Breaking Point: Poor Training in Italian Tank Units

Рет қаралды 15,893

7 ай бұрын

Of all the major powers that participated in World War II, Italy is perhaps the one with the worst reputation when it comes to armored warfare. This reputation is by no means unjustified, as despite having a vast array of opportunities to develop tank doctrines and training regimes that were at least competitive with those of other powers, the Regio Esercito continually demonstrated a stubborn unwillingness to modernize. This video will explore both the reasons behind this regressive attitude, and look at the many practical issues faced by the few Italian commanders who tried to wrestle with the system and give their soldiers a chance against better equipped and motivated opponents.
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Sources:
La Meccanizzazione dell'Esercito Italiano fino al 1943 Volume I Parte I - Lucio Ceva and Andrea Curami - Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, Ufficio Storico, 1994
La Meccanizzazione dell'Esercito Italiano fino al 1943 Volume I Parte II - Lucio Ceva and Andrea Curami - Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, Ufficio Storico, 1994
Gli Autoveicoli da Combattimento dell'Esercito Italiano Volume II Tomo I - Nicola Pignato and Filippo Cappellano - Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, Ufficio Storico, 2002
Gli Autoveicoli da Combattimento dell'Esercito Italiano Volume III Tomo I - Nicola Pignato and Filippo Cappellano - Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, Ufficio Storico, 2002
Italian Soldiers in North Africa 1941-1943 - Piero Crociani and Pier Paolo Battistelli - Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013
Carro M - Carri Medi M11/39, M13/40, M14/41, M15/42, Semoventi ed Altri Derivati Volume Primo and Secondo - Antonio Tallillo, Andrea Tallillo and Daniele Guglielmi - Gruppo Modellistico Trentino di Studio e Ricerca Storica, 2012
Andrea Viotti Uniformi e Distintivi dell’Esercito Italiano nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale 1940-1945 Roma 1988
Andrea Viotti Uniformi e Distintivi dell’Esercito Italiano fra le Due Guerre 1918-1935 Roma 2009
Andrea Viotti e Stefano Ales Le Uniformi e i Distintivi del Corpo Truppe Volontarie in Spagna 1936-1939 Roma 2004
Ruggero Belogi Regio Esercito Italiano. Uniformi 1919-1933 Pubblicazione dell’autore 1989
Sergio Coccia e Nicola Pignato Le Uniformi Metropolitane del Regio Esercito dalla Riforma Baistrocchi all’Inizio della Seconda Guerra Mondiale 1933-1940 Roma 2005
Uniformi e Armi magazine, number 163, Parma 2009 - Roberto Manno, Rudy A. D'Angelo e Marco Ghedini article title: Segni di distinzione. Medaglie e distintivi della seconda guerra mondiale - Page 132
Nicola Pignato e Filippo Cappellano Le Armi della Fanteria Italiana (1919-1945) Parma 2008
Ministero Forze Armate Istruzione provvisoria sull'uniforme dell'Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano(1944 - XXII)
Paolo Crippa Storia dei Reparti Corazzati della Repubblica Sociale Italiana 1943-1945 Marvia 2022
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An article by Arturo Giusti
A script by Jeran Korak
Narrated by Nellop
Edited by ‪@storiediguerra3260‬
Sound edited by Nellop

Пікірлер: 86

@HeinzGuderian_ 7 ай бұрын

Gunner- I got 3 months of training on how to fire the gun. Driver- I got 3 months of training on how to drive. Mechanic- I had 2 days to learn how the tanks works and how to repair it. Command- Perfect.

@HeinzGuderian_ 5 ай бұрын

@@giudicedredd9195 nobody said the drivers were poorly trained.

@HeinzGuderian_ 5 ай бұрын

@@giudicedredd9195 the video and I said the mechanics were poorly trained. This is well documented and even the Italian military said it was a major factor in their failure to keep the tanks running. You cannot find a single reference that shows otherwise.

@HeinzGuderian_ 5 ай бұрын

@@giudicedredd9195 provide a single shred of evidence that supports your claim. T-E provided actual reports. Their website provides the sources for the information. None of them agree with you.

