistics, yeah ? Because - and we both know you ignore logistics - Nazis plus logistics is dangerous.
Which makes me wonder just how Mussolini could have so completely misread his peoples thoughts and feelings. For someone who made his life in politics, this is astoundingly bad judgement.
Deleted member 1487
And that leaves how many divisions? They would still have inadequate materials as well. Having surplus useless equipment isn't that much of a help. Plus it means very limited abilities to intervene anywhere else and means occupying their colonies absorbs the entire military, including the part that is cutoff and sacrificed in East Africa.
Equipment is hardly the only issue with the Italian military, I've even started a thread on Italy not participating in Russia or invading Greece to focus on North Africa, but even relatively minor fixes like adopting working equipment and calibers does have an effect. Since this thread is about improve Italian performance ANY means of improving performance should be looked at, not just the stuff you think should be discussed. You're certainly welcome to fap to logistics to the exclusion of all else, but that isn't the only thing the matter with the Italian military, arguably less than half the problem. Strategy, such as not invading more countries than they could sustain, is more important and logistics then is a effect, not a cause of the problem.
One of the issues with the Italian Army in and around 1940 was that after the Albania adventure Mussolini ordered a large portion of the army to be demobbed
Aware that many men in the army that invaded Albania worked in factories and in agriculture (with essential skills etc.) he did not want to overly disrupt the Italian industry and food producing ability hence his decision.
This process had just about been completed when Mussolini changed his mind and recalled many of these men to the colours and invaded Greece.
So therefore many units’ cohesion and training regimes had been broken only to be rapidly reformed and sent back into battle with little time to redress the lack of both.
It’s no wonder they performed badly vs the Greeks and had a poor reputation in WW2
So what should they do?
In the UK they had not forgotten the lessons learned where men who had critical skills in industry were accepted as volunteers. So in WW2 many individuals were denied permission to join up or conversely not drafted if their job / skill set was deemed vital to the nation.
So let Italy do the same - identify jobs/skills vital to Italian industry etc and prevent those from joining the military or being drafted – while this would reduce the overall numbers available for the Italian Military it would drastically reduce the impact on vital Italian industry and agriculture and go some way to preventing the need to ‘disband’ units and allow that cohesion and ‘tribal’ knowledge to be retained in a given unit.
Aware that many men in the army that invaded Albania worked in factories and in agriculture (with essential skills etc.) he did not want to overly disrupt the Italian industry and food producing ability hence his decision.
This process had just about been completed when Mussolini changed his mind and recalled many of these men to the colours and invaded Greece.
So therefore many units’ cohesion and training regimes had been broken only to be rapidly reformed and sent back into battle with little time to redress the lack of both.
It’s no wonder they performed badly vs the Greeks and had a poor reputation in WW2
So what should they do?
In the UK they had not forgotten the lessons learned where men who had critical skills in industry were accepted as volunteers. So in WW2 many individuals were denied permission to join up or conversely not drafted if their job / skill set was deemed vital to the nation.
So let Italy do the same - identify jobs/skills vital to Italian industry etc and prevent those from joining the military or being drafted – while this would reduce the overall numbers available for the Italian Military it would drastically reduce the impact on vital Italian industry and agriculture and go some way to preventing the need to ‘disband’ units and allow that cohesion and ‘tribal’ knowledge to be retained in a given unit.
According to the Wikipaedia entry a Ca 133 could carry 18 fully equipped troops. It that statement correct? If it is how far could it fly with that load?
Deleted member 1487
McPherson
Banned
Just want to point out the obvious.
Improve Italian weapon performance and the logistics burden increases as a logarithmic function with regard to ammunition needs, transport and supply. Double the combat rpm across the line (all weapons) and the needs for ammunition by individual fire unit goes up about 6.7 - 8 times. Italian firepower doctrine will exacerbate the problem. Fire discipline, the German schtick, to conserve ammunition (The Germans used a lot of bullets themselves, they are notorious for not paying attention to their own fire discipline training to conserve ammunition in battle.) is not the Italian way. Truck shortage develops. Gasoline shortage. Water shortage, and troop shortage. Takes men to move everything, too. More tail to tooth. Italy's Esercito starts to look like an allied army. Ian W. does have a mathematical point here. And just how does the supply chain feed X Army in Libya when it suddenly doubles its ammunition needs as it historically happened?
