General
The unsuitability of much of the Italian equipment was caused by multiple reasons. Equipment must be
designed to perform the function demanded of it by doctrine. When doctrine is changed, it only follows
that some of the equipment will no longer be suitable. Equipment must be designed to perform in the
environment envisioned. When operations are conducted in areas not planned for and prepared for, some
of the equipment will not be suitable. National pride, and balance of payments frequently see nations
adopt an inferior design just because it is designed and produced “at home.” There are some reports
of corruption and collusion within the Italian “military-industrial complex.” The armed forces of
every nation suffer these problems to some extent, but Italy lacked the economic and industrial
foundation to effect timely changes.
To ease his balance of payment problems, Mussolini had sold off his newest aircraft and weapons to
foreign buyers like Spain and Turkey while equipping his forces with field guns from 1918. The army
had to borrow trucks from private firms just to hold peacetime parades of its motorized divisions.
Italian troops were also short of antitank guns, antiaircraft gun ammunition, and radio sets.
Artillery was light and ancient.
Small Arms
The Beretta pistol and submachine gun were outstanding weapons, but the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle,
a rather indifferent model designed in 1881, suffered from low bullet velocity. Breda M1930 light
machine guns were clumsy to operate and jammed easily. The war caught Italy in the process of changing
from the 6.5mm to a 7.35mm round. They tried to revert to the older and more common round. The Model
35 "Red Devil" hand grenades had a cute trick of exploding in the hands of their users.
CREW SERVED WEAPONS
Machineguns
The Breda M1937 was strip fed and complicated to the extent that the empty brass was re-inserted into
the strips. Ammunition was oiled. This attracted dust and caused malfunctions. Ammunition was 8mm,
different from the LMG and rifle ammunition.
Mortars
Italy’s 45mm Brixia mortar might have been quite useful in WWI, but, like small mortars of some other
nations, was not well suited to conditions that developed during the Second World War. The 81mm piece
was an excellent weapon and was well suited for mountain warfare, but was claimed by Tyre to be of
little use in the desert.
Antitank Guns
The war in Spain had proven the 47mm Bohler inadequate, but the elderly (1913) 65mm infantry gun,
once the Alpini’s pack artillery, had worked and was praised for its lightweight as well as its
‘omnipresence’. No attempt was made to improve this situation because Italy was indeed barely able
to equip all units with the obsolescent Bohler. Italian officers failed to appreciate the true
seriousness because they thought that Spain was not reflective of full-scale warfare. They expected
more heavy artillery, more chemical warfare, and more well prepared fixed defenses than Spain
provided.
Tanks
Italy began rearming earlier than the other powers. Unfortunately for their armored force, this was
during the time when tankettes were in vogue. The L/3 was very reliable, quite mobile, and, with over
2000 in inventory, in an abundance that precluded easy access to funds for newer weapons systems. The
3.5 ton vehicle was, sadly, an under protected, machinegun-armed tankette with little business on a
WWII battlefield. The underpowered and thinly armored M11/39 suffered from the main gun’s being hull
mounted because narrow Italian roads and railway tunnels would not permit a turret width sufficient
to accept a gun. The heavyweight M13 packed a turret mounted 47mm gun, but crawled along at nine
miles per hour.
Artillery
The artillery was equipped with WWI Austrian field pieces refurbished in 1933. A modernization plan
was delayed for 10 yrs due to new naval construction and foreign adventures and thus was not to be
completed until 1950! This meant that Italy’s gunners faced opponents with greater range, greater
mobility, and a greater rate of fire.
Motorcycles
The idea of motorized infantry being mounted on motorcycles was a legacy of the bicycles and
motorcycles used successfully by the Bersaglieri in the First World War. This also meant that a very
competent and highly respected light infantry force would evolve into a rather inefficient motorized
infantry, but, the Bersaglieri on his motorcycle with his plume blowing in the wind was a powerful
image to Italians, including that old Bersaglieri himself, Benito Mussolini. Attempts were made
during the war to carry some of these troops in trucks, but the Italian automotive industry was not
up to the task.
