Why was Italy so inept at building tanks?

>"The vehicle was unreliable and cramped, and caught fire easily when hit"
you would think they would stop making the Fiat M14 after their defeats in africa.

>During the war the Italians were only able to crank out around 2,000 M13/40's, their main medium tank, and ran out of fuel and iron by the end of 1942 to keep production sustainable.

Shouldn't have spent so much steel and cash on battleships. In the end their light forces (destroyers, subs, frogmen) ended up pulling their weight in the Mediterranean while the battleships just got bombed.

Anyway the perception that Italy was totally incompetent at tank building is a meme, same with Japan. The M13/40 was a decent vehicle for its time, roughly equivalent to the early Panzer III. Standards just advanced very rapidly, and Italy wasn't able to keep up with the advances the Soviets, Americans, Brits, and Germans made.

Without American aid it's likely that the British wouldn't have been able to keep pace either despite them being much more economically powerful than Italy.

Italy was scattered brained on areas to focus development on. Germany had a clear military developement track that aligned with their tactics.

Because of the rough terrain of Italy it would have made more sense to focus on their navy and air, rather than land forces.

most of their battleships would just be useless either way tho.

They build the absolute BBs of the war too. The main role of the ww2 bb was AA, and look at that fucking italian throw rate. Fucking pathetic.

Oh sorry, I meant rapid deployment of a marine force/airborne force with shock troops. Italy did have a pretty good bunch of crack scout troops from the border war with Austria during the Great War. They were the backbone of the early Fasci.

I think they were called the "I dont give a damns" or something like that in Italian.

worst

Guderian was not an engineer.

wow these people really don't deserve to live, let alone living on the rich land they desecrate with their filthy footsteps.

>tfw Italian
>tfw Italian Troops were considered stand up fighters by the Germans but were plagued by the officer class and suffered as a result.
>tfw Germans should have put the officer class into military school in 1940-41ish

The Italian command was, for the most part, not equal to the task of carrying on war in the desert, where the requirement was lightning decision followed by immediate action. The training of the Italian infantryman fell far short of the standard required by modern warfare. … Particularly harmful was the all pervading differentiation between officer and man. While the men had to make shift without field-kitchens, the officers, or many of them, refused adamantly to forgo their several course meals. Many officers, again, considered it unnecessary to put in an appearance during battle and thus set the men an example. All in all, therefore, it was small wonder that the Italian soldier, who incidentally was extraordinarily modest in his needs, developed a feeling of inferiority which accounted for his occasional failure and moments of crisis. There was no foreseeable hope of a change for the better in any of these matters, although many of the bigger men among the Italian officers were making sincere efforts in that direction.

Guderian was placed in command as chief Panzer inspector of the Heer and was frequently sent to Italy to check over their armour development programs.

The Arditi? Their name roughly translates to "The Daring Ones".

Hmm, interesting. Pretty sure the Black Book on Italian Fascism (cant recall the authors name that wrote it) translated it as the "I dont give a damns" or something else because of their disdain for their own life for their (which makes sense since its talking daring actions they do).

Guderian became Chief Inspector of the Panzer Forces in 1943. I doubt he had much influence on the Italian tank design in that capacity.

The p 40 was designed in 1940 and started production in 1943.

Other then that, I was more or less teasing Italian bullishness.

>The p 40 was designed in 1940 and started production in 1943.
In other words, Guderian traveled back in time to give advice on how to design it? You should just kill yourself.

To be completely fair, I can't imagine anyone else could've done all that much better in their shoes.

"Me ne frego" is essentially "I don't give a damn." It was a popular Fascist phrase, but i don't know about it becoming the name of any unit.

I forgot how autism flows freely here. Carry on.

>be BTFO
>cry autism
Go to bed, child.

AH. Maybe I might have misread it, or the author may have been referring to them in colloqiual speech being called the "I dont give a damns" for their oft used phrase.

If spain succeeded in its war and was brought into the Fascist sphere it would have made a decent raw materials exporter.

I doubt the Brits would have allowed them to openly aid the Axis, they mined neutral Norway for god's sakes.

>Norway
>neutral
What

Which retard told you BBs were designed for AA?

Not to mention you're comparing a 1930s ship to a 1940s ship

He's not saying they were designed for it. He's stating that it's what they were primarily used for once in service. I have no idea about the comparison, but you're purposely misrepresenting his argument.

If I build a hammer designed to hammer in nails and then someone decides it should be a screwdriver, they have no right to complain about its screwing ability

The guy was just trying to tell a joke holy shit.