@OscarReyes-ud4vz 3 ай бұрын

This is "how to lose a war" for Dummies!

@jeremy9416 7 ай бұрын

You can't train a man to be brave. You can't train a man to love his brothers in arms You can't make a video about Italian takers, without mentioning the great courage they have demonstrated against a superior enemy. We have many occasions where our soldiers have demonstrated great courage, like luigi Pascucci, an Italian tanker that charged an entire British division alone to gain time for his allies to retread. We have a medal in word of tanks called the Pascucci medal.

@TanksEncyclopediaYT 7 ай бұрын

We did mention it, it is the closing remark of the video

@jeremy9416 7 ай бұрын

@@TanksEncyclopediaYT ah. My bad I apologize. Maybe I should activate subtitles then. My English is not the best at the moment. Good work , as always

@guidor.4161 7 ай бұрын

Soviet tank training history in ww2 would also be very intersting

@JNF590 7 ай бұрын

Desperate times made the Builder's be the crew, the turning point the soviets had resumed proper Tank Crew training. That war was a mess.

@RonSommar 7 ай бұрын

Heres your tank, 10 grenades. Cu

@BlaBla-pf8mf 7 ай бұрын

The sorry state of italian armored forces training is not surprising. Italy had terrible high ranking officers as proven by everything they did between Cadorna's repeated Isonzo offensives in WW1 to Badoglio's bungled armistice in WW2. Italy also entered WW2 nearly bankrupt and poorly equipped due to the effort in the Spanish Civil War. An army can handle being poor if its motivated and well led e.g. Finland in the Winter War, but being poor, unmotivated and led by donkeys is a recipe for defeat.

@zoompt-lm5xw 7 ай бұрын

Very true Finland made itself a name dispate being far smaller than italy in both population, industrial base and resources. Even Greece was better

@mrtizio13 7 ай бұрын

@@zoompt-lm5xw While i agree with the comment i'd say that both Finland and Greece started the winter war and ww2 on the defensive (wich favours the defender even in inferior numbers) unlike Italy that was on the offensive.

@Heylanda-fb9xb 7 ай бұрын

Not to mention that Italian Commander/General are full of coward. Every time Italian army are losing the fight, their commander will ALWAYS prioritize their safety first. Even their king and his chief of staff is not even shy from abandoning his men and subjects just to find shelter from the Allies when they surrendered and got attack by Germany. Leaving millions of Italian to be slaughter in Rome and the rest of the country under German occupation.

@SilverShamrockNovelties 7 ай бұрын

The overriding theme of this comment section is indicative of the misguided notion that just because the desert is a flat, open battleground, that means it was an ideal environment for tanks. Anyone with knowledge of basic automotive mechanics knows how foolish that idea is. Engines wrapped in armor struggle to remain cool and need massive amounts of airflow. With that air, comes a huge amount of destructive sand. Filters were overwhelmed by the task. The sand gets into bearings. The sand gets into the fuel. The sand gets into the weapons, optics, and other essential systems. Systems that were still relatively unsophisticated and fragile by today’s standards. Strategists who visualized the desert as a good place to employ tanks were not mechanically savvy. Imagination and reality turned out to be very different in North Africa during WW2.

@papaaaaaaa2625 10 күн бұрын

Isn't there a analytics that showed that a Tank operated in the Desert needed 5 times the supply and maintenance than a Tank operated in the European Theater. The lubrication was a MASSIV problem for all Tanks, even for well prepared once. The A9 and A10 Cruiser Tanks of the British for example. It was nearly impossible to lubricant the track links under field conditions. That meant that they had change the complete tracks after a few kilometers.