Bicycles
“The bicycle had arrived as a military item in the 1880’s and 1890’s… The Italians raised the use
of the military bicycle to its highest level. The bicycle troops were essentially a mounted infantry
unit without a requirement for forage. They could be used as couriers, scouts, or in other traditional
cavalry roles. The Italians prided themselves on the speed with which Bersaglieri-cycilisti could
manuever. Bicycle troops became almost a culture in the late ‘30s and early 40’s. The bicycle, on
the basis of Italy’s WWI record, was competing with armored vehicles as battlefield transportation.
Communications
Reliance was on the landline. Even commo wire was in short supply. No effort was made to put radios
in tanks until 1942. Italian units lacked armored cars with radios to keep tabs on enemy units.
Radio equipment available to corps, divisions, and higher would not function on the move, required
a long set up time, and didn’t work at all under conditions of the Russian front. Signal
communications were, unique among armies, a function of the engineer troops.
The Hope
The mechanization of Italy’s army was a goal determined before the war. Only two armies in Europe
envisioned a role for armored corps-Germany and Italy. Italy therefore began the war ahead of most
other nations in doctrine. Britain and France did not have the armored striking force that Italy
possessed. Only one brigade of quasi-armored troops existed in the United States. Only Germany had
a superior armored force, but the Italian Centauro armored division, used against Albania, beat the
Germans by several months being the first armored division to be operationally employed.
The “Guerra di Rapido Corso” would have dared to attempt mechanized warfare in mountainous terrain.
Celeri units were envisioned as flanking units and pursuit units. They were combined with motorized
infantry and armored divisions making the breakthrough and with the alpine divisions covering the
flanks, it was a novel, and a heady concept. It remains an untested concept.
The Reality
In the cold, hard world of economic and industrial capability, Italy’s inadequacies limited the
possibilities. Italy lacked the essential raw materials and industrial base to be a major power.
Her annual production of 2.4 million tons of steel, for example, paled when compared with Japan’s
5 million tons, Britain’s 13.4 million tons, and Germany’s 22.5 million tons.
Italy’s financial difficulties were made worse by Mussolini’s mismanagement. His adventures into Spain
and Ethiopia had been a tremendous drain on the treasury. His formation of Fascist Militia did not
pay good dividends. Blackshirt units did not perform well and siphoned away material that the exiting
armed forces needed desperately.
Italian armed forces had some serious problems. They were poorly organized, equipped, led, and
trained. They had been prepared for the wrong war. This was certainly not unique among nations, but
Italy lacked the favorable geography and the industrial might of the nations that were able to
overcome similar difficulties. Marshal Badoglio, in an audience with the king in Mar ’43 explained,
“When a war is made on the explicit calculation that it will be short and if the preparations are
for a lightning war, it is lost as soon as the opposite happens.”
“Italy entered the war with old generals, no heavy tanks, mechanically unreliable and uncomfortable
medium tanks, a lack of motor vehicles and drivers for them, old artillery and preparations to fight
a war in the Alps against the French or to invade Yugoslavia --- not for a war in the desert or in
Russia. Her Navy was built to face the French not the British, and had been told not to expect to
resupply North Africa. One of the first tasks assigned to the Navy was to resupply North Africa!
Her Air Force was too small and, geared to Douhet’s doctrine of gas attacks against cities,
armed with too few bombers, protected by undergunned and low powered fighters.”
English, John, A Perspective on Infantry
Greene, Jack, Mare Nostrum
Knox, McGregor, Hitler’s Italian Allies
Lippman, David H., Desert Dawn
Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness vol.3
Ogorkiewitz, Richard, Armour
Solitario, Lupo Information from the internet
Sweet, John Joseph Timothy, Iron Arm
Tyre, Rex, Mussolini’s Soldiers
U.S. Army, TM 30-420, Handbook of Italian Military Forces
Article by W. W. Turnbow
