AHC: A Competent Italian Military During WW2

Status
Not open for further replies.
Somua's?

If we want to get Italian Armoured divisions up and running earlier, they could get 300+ Somua S35 from French stocks in 1940, and using French equipment a large maintenance facility could be set up in Lybia.
 

Rubicon

Banned
This is were a jump to US logic would be needed. In the US a car guy, William Knudsen, president of GMC, was put in charge of coordinating industry to defence needs. He saw tanks as more akin to cars than to locomotives, so e set up to build a huge tank factory that was organised like the best car factories and run by people from Chrysler. This became Detroit Tank Arsenal. Later they repeated the idea with Grand Blanc tank Arsenal, wich went from beguinning construction to mass building Shermans in six months. In Italy there was no shortage of skilled auto workers, and Milan is the Italian Detroit, so building a large tank factory in Milan from 1938 would be doable. The US also went from riveted to welded hulls with ease, and some factories, like Baldwin, built both riveted and welded M3.
But even if we drop the common hull requirment, we could just let the Italians licence build German engine and suspension designs, and build their own PzIII analogue with a riveted hull. I don't think however, that it would be that difficult, on a new factory, to introduce welded hull manufacture in a two year time frame.
Even if it had half the capacity of Detroit Tank Arsenal, we're talking 200 to 300 tanks per month...

Even if Italy and Germany were to embark on such an endeavor and even if there were enough skilled workers in Milano or Torino for a new tank factory. There is one enormous big hurdle to cross.

Raw materials.

Germany has zero to spare, in fact Germany needed to import a bucketload of raw material simply to keep its own industry running. Italy has very, very few strategical resources needed to construct armoured fighting vehicles.

If we want to get Italian Armoured divisions up and running earlier, they could get 300+ Somua S35 from French stocks in 1940, and using French equipment a large maintenance facility could be set up in Lybia.

This is perhaps a possible solution. You could potentially ship the French factory that produced the S35 (which one eludes me at the moment) to Italy and set up shop there, of course you'll still run into the same problem I mentioned earlier, raw materials. But it might be possible.

But to be honest trying to improve the Italian equipment I believe is a waste of time, it was actually good enough, and instead focusing of finding ways to improve that which really matters:
Training
Education
Doctrine
 
This is perhaps a possible solution. You could potentially ship the French factory that produced the S35 (which one eludes me at the moment) to Italy and set up shop there, of course you'll still run into the same problem I mentioned earlier, raw materials. But it might be possible.

The factory is Somua, an acronym for Society for something artillery in French. Located in Paris suburbs, it was occupied by Germans. I think Germans probably used it the whole war, as they used S35s themselves.
 
I'm with Rubicon

Several issues confronted the Italians as we've mentioned:
  • Italian industry had nowhere near the capacity for mass production or management skills to scale up before WWII
  • As with most fascist regimes, political reliability trumps technical ability
  • Italian army doctrine had major issues stemming from WWI that weren't addressed. Cardona should have been drummed out in disgrace and there were several other senior Italian commanders that were severe impediments to effective military reform.
  • Fourth Benny the Moose couldn't keep his mitts out of either the industrial scale-up or the military reforms necessary for the Italians to perform up to their potential.

For the Italians to do better- TED and TOE needed serious improvements that fascist governments interested in imposing a steady-state economy aren't willing or able to do very often. KMT in Taiwan offers one example and ROK another after WWII of a one-party authoritarian state getting a nation's act together on both the technical and military effectiveness fronts to succeed.
 
This is were a jump to US logic would be needed. In the US a car guy, William Knudsen, president of GMC, was put in charge of coordinating industry to defence needs. He saw tanks as more akin to cars than to locomotives, so e set up to build a huge tank factory that was organised like the best car factories and run by people from Chrysler. This became Detroit Tank Arsenal. Later they repeated the idea with Grand Blanc tank Arsenal, wich went from beguinning construction to mass building Shermans in six months. In Italy there was no shortage of skilled auto workers, and Milan is the Italian Detroit, so building a large tank factory in Milan from 1938 would be doable. The US also went from riveted to welded hulls with ease, and some factories, like Baldwin, built both riveted and welded M3.
But even if we drop the common hull requirment, we could just let the Italians licence build German engine and suspension designs, and build their own PzIII analogue with a riveted hull. I don't think however, that it would be that difficult, on a new factory, to introduce welded hull manufacture in a two year time frame.
Even if it had half the capacity of Detroit Tank Arsenal, we're talking 200 to 300 tanks per month...