That's a false equivalence. It would be more like, you built a hammer only the hammer sucked at hammering nails and instead was better at being a screwdriver and was primarily used as such, they absolutely have a right to complain about its screwing ability.

Let's go through what you said bit by bit

>That's a false equivalence. It would be more like, you built a hammer only the hammer sucked at hammering nails
Did the Italian BBs have terrible main guns?

>and instead was better at being a screwdriver
Irrelevant unforeseeable circumstance.

You're literally justifying someone complaining about a hammer being a bad screwdriver just because you want to use it that way.

>because you want to use it that way.
Because it sucks giant cock at being a hammer which is why they went the way of the fucking dodo.

Shittiest main guns as well. Building a BB in the 30s and not also giving it great AA to protect those main guns was shitty building.

The NC wasn't that much newer than the VV and had about 40k total AA throw weight. No excuse for that hilarious terrible AA on their best BB.

railroad connection though Vichy france to Italies only industrialized corridor, the piedmonte. Though I am not sure the capacity for railroads through the mountains, if there were any good connections through southern france.

Please don't attempt to enter into abstract thought again.

>The NC wasn't that much newer than the VV and had about 40k total AA throw weight.

The NC isn't listed in your lineup so I can't provide full comment, but even with its superior AA that's completely secondary to its intended function of being a mobile big-gun platform that functions as part of a fleet.

Even if the Vittorio had weak AA, BBs do not operate on their own unless they're some kind of raider. No WW2 BB on its own is going to survive against aircraft on its own. What people SHOULD be looking at is the overall fleet ability to handle aircraft, such as AA on light cruisers. Unfortunately this is more complex than just saying 'but this number is bigger than this number.

>Please don't attempt to enter into abstract thought again
Please don't ever post again. It was your retarded analogy.

Let's put it in a more simple way for you

big gun focus = hammer
game is all about big guns

game suddenly changes, game now all about aircraft!

AA focus = screwdriver
Big gun still good hammer, but hammer no good for screws

Because hammer no good for screws, person says hammer is a bad hammer and should have been a screwdriver in the first place

Are you good now?

Jesus Christ, remind me to never read a Veeky Forums naval thread again. You people are just not salvageable.

Your content is zero and therefore so is your worth

The North Carolina class is essentially identical to the South Dakotas, but with a stronger torpedo defense system in exchange for slightly worse horizontal protection. In terms of firepower and AA capability, they are identical.

This thread turned into one of those "I don't even know where to start" scenarios the instant people started posting images from CombinedFleet.

>hammer sucks at being a hammer
>use it as a screwdriver because it's better at that
>sucks at that too
>HURR CAN'T JUDGE IT FOR BEING A SHITTY SCREWDRIVER EVEN THOUGH IT SUCKS AT BEING A HAMMER AND A SCREWDRIVER
Stop posting.

well fucking enlighten us Admiral Nelson, or just be a nigger

Tell me why a battleship isn't any good at firing large shells at targets.

Tell me how many ships the Veneto sank. I'll clue you in: 0. In fact, it only inflicted very minor damage on TWO ships during the entire war. Sucks at being a hammer, better at being a screwdriver but sucks at that too. Stop posting.

I'm too busy watching this retarded argument about a hammer-screwdriver-battleship analogy. I'll be with you shortly.

hehe

All of you are stupid and don't know shit. You're just here arguing about nonsense on the off chance you're finally right about *something* in your lives.

The Yamato did shit all too. your point is irrelevant.

The entire point of WW2 is that all BBs became obsolete, I even tried pointing this out for you. If you haven't gathered the point by now then there's no point replying to you any further.

Does it make you feel better trying to act superior while being unable to contribute in any meaningful way?

Tell me you're just 'unwilling'

The Yamato wasn't the backbone of the Japanese fleet. Either way, now you're moving the goalposts so I'm taking this as a concession of defeat.

Can someone please clarify exactly what is being argued right now.

A bunch of off topic nonsense shit by know nothings that desperately want their existence validated.

You know nothing unless you can show otherwise, and you won't.

What did they mean by this?

Am i wrong?

There were railroad tunnels connecting Germany and Italy through Switzerland. Swiss neutrality allowed rail traffic throughout the war.

Can you show that you're correct?

People who buzz around a topic saying nothing but 'I know better' are a dime a dozen

You didn't answer my question, am I wrong?

Oh buzz off, another person with nothing to say

My opinion on whether it's right or wrong has nothing to do with it

WHAT THE FUCK IS BEING ARGUED HERE!?

So you don't actually contest anything i said simply are upset it might possibly be applied to you.

