Yeah...this guy picked one up real cheap...
Posted on 05/07/2008 6:30:16 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Yeah...this guy picked one up real cheap...
One of the worst equipped [and led] armies in history. They had to sandbag their tank [not tankette] hulls to stop rifle bullets.
Tell that to the Germans.
This is what caught my eye. Really a stunning piece of mendacity....
Sandbagging tank hulls against shrapnels was done by all Armies.
and was a pretty good shot with it... The ad for his rifle would be;
Fired very few times, dropped twice
Magic bullets extra...
I’m talking about sandbags, inside the hull for the specific purpose of stopping small arms fire. Not artillery or anti-tank weapon fire.
I wonder if those 400 tanks looked like these little guys. (This is the L6, but I think they mostly had L3 which are simular).
All right - who’s the wise guy who changed the title? Petronski, is that you?
I read an essay in which armies are classified by their purpose.
1. To fight and defeat other armies.
2. To look good on parade and increase the regime’s prestige.
3. To act as essentially an internal police force against the regime’s enemies.
In WWII the various armies fell out, I would guess:
Italian: Mostly group 2, a little bit of group 3.
German: Definitely group 1.
British: Group 1, although few can beat them at showmanship.
American: Group 1, as Americans have never cared much about the other types.
Soviet: Mostly group 3.
French: Planned as group 1, but didn’t work out as planned.
Japanese: Group 1.
Chinese Nationalist: Lord only knows!
BTW, some of the best parading outfits are nobody you’d want to fight. Consider the British Guard and Highlander regiments.
The British actually had something very similar to that, barely a tank at all...made by Vickers, I believe. It mounted a .50-caliber (not the American M2 .50 but a much inferior weapon) and a .303-caliber gun, and had very light armor but reasonable mobility for the 1930s. Nasty against infantry, and useless against anything else.
}:-)4
I’d call #3 colonial army, IMHO more exact for those days.
Italian armed forces might have stand between #2 and 3: something to show in order to provide an advantage in diplomacy, externally; and increase the ruler’s prestige, internally; and a tool to conquer territories in Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans.
They would have also something about #1, which I’d call “Armed Forces prepared for a Total War”. For instance, the plan to increase the force of the Italian navy was more far reaching.
Regarding equipment, they had some very good (battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, torpedo aircrafts and air launched torpedos) product of the italian ingenuity; but also extremely bad weapons and systems, and especially, a management and organization unable to cope with a total war.
In the end, I think that all can be traced back to a lack of doctrine, developed into lack of coordination, management and organization (the italian navy had no air arm, depending on the air force). In such conditions, even the best equipment used correctly yields no practical results.
I saw one of the L6’s at the Aberdeen Proving Ground Museum and it was wedged between an bit T-(62 I think) and a Patton tank. It looked like a childs toy. You could probably fit an L6 in the opens space inside an Abrams.
I agree with you Homer, "real time" is when they wrote it, and today is +70 years later.
I understand changing posts can be done, though don't know how.
Once I made what I thought was a "brilliant critique" of someone's post, only to see later he had changed his own post, thus making my "brilliant critique" look a bit foolish.
I also heard that anyone can change not only their own post, but yours too! Now that would surely be dirty pool...
Btw, thanks again for the interesting articles. We really have no other way to see "real time," the way our parents and grandparents experienced it.
I have no such powers.
Someone else spotted the error and fixed it.
Once again you piqued my curiosity, a.c. Didn't you first draw our attention to the career of Herbert Matthews? I went to google to seek factoids relating V. Gayda. Part of what I found is as follows.
The fall of Barcelona on Jan. 26 was celebrated in Italy as a national victory. On Feb. 5. Virginio Gayda, editor of the Giornale d'Italia of Rome and generally regarded as an unofficial but reliable spokesman for the Fascist Foreign Ministry, wrote that, in order to attain certain political objectives, the Italian troops in Spain would stay there even after the complete defeat of the Loyalist armies. France naturally regarded this proposal as a clear threat to her security, while to the British it represented a violation of Italy's promise, made in connection with the Anglo-Italian Agreement of 1938, to remove all troops from Spain as soon as the war was over. Consequently, on the very next day, Mr. Chamberlain gave France a sweeping pledge that Britain would come to her assistance in the event that any of her 'vital interest' were threatened 'from whatever quarter.' On Feb. 6, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, explained to the British Ambassador that Gayda's view was not shared by the Government and that Italy would keep her pledges.
So, Gayda was more truculent than Ciano.
Try to see Italy’s POV. The Rest of Northern Europe had their empires and condemmed Italy for seeking the same in Africa. Italy was also not given the land she was promised for joining the allies in WW1 and The Kellog-Briand Pact limited the size of her navy.
Today the Italian Armed forces are some of the most respected troops on the ground and are deployed in many peace-keeping missions. They were also the only troops in Beirut who were not truck bombed.
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