@aymonfoxc1442 7 ай бұрын

I think Italian tank doctrine and the Italian tank fleet made sense in the broader context of Italian strategic concerns. Italy has rarely faced conquest from the sea whilst it has faced conquest from the north many times and WW1 loomed large in every participating nation's memory. Plus, insurgencies in Africa didn't pose the threat of fielding heavier armour or outranging Italian tanks, whilst Ethiopian ambush and canyon-fighting tactics could be countered by deploying infantry alongside Italian tanks. What's more, the Italian economy had suffered under Mussolini's rule as his regime had attracted sanctions and imposed import / export policies that inhibited the development of the Italian automotive manufacturing industry. As such, senior military leadership had to make decisions as to where their limited resources would be best placed; investing in new weapons, funding troops in the field, financing the development and roll-out of new training regimes, or growing the Italian arms industry but they didn’t have the budget to do it all at once.. at least not to the same degree as countries like Germany, Japan, Britain, France or the US.

@Hybris51129 7 ай бұрын

Italy has become my favorite nation to look at when it comes to the logistics of building and modernizing a nations military. It's one thing to know that tanks exist and that you need to build some of your own but its entirely different ball game when you bring up questions like: Do we have enough steel production? Can we make our own tooling? Where is the fuel for all this coming from? It quickly becomes a rabbit hole as you realize how long of a line of prerequisites there is before you decide what tank you are going to build or even simpler things like rifles and handguns. Also the voice over for this video is a lot better than the previous attempt.

@jgrandson5651 7 ай бұрын

They had the materials, specially steel. But it was more profitable for the companies, the same that financed Mussolini into power, to sell them in a postwar economy rather than wasting them in the war.

@maglorthearcanist 7 ай бұрын

One ofvthe problem was that in italy becouse of the small industry only one armed forcevget upgrades at time, and the first was the army after ww1 so when ww2 hit, the italian army had plans for hevyer and modern tanks, but it wasn't the industrial time or money for the upgrade.

@alhemicaribastovani9029 7 ай бұрын

Great video as always ❤

@clydedopheide1033 7 ай бұрын

A very interesting video, thanks

@gabrielho1874 7 ай бұрын

Germany failed in its gamble for resources, Italy got good stuff but no resources to make them and Japan lost effectively every resources with the death of the ijn

@Handyman695 5 ай бұрын

Would you ever consider doing a video on the Italian P40 tank?

@TanksEncyclopediaYT 5 ай бұрын

We would, but that's a very deep rabbit hole

@morteforte7033 7 ай бұрын

Awesome vid!!❤ Honestly would love to hear anything on tank training from the various countries of ww2...though more so on the ones from smaller countries, such a Hungary, for example.

@tekis0 5 ай бұрын

Yeah, that's something noone els is overing!

@bwilliams463 7 ай бұрын

I knew they were thin-skinned almost without sloping armor, but sending them out with only 7 rounds for the main gun? Italy may as well have deployed Vespas.

@aymonfoxc1442 7 ай бұрын

Well, the French deployed Vespas... and their were quite successful.

@legbreaker2762 7 ай бұрын

The 7 rounds were for training.

@biggiouschinnus7489 7 ай бұрын

I'd be really interested to see how this compares with training for British tank units! I suspect that British success in Operation Compass can be attributed to simply better crew training, thus concealing the weaknesses in British armoured doctrine until the arrival of the Afrika Korps.

@billballbuster7186 7 ай бұрын

The big advantage the Germans had were their much superior communications, not their tanks. A superb wireless network far superior to anything the allies had until 1944, thats what really made Blitzkrieg possible.

@biggiouschinnus7489 7 ай бұрын

@@billballbuster7186 Fascinating! Do you have any books to recommend on this?

@billballbuster7186 7 ай бұрын

@@biggiouschinnus7489 Never found any books in English on the subject. But you do pick up on it when reading battle reports were the Germans encounter an obstacle and within minutes Stuka's are called in to take care of it. German Wireless was the best for many years.

@tomhenry897 7 ай бұрын

Which the British listened in to

@billballbuster7186 7 ай бұрын

@@tomhenry897 Every side listened into messages, the British more than most. But there was a huge volume which took time to decode.

