How to improve Italian armour?
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Possibly Italy could be like Germany, and use the Spanish Civil War as an excuse to test armor in Spain. Seeing the effectiveness of Italian Armor on the nationalist Spanish could make Mussolini or some other Italian official to institute reforms.
BlairWitch749
Banned
This did happen, and the Fiat Ansaldo's and L-3's where proven to be ineffective against the T-26 as was the Panzer MK I... lessons where learned and the M-11 vehichle was put on the drawing board... the M-11 with its 47mm gun was competitive against other tanks of its class for its day (Panzer MK 3, H39, A12 cruiser tank, and the T-26)... that the Italians didn't have a tank capable of beating a Matilda isn't especially surprising... when war was declared in 1939 the British only had 2 of them, and they where just starting production, nor where the first Italian adventures in the French Alps good tank country for them to seriously test their designs... their first real shock and test of their main battle tank didn't occur till operation Compass when it was shown that the M-11 couldn't pierce a Matilda frontally at any normal battle range... then Rommel came
Rommel and the Germans as a whole in that period eschewed tank vs tank combat instead preferring to lure the allies into anti tank nests and shoot them up with high velocity 50mm pieces and 88mm AA guns acting in the ground role... the DAK itself didn't bring any tanks capable of defeating a Matilda either (the MK 3 and MK 4 of the period couldn't pierce its armor frontally) but instead used AT guns, dive bombers and AA multi role guns to shoot the British up plenty. Rommel didn't even get tanks capable of knocking out a Matilda till AFTER Aleimein when he first started getting some Panzer MK 4's with the high velocity long barrelled 75mm gun (even though the design had been in production since late '41)
Italy's tank's once they adopted German doctrine where satisfactory for their purposes... the M-11 wasn't a suitable vehicle for a high velocity long barrell so upgunning that tank is out, and the P-26 which was intended to be their main battle tank from 1943 and beyond was a competitive enough design where they would get by
there was honestly a lot more wrong with the Italian military machine than their armor itself
Not spend close to 25% of the national budget supplying Franco with supplies, and funds. The myth of Germany in the Spanish Civil War is that they alone brought about victory. The truth is Italy supplied more material, men and supplies than the Germans did.
Germany sent in like 200 tanks, Italy sent in 150, both sent in close to the same level of artillery. In terms of planes Italy sent in 660, and Germany 600. Before some speaks of quality be aware Germany was using the He 51 for the bulk of the war, while the Me 109 was shown to have very poor armaments, with Italy having similar planes in the field.
If you want Italy to have a better tank it does not need much. The M11/39 had frontal armor of 30mm, a 37mm gun, could go 200km, and at a speed of 32kmph. The Panzer III had 30mm armor until mid-1941, a 37mm gun, a range of 150 km, and a similar speed. On paper Italian armor was rather close to German armor. However Germany faced a vastly different war from Italy, as well as saw different needs.
The image of the bumbling Italians is somewhat flawed when you look at how much Italy was able to produce when the war began. It made hundreds of aircraft a week (mostly biplanes) but its "real" army was not to be ready until 1942. Italy has a history of advanced aircraft, quality cars (for all the jokes about fiat in the 1930's they were a international company with autorace wins under their belt), and really good firearms.
I think the swiftest way to fix armor is to get tankettes stuck in the mud.
Germany sent in like 200 tanks, Italy sent in 150, both sent in close to the same level of artillery. In terms of planes Italy sent in 660, and Germany 600. Before some speaks of quality be aware Germany was using the He 51 for the bulk of the war, while the Me 109 was shown to have very poor armaments, with Italy having similar planes in the field.
If you want Italy to have a better tank it does not need much. The M11/39 had frontal armor of 30mm, a 37mm gun, could go 200km, and at a speed of 32kmph. The Panzer III had 30mm armor until mid-1941, a 37mm gun, a range of 150 km, and a similar speed. On paper Italian armor was rather close to German armor. However Germany faced a vastly different war from Italy, as well as saw different needs.
The image of the bumbling Italians is somewhat flawed when you look at how much Italy was able to produce when the war began. It made hundreds of aircraft a week (mostly biplanes) but its "real" army was not to be ready until 1942. Italy has a history of advanced aircraft, quality cars (for all the jokes about fiat in the 1930's they were a international company with autorace wins under their belt), and really good firearms.
I think the swiftest way to fix armor is to get tankettes stuck in the mud.