Improve Italian weapon performance and the logistics burden increases as a logarithmic function with regard to ammunition needs, transport and supply. Double the combat rpm across the line (all weapons) and the needs for ammunition by individual fire unit goes up about 6.7 - 8 times. Italian firepower doctrine will exacerbate the problem. Fire discipline, the German schtick, to conserve ammunition (The Germans used a lot of bullets themselves, they are notorious for not paying attention to their own fire discipline training to conserve ammunition in battle.) is not the Italian way. Truck shortage develops. Gasoline shortage. Water shortage, and troop shortage. Takes men to move everything, too. More tail to tooth. Italy's Esercito starts to look like an allied army. Ian W. does have a mathematical point here. And just how does the supply chain feed X Army in Libya when it suddenly doubles its ammunition needs as it historically happened?
Deleted member 1487
Smaller, fully motorized combat component, as I talked about in my thread about Italian strategic priorities being on point:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/italy-focused-on-north-africa.443170/
Also the problem with your calculation is that successes add up, so by winning more engagements leads to quicker victory and overall less ammo used...plus of course all the historical supply dumps not abandoned in the repeated Italians defeats, which probably cost them far more than what they spent in combat in 1940-41.
What slice of the Logistics pie is small arms ammunition generally using?
I would imagine that it is less than the daily average of POL, Water, food, artillery ammo being delivered across a given Division especially as on most soldiers will not be shooting their rifle, SMG, LMG every day but will be eating, drinking everyday and the units vehicles would need POL etc and the units artillery will be far more likely to be firing on a daily basis.
I would imagine that it is less than the daily average of POL, Water, food, artillery ammo being delivered across a given Division especially as on most soldiers will not be shooting their rifle, SMG, LMG every day but will be eating, drinking everyday and the units vehicles would need POL etc and the units artillery will be far more likely to be firing on a daily basis.
True. I don't know if this is really all that possible TBH. Because after Barbarossa (which the OP stated he was particularly interested in) Italy is well and truly screwed. Too many fronts, too little industry and what they have is stymied by Fascist cronyism and incompetence. This gives Italy a bit less than two years to change things, in the midst of a major war, on the loosing side. We should possibly start a separate thread asking this question sometime in the early to mid thirties.
Deleted member 1487
With that constraint for starters the Italians could not send any troops to Russia and reserve everything for North Africa after the start of Barbarossa. If they can use some troops that wouldn't be as useful in Africa instead in say the Balkans (I'm thinking the Mountain Divisions), then they could free up the significant number of German troops who were employed on the offensives against the partisans in Yugoslavia.
I won't deny that, but OTL made it pretty clear that Italy doesn't have the industrial base to switch away from 6.5 Carcano (and yes, 6.5 Swede is an entirely different Caliber), in fact the attempt to switch to 7.35 was a disaster that massively screwed up both weapon development and logistics.
Besides I'm pretty sure the impotency of 6.5 Carcano has been exaggerated (sure it's no 7.92 Mauser, but it's not like you'd be able to just walk off being hit centre of mass with one), and it certainly could have been more than compensated for with weapons capable of producing an adequate volume of fire.
So be it a ZB-26 clone, a modified MG-30 like I suggested, or something else, I think whatever they use instead of the Breda 30 should remain in 6.5 Carcano.
Last edited:
I have to agree with you. Having enough of something that is (and I too am not convinced of the 6.5 Italian being that bad) mediocre is far better than a better round and not having enough of either, which is what they got.
Deleted member 1487
When I was talking about caliber-ing, I was not sticking to the time period in OP, rather it was a general point of something they could have done (should have done?) back when they were adopting a 6.5mm caliber weapon. That said they could have just modified/improved the standard 6.5mm bullet used with the Carcano cartridge to get all the benefits of the 7.35mm round and more. The Italians totally shit the bed with the attempt to move to the 7.35mm bullet when they could have just made a better 6.5mm bullet and avoided all the problems with recaliber-ing their infantry weapons. The point about the Swedish 6.5mm was so that they could have adopted the Swedish BAR. Honestly they would have been better getting the Czechs to modify their ZB-26 to Italian caliber and using their MG designs rather than their domestic options, which all seem to have been crap. Hell, even the Japanese Type 96 was superior! The Carcano cartridge was of course completely decent, but by adopting a non-standard 6.5mm caliber (theirs was actually 6.8mm instead of the 6.7mm actual of all other 6.5mm rounds) they were shut out of all other 6.5mm nation's developments in small arms; even adopting Japanese weapons modified to take Italian rounds would have been much better than the historical Italian MGs.
That said, if we're sticking to the time period OP wants, then there is very little that could be done other than not joining in the war in the East and focusing resources on North Africa.