People are arguing about arguments in order to validate their arguments about arguments because two people dared to argue

>
Whether or not the Italians used Swiss anti-aircraft guns on their battleships.

Hammers and screwdrivers because Veeky Forums is fucking retarded.

Man, all i said was that the Italians really sucked at shooting at planes.

The VV survived the war, so they could have refit(like the Japs did with Yamato) it at some point as the role change of BBs was very clear. They were either too stupid or incompetent to do so.

They sucked at building tanks and they sucked at building ships.
also what was wrong with those combined fleet pics? the info on those charts is cited from

amazon.com/Naval-Weapons-World-War-Two/dp/0870214594

history fags talking about irrelevant offtopic shit just like they accuse & humanities of

Yeah well next time keep your opinions to yourself, okay champ?

You mean humanities fags false flagging history threads in order to make their threads not seem so shitty. Way to out yourself.

lol it's not really an opinion. the VV was their best ship and it was factually a total piece of shit. couldn't shoot at ships, couldn't shoot at planes, and it wasn't made out of face hardened homogeneous steel so if it ever did get hit it would have sank like a bitch.

Ohhh yeah? This piece of paper makes me an historical expert! And I approve this thread. Show credentials or get aboard the HMS Hood on may 24th in 41'. Plebians.

I really don't fucking understand whats going on anymore, but if you're trying t find which nations battleships had the most utility in the war, I can lay it out.

USA: Fast battleships that put a premium on having good overall levels of protection, speed, firepower and operational range, but not excessively strong in any one direction but anti-aircraft potency. Generally equipped with the best technology as well. Overall had the most utility out of all of the nations new construction battleships.

GB: Battleships greatly marred by financial setbacks and trying untested technology (like Prince of Wales infamous quad turrets) on production vessels. Generally focused more on protection than firepower, with good anti-aircraft potency and acceptable operational range. Inherited a lot of technology like modern radar FCS and medium caliber AA weaponry from the USA.

Germany: Designs somewhat compromised from a 15 year period of naval brain-drain following the end of WW1. Their ships generally lacked offensive firepower on par with other nations ships, but put a premium on speed and durability for swift and brutal operations in the North Atlantic which were likely to occur at shorter ranges than the open expanses of the Pacific. Generally lacked effective anti-aircraft armament and never had the numbers to really challenge anyone but the Soviets.

Japan: Only produced two modern battleships, Yamato and Musashi. They embodied an even more archaic design philosophy that the Germans, which emphasized larger guns and thicker armor over everything else. In theory they were the most dangerous battleships ever built, but in practice they were compromised by a variety of technological and financial factors. Utterly useless in a modern war, even compared to the Germans.

Italy: Designed revolutionary ships that were constructed so poorly that they were essentially useless. Extremely erratic gun performance, terrible operational range, bad protection and shit AA potency.

This is a thread about tanks.

TANKS
A
N
K
S

>lol it's not really an opinion.
No, it is. Whoever told you it wasn't lied to you.

It hasn't been about tanks for like 50 posts.

You mean the fuel tanks on battleships? What about them?

Basically beacause the fascist regime was deeply corrupt. This implies that a lot officers were in charge only for their name (mostly nobility) or because of their fascist militancy (like Graziani). So also the strategic decisions like building tanks were vitiated: the FIAT industries were a pillar of the regime and than they obtained the largest part of military orders. In the 30's and early 40's italian scientinsts were developing some good technologies (see Campini-Caproni C.C.2 or the Gufo radar) but the lack of raw materials and the bad choices led to failure.
Finally because Mussolini dragged Italy in an unbearable war for the country.

Fuck you for that

I didn't start it.

Fuck you anyway

>ctrl+f
>semovent
>no results

for shame, yes it was a tank destroyer but it was good

Also good for fighting Ethiopian spearchuckers.

Purdue started it.

>Gufo radar

Added hilarity: Italian radar research was much further along than the Germans, but the Germans never asked them about their radar research because clearly those Eye-talians could never surpass Teutonic science.

did you read any of that post

Like I said. It's autism.

Go figure the Italians would be more advance in an area of science that would permit them a wider time frame to run and hide, or switch sides.

Are Parshall and Tully the perfect Veeky Forumstorians?
>not educated in history
>no knowledge of anything outside the tiny niche they decide to autistically specialize in
>no understanding of how to use source material or write academic text
>unironically thinks x was better than y is a good topic of discussion
"Historians" who are creatures of the internet forum culture - no wonder they are so readily accepted by that same forum culture.

you are talking about the fascists, the other italians never switched side since Spain
pic related

You underestimate Italia's power.

Ehi Fritz look for your great grandfather