@madmusial 6 ай бұрын

Crew training regimes for the minor powers would be pretty cool

@sailor67duilio27 4 ай бұрын

Not much has changed in the administration/ leadership of the Italian wrmed forces. Politicians control the armed forces making them disarmed to satisfy a clouded pacifist view reminder of the pre WWII situation. The Italian army is still unprepared and the Italian/air force show the same physical preparadness as in WWII. History repeat itself.

@TomasFunes-rt8rd 7 ай бұрын

Hello - do any viewers have any info to impart about the standard of tank crews who were sent to fight in Abyssinia / Ethiopia in 1935 , please ? Or any good websites I could visit about this ? Thanks folks !

@pavelslama5543 7 ай бұрын

1942 Italy would have its ass manhandled even by a 1938 Czechoslovakia. Its armored forces were more comparable to those of Hungary, or maybe Japan, rather than major powers like what their leader claimed they are. Some nations had natural reasons to not invest in tanks too much (Japan), some had incompetent high echelons, some had incompetent low echelons, some had problems with resources, and then there was Italy with all of those...

@saloenjoyer3266 6 ай бұрын

I wouldn’t say they would get “manhandled” by the Czechs. You have to keep in mind the existence of the Semovente M40s, M41s, and M42s and the fact the M15/42s being fully designed at this point and their chassis used for the Semovente 75/34s and 75/46s plus the 105/25s. It’s also worth noting that during 1942 Italian tank crews have already familiarized and embraced the use of German tank tactics (and adopted them) as seen at Bir el Gubi in November of the previous year. Under competent commanders like Gambara I don’t think the Czechs would fair that well especially since the Italians wouldn’t be plagued by the royal navy and airforce and forced to ship supplies out in contested waters.

@nzfield6913 7 ай бұрын

Dude... love the channel for the excellent work on most articles but this one... lack of historical context, dubious sources, mindblowing statements (i.e. as an example, the L6 being "the best" light tank?? all Italian tanks were light compared to everyone else's, and you never even mention the semovente 75/18, the actual best one??), and the terribile italian pronounciation does not help (i.e. you show Bracciano on the map and you read "Brazziano"? Regio Esersito??? a 'c' reads C not S, italian isn't spanish.... ) The general sense is is not bad but your statements are debatable, with a hint of prejudice, you could have dove so much better. Pls take no offense and produce a better article, greetings from an Italian tanker.

@TanksEncyclopediaYT 7 ай бұрын

Hello nzfield, Which of our sources are dubious? The L6 was the best light tank. Classification has nothing to do with weight (or what other nations have), but with the doctrine of the user. The Italian Army, according to itself, had only 3 types of light tanks in use: the Fiat 3000, L3s and L6/40. Of these, the L6 was by far the best. Semoventes are not tanks, they are self-propelled artillery. It is in the name. As for the pronounciations, we tried our best. The narrator is not Italian, and he did his best. We don't get enough money to be able to torture our narrators to perfectly pronounce every language, and sometimes good enough is good enough.

@tiburtinagvng 7 ай бұрын

@@TanksEncyclopediaYTAs an Italian passionate about Italian military history, especially WW2, I assure you that there is nothing wrong with the video. me too when I heard L6 best light tank I had to disagree but thinking about it, it's the right statement. nothing to say against the video, but perhaps I would have added that the experience was gained on the field and as demonstrated by the fights in Tunisia against the Americans with far superior vehicles

@tiburtinagvng 7 ай бұрын

il 75/18 non è mai stato il miglior semovente. è stato il primo di successo di una lunga serie. semplicemente i britannici rimasero impressionati dal piccolo 75/18 perché non si aspettavano che l'italia potesse mettere in campo un veicolo che si dimostrasse una vera minaccia per loro e rimasero sorpresi quando si videro le chiappe dei loro veicoli prestati dagli stati uniti aperte da un piccolo pezzo da 75 mm

@cmbbfan78 5 ай бұрын

Semovente's were not tanks, but assault guns and tank destroyers...

