Yesterday's Weapons Forums

While looking for examples of Italian uniform items I need for my display, I came across some Italian tank pics.

Pretty amazing, actually... Look at the small machinegun carrier. Twelve mm maximum armor plating! Dang! Black tip '06 would go steaming right through that!



I mean, the thing weighed around 5000 pounds & only had two 6.5 MGs for armament. Given the logistics problems the axis had in Africa, I severely question the need/use of this! They were used in the Spanish Civil War & did okay against partisans. When the opposition showed up with some of the Russian light tanks they had, these soon found a reason to leave!

The SP artillery shown in this pic was not a bad machine... relatively speaking. You only had so many options for aiming it... & for those long shots, you needed a ramp... Make the best with what you have, I guess...



This tank is from a museum of the El Alamein battle. I think it's remarkable for the lack of damage. It must have been captured while in the shop for repairs.

Notice the rivets in all these... In the Time-Life series World War Two, the war in the desert, there's a pic of heavily sandbagged Italian tanks. The sandbags were necessary because the armor was so thin.

Gen. Rommel was quoted as saying, "It would curl one's hair to see the equipment with which the Duce sent his troops into battle!" And how!!! SW




*edit*

By way of comparison, here's a Russian T-28 of similar vintage. The T-28 medium tank. Crew of 6 - 28 tons - 3 turrets... and REALLY easy to hit!

The majority of these were lost to the Finns during the winter war & the Germans quickly killed the rest.

It also suffered from thin armor as the Russkies soon learned in Finland, so it was upgraded to a little over 3" in 'critical areas'. Not enough to stop German anti-tank munitions.

None survived the war. Tank designers were one of two things in those days: heroes or back stops for firing squads!! Many desperate days were to follow for the Russians until the T-34 really started rolling from the factories. SW

When I was a youngster in high school, my circle of friends discussed all sorts of things military. One of the jokes going around then was the story about the design of Italian tanks. It went something like this:

"Do you know what kind of transmission is installed in an Italian Army tank?"

"No, I'll bite, what kind does it have?"

"Italian tanks have a five speed gear box; one speed forward and four in reverse. The reason it has a forward gear is in case they get attacked from the rear."

Another thing we learned about the Italian Army was that it had the best engineers in the Axis. When Rommel wanted things built in North Africa, he had the Italians do it. Read about it and other good stuff in the book "Foxes of the Desert," by Paul Carell.