Uhm, to rivet or to not rivet aside, building a single big (or not so big) tank plant with multiple assembly lines in italy is first of all, hazardous (hey, its the land of Douhet! :) ) but most importantly: investment heavy.

Not only grinders, drillers, revolvingiforgetitsnameandshameonme needed, but palettes, conveyors, cranes, big owens.. and many.
Maybe they should solve the skilled workforce problem (start the plant early, educate, mix the with the experienced, etc) but only at the expense of other works (like naval yards or truck production),
And the raw material problem as Rubicon mentioned, still could have been hit hard: im amused, that the germans restricted the use of good electrodes! and dont think that the italians were in better shape.
 
OTL they did build large numbers of tanks, simply not very good ones.
Centralised production and better models would give more tanks earlier. Skoda and CKD, among others kept going up to 1945 so there wasn't really a massive shortage of materials in Europe.
The economic rational in 38 to build a big factory was simple. EXports. There was a large market in 1938 for weapon, specially tanks and aircraft, exports and after Munich Italy and the USA were essencialy the only countries exporting, all other concnentrating on national needs.
As for the conditions for industrial progress, the FIAT group was huge, and its SPA division was a major truck manufacturer.
 
Im afraid, we are back in square one: more competent leadership.
(Altough Benny was somehow visionary: as far as i remember, he really did inveted state capital in the Torino plant.)

Absolutely. All the pieces were there. They just couldn't get them to fit. Italian fascism was not a good breeding ground for competence, and I'd rather have (lets avoid extreme bows vs LMG examples, ok) the right people with the wrong weapons than the wrong people with the right weapons.
A 20s POD, an Arditti based rebuilding of the Army,some brainswaps for leaders, and we could have an Italian IDF (67 vintage) rather than the OTL mess...
icon6.gif


arditi_al_assalto.jpg
 
Italian and Spanish troops also supported in Operation Barbarossa. How about redistributing their involvement to where more troops in numbers matter most? Say supporting Romanian in Ukraine and Von Manstein in the Crimea so that when VM was victorious, Italian troops share the spoils of Soviet machines. Finland refitted T34 and KVs; Italian industries given better industries in alternative timeline could refit captured Soviet machines or produced better Italian tanks.
 
Italian and Spanish troops also supported in Operation Barbarossa. How about redistributing their involvement to where more troops in numbers matter most? Say supporting Romanian in Ukraine and Von Manstein in the Crimea so that when VM was victorious, Italian troops share the spoils of Soviet machines. Finland refitted T34 and KVs; Italian industries given better industries in alternative timeline could refit captured Soviet machines or produced better Italian tanks.
Finland refitted T/34s and KVs because they were clise to front. Germany other allies had problems to ship captured equipment back home because of train allocations as well as Germans wanting that materials themselves.
 
Finland refitted T/34s and KVs because they were clise to front. Germany other allies had problems to ship captured equipment back home because of train allocations as well as Germans wanting that materials themselves.

Finland was located at the northern end of the German-Soviet battleline; Romanian at the southern end. As Von Manstein's leadership was dueling with the Red Army, could more Italian and Romanian troops be allotted to Southern Ukraine and the Crimea? Using the coastline of the Black Sea, captured Soviet machines could be shipped to Romanian ports where they would be refitted or taken apart for valuable assets. With reference to Japan taking American scrap iron and steel, scrap Soviet metals from taken apart machines could be shipped from Romanian ports to resource poor Italy. Say from the Port of Constanta to the Port of Taranto would take a week.
 
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top