I think there are 3 big problems about it:
1, military strategy) The official position of the italian army was that using tanks was risky. A tank could bog down in the mud/sand, could run out of fuel, could break down away from its supply centers and run out of spare parts.
To give an example the italian evaluation of the Red Army was that it was "prone to collapse easily because it was too much mechanized".
I know it seems silly now, but that's what was the Army policy.
(And before '39 there has not been a massive-scale test for tanks, anyway, so they could even be right).
Thus, tanks were not labeled as a top priority and, apart form very few divisions (Centauro), Italian army preferred to invest on large infantry masses (Great-War mentality played a role here, too).
Also, the (few) tanks were to be used as support to infantry rather than armour division per se, thus were really conceived to be more armoured cars than tanks.
2, economics and politcs) All the models were produced by FIAT-Ansaldo.
All of them.
There was no real competition aimed at determining the better design.
FIAT-Ansaldo managed to have HUGE investments from the state and to give the cheapest possible product in exchange for that.
Bribery and corruption were the means to achieve it.
3, industrial base) lack of
1, military strategy) The official position of the italian army was that using tanks was risky. A tank could bog down in the mud/sand, could run out of fuel, could break down away from its supply centers and run out of spare parts.
To give an example the italian evaluation of the Red Army was that it was "prone to collapse easily because it was too much mechanized".
I know it seems silly now, but that's what was the Army policy.
(And before '39 there has not been a massive-scale test for tanks, anyway, so they could even be right).
Thus, tanks were not labeled as a top priority and, apart form very few divisions (Centauro), Italian army preferred to invest on large infantry masses (Great-War mentality played a role here, too).
Also, the (few) tanks were to be used as support to infantry rather than armour division per se, thus were really conceived to be more armoured cars than tanks.
2, economics and politcs) All the models were produced by FIAT-Ansaldo.
All of them.
There was no real competition aimed at determining the better design.
FIAT-Ansaldo managed to have HUGE investments from the state and to give the cheapest possible product in exchange for that.
Bribery and corruption were the means to achieve it.
3, industrial base) lack of
Last edited:
BlairWitch749
Banned
I think there are 3 big problems about it:
1, military strategy) The official position of the italian army was that using tanks was risky. A tank could bog down in the mud/sand, could run out of fuel, could break down away from its supply centers and run out of spare parts.
To give an example the italian evaluation of the Red Army was that it was "prone to collapse easily because it was too much mechanized".
I know it seems silly now, but that's what was the Army policy.
(And before '39 there has not been a massive-scale test for tanks, anyway, so they could even be right).
Thus, tanks were not labeled as a top priority and, apart form very few divisions (Centauro), Italian army preferred to invest on large infantry masses (Great-War mentality played a role here, too).
Also, the (few) tanks were to be used as support to infantry rather than armour division per se, thus were really conceived to be more armoured cars than tanks.
2, economics and politcs) All the models were produced by FIAT-Ansaldo.
All of them.
There was no real competition aimed at determining the better design.
FIAT-Ansaldo managed to have HUGE investments from the state and to give the cheapest possible product in exchange for that.
Bribery and corruption were the means to achieve it.
3, industrial base) lack of
1. EVERYONE of the major powers was having doctrine searching issues in the 1936-40 period... they where no more out of step than the Americans or the British of the period... by 1941 they developed the doctrine of rapid movement (rough translation) which was analagous to German doctrines of the day
2. You have a real point there, and Fiat's bumbling severely delayed the 75mm assault guns and they could have made a real difference
3. This wasn't as big a problem as you might think... Italy produced thousands of tanks the problem was that A: transporting them to Libya was dangerous and difficult B Libya's infrastructure was hard pressed to support more forces than otl (1 more division was perhaps possible but that was it) C: Italy made a serious committment of forces to Russia and the Balkans that tied up a lot of their resources
Their armored vehicles like those of the DAK where not that much of a handicap... and ANYONE who served in the 8th army would tell you that the Ariete and Trieste Divisions where first class and tough customers... they where just grossly outnumbered and from mid '42 on suffered from total and complete air inferiority making their lives hell
I would say that after Poland and France everyone took the hint
Only problem is that the design and the manufactury chains were to be re-converted (and industrial grumbled about it, and sometimes did not do that).
I am sorry I was not clear
I meant that the lack of a multi-polar (i.e. many different independent industries) industrial base made FIAT-Ansaldo position even more monopolistic, thus forcing the government to gulp down bad (cheap) design, because the alternative was to have no design at all