@solinvictus1234 7 ай бұрын

A lot of misconcwptions and mistakes in this video, probably due fake propaganda trough the years. 1. The Regio Esercito wasn't unwilling to modernize, Italy simply didn't had the resource, economy and bellic industry to do that. Starting from the fact that Hitler didn't gived the time Mussolini asked to modernize his army, Mussolini asked Hitler ten more years before to enter in war, asking him also tons of resources to starting the modernizing of his army (and we know that by official Govt. documents, we have the list of what resources Mussolini asked to Hitler, even the total tonnage of that). Saying that Italy was no way ready for that war, coming from WWI and Franco's Spanish war efforts. 2. It's a false myth that the Italian tank crews was untrained. Surely they had a realky bad equipment, that was compensated with an huge great training. Also here historical evidence say it to us, as in Rommel's war diaries for example, where Rommel itself said that the Italian Ariete division was his "tip of the Diamond" among his Tank divisions.

@michellepeoplelikeyoumurde8373 4 ай бұрын

ROMMEL WANTED TO SELL BOOKS IN ITALY

@billevans7936 7 ай бұрын

❤

@johnd2058 7 ай бұрын

4:00 Sounds far more like a resource issue, like their navy, than the hackneyed 'stodgy old guard' intro.

@bombfog1 7 ай бұрын

You have a cool accent that I can’t place; what is your mother language?

@AncientRylanor69 7 ай бұрын

@johnd2058 7 ай бұрын

Is that Albanian for "FIRST!!!!?????"

@AncientRylanor69 7 ай бұрын

@@johnd2058 No I just leave a comment to boost the video & so that if I ever come back hear Ill know how long ago I watched the video.

@johnd2058 7 ай бұрын

@@AncientRylanor69 But you were first, you could have celebrated that fact per tradition!

@FrancisFjordCupola 7 ай бұрын

Scorching desert is great for tanks; the open wide space lets them use their mobility to the maximum. A tank does need to be prepped for such a climate. Other than that, the desert is one of the best places for manoeuvre warfare.

@TanksEncyclopediaYT 7 ай бұрын

Tanks are ideal for the desert, but the desert is not ideal for the tanks. WW2 tanks didn't really like the desert all that much.

@sandrodunatov485 7 ай бұрын

There is also the fact that the damn tank needs plenty of two foundamental commodities to fight: fuel and water. Water is scarce in the desert, yet it was a far smaller problem than fuel. The British had to sustain an expensive and complex , long logistic chain (that draw heavily from other theaters) to 'feed' their forces in North Africa and, then, Egypt alone; the Axis were fuel-hungry all along, as they had too little fuel to start with.

@tiburtinagvng 7 ай бұрын

@@sandrodunatov485le manovre finali prima delle battaglia di el alamein ne sono la prova. l'asse aveva allungato più di quanto possibile le sue linee di rifornimento e come se non bastasse non era facile far arrivare il poco carburante disponibile in nord africa.

@Heylanda-fb9xb 3 ай бұрын

I thought a plain fields is the most ideal place for tanks. Do you ever experience having your cars engine became overheat and torch itself? That happened to the tanks of all faction in WW2. Even early M1 Abram or T-72 during the Gulf War suffers from the same problem.

@billballbuster7186 7 ай бұрын

Italy was the paper tiger of the 1930s, with most commentators over estimating Italian capabilities. The tanks themselves were typical of the period nothing too complicated. By 1940 the British had similar training problems and some of their tanks were worse, but what they lacked in training they made up for in enthusiasm. The British were bold and aggressive especially in North and East Africa were they faced huge Italian armies. Most reports of the time comment that the Italians did not have the will to fight the British, typically firing off a few shots before surrendering. They didn't do too well against the Greeks either.

