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...
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.
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...
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.)
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.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.