@tiburtinagvng 7 ай бұрын

the 40th as regards the fighting between Italians and English are a completely separate period. the Italian army of that period was different from what I become after that defeat, on what you wrote I can say with certainty that more than the lack of desire to fight there was an abyss regarding armaments. furthermore, the Italians in enormous numbers were scattered by that idiot Graziani and were easily isolated by the English little by little. in addition, the Italian infantry teams of the 40th lacked firepower compared to the British ones as well as training in desert warfare. as for the famous Matildas who were faced by the useless M11/39s, they could easily be destroyed by 75 anti-aircraft guns which were also scattered on the front (those pieces will be used to build the formidable 75/46 self-propelled guns)

@billballbuster7186 7 ай бұрын

@@tiburtinagvng There are many excuses for the pathetic performance of the Italian troops in 1940-41 against the British. But British superiority in tanks is not one of them. There was only 1 Armoured Division in North Africa in 1940 and that was under strength. It had only 60 Cruiser tanks and 90 Light tanks. There was 1 Tank Regiment with 20 A12 Matilda There were only 120 guns with the Royal Artillery. Supported by 140 aircraft. Total army size 35,000. Graziani had 600 Tanks , 1,600 guns supported by 335 aircraft total army size 160,000+. The Italians were fighting in their own backyard and had been at war since 1936 against the Arabs. Sheer numbers alone should have negated any advantage the British had. But almost the entire army surrendered, the IWM has the pictures of thousands of Italian POWs overjoyed at surrendering. However later in the war the Italians were forced to fight by their German masters, maybe a case of fight or be shot.

@Heylanda-fb9xb 7 ай бұрын

Except the fact that the Italian army of Africa, both North and East, are facing THE BEST British Armoured Force they have to offer. Middle East and Egypt were home and birthplace of Modern British Armor Doctrine and their tank corp there are train to the highest quality to be use in the empire's colonial endeavour. It's like a low-grade militia being rush to fight the top-of-the-top member of an elite special force.

@tiburtinagvng 7 ай бұрын

@@billballbuster7186 wtf forced to fight? you probably don't know any battle in which Italy participated in North Africa or any other theater. forced to fight hahaha. the craziest thing I've ever heard. Italians have sacrificed themselves countless times. in the same period they won in British Somalia only to lose but continue to fight until annihilation for another two years. if a squad of riflemen with cork helmets sees 2 tanks arriving that are literally invulnerable to the accompanying cannons with the addition of infantry well armed with automatic weapons What do you expect them to do? and the photos of alive and smiling prisoners are not the direct consequence of a lack of will to fight. and to top it off, our tanks at that time were L3/33 or 35 with machine guns (which could be destroyed even by a bren at short range) and M11/39 with 37mm guns with very little maneuvering angle easily penetrable by anti-tank rifles while the few Matildas could, as I said, only be destroyed by 75mm or with an emergency technique which consists in creating bumps for the tanks to overcome in order to hit them in the lower part, the thinnest

@billballbuster7186 7 ай бұрын

@@Heylanda-fb9xb What 'Best British Armoured Force' ? What were the Divisions? Who commanded them? You are talking poppycock or trying to be sarcastic. There was only the Mobile Division, later renamed 7th Armoured Division in Egypt 1940. It was at half strength, consisting mostly of Light Tanks and Armoured Cars with a few A9 and A10 Cruisers. It probably was the best British armoured force as half Britain's tanks had just been lost in France. The 1st Armoured Division was still being re-formed in the UK. So the 7th was the only armoured force in late 1940. The Mobile Division was indeed well trained by General Percy Hobart, but he was 'retired' by Wavell in 1939. The new GOC was O'Moore-Creagh who had only commanded a regiment in the UK. Hardly the Commander of an 'elite special force'.

@ivan5595 7 ай бұрын

Italian tank training: how to make 🍕

@tomhenry897 7 ай бұрын

That was most of the Italian army

@TheLoyalOfficer 7 ай бұрын

Deserts are not good for tanks...? Um... what?

@TanksEncyclopediaYT 7 ай бұрын

Engines don't like sand, radiators and crews don't like the heat, no rail infrastructure and long patrols mean they have to drive a lot on their own tracks (which leads to a lot of breakdowns) and the logistics of keeping them running is even worse than usual.

@terraflow__bryanburdo4547 7 ай бұрын

@@TanksEncyclopediaYTAny movement created huge plumes of dust making location obvious. Sandstorms could be worse than artillery barrages. Logistics were always strung out and unreliable. The only compensation was not being on the Ostfront😂