Italian Armoured Vehicles

Seems like all the axis powers had eninge trouble.

 

Italian WWII site

My website has quite a bit of information on Italian armor. Please take a look at Comando Supremo: Italy at war

Nice forum by the way!

Jim

 

Nice site!

 

Thanks! Much appreciated.

Jim

 

It is a very nice site, Supremo. And I have to agree with you about the myth of Italian "cowardice". No one who made the convoy run to Malta in 1940-42 ever laughed at the skill of the Regia Aeronautica's antishipping squadrons, who were, in fact, better at hitting ships than any Luftwaffe unit, save for Fliegerkorps Ten. Just because poorly trained, equipped and led conscripts surrendered in droves does not make every Italian a coward; when they decided to fight, they could really give the Allies a run for their money.

 

Italy didn´t have many casting facilities at all, which is why almost all Italian tanks were of riveted construction. The steel used to make tanks with was also of very low quality, which made the armour extremely brittle.

The Italian armours tendency to crack is shown graphically in the first picture. An M 13-40 hit by a Greek artillery shell.

The second picture shows another M 13-40. Note how the armour not only has cracked, but it also looks like part of it has flaked off. Also note the missing bolts.

 

Presumably an added 'bonus' of brittle armor would be more metal splinters. I would also imagine that there would be a danger of non-penetrating hits dislodging flakes of armor on the inside like a modern swash head round does.



Just on a side note. Some of the early Iron Clad warships backed their armor with wood (usually teak I think) to catch splinters of the armor. Has this concept ever been tried with tanks that anyone knows of?

 

Italian Armor

Bolted armor was prevalent among Italian AFVS during WW2-Note this "Semovente" 90 mm L.53 gun mounted board an M14/41 chassis- and to the left, a Semovente 47/32.This was a 47 mm L.32 AT gun on the chassis of an L.6/41- The latter , according to allaccounts lacked punch to knock out heavy AFVS, but the 90 mm L.53 was a different story..Only a few were built...

 

Roel could you elaborate on this interesting point? Casting is not an impossible task, specially for an industrialized country. It is easy enough to make a wooden mock up for a sand-mold and you have a mold for casting...A friend of mine cast steel pieces 6 meters in diameter through this process in the 1960s and 1970s...This is a method in use even today, and one which could have been easily employed in Italy during WW2 (had there been, of course, a will)

 

Unfortunately, I can't, because I can't remember writing it and wouldn't have written it today. I can't support it with any of my readyly available knowledge...

 

Post subject: Italian WWII site

There must have been a reason why the Italians ressorted to bolted armor-your explanation seemed logical..but l wondered why they did not employed the method l described. In 1944, Argentina, which was far less industrialized and technologically developed as Italy managed to produce a 75 mm, 35-ton tank with a three-man turret cast-steel turret....
best regards

 

Well, remember that Britain relied very heavily on bolted tanks in the 1930s & early war years - the only initial exception being the Matilda II.

 

Re: Italian Armor

Why? Because it overheated and boiled? An air cooled engine is more prone to boiling; especially in the warm desert! A liquid cooled engine will be cooler; all you have to do is increase cooling capacity, add fans, etc. A liquid cooling system had way more potential. I cannot see that the liquid cool system would be a drawback in the desert. Feel free to prove me wrong

 

Yes, and that is something l've never been able to figure..Would you care to speculate? My guess is that the English industrial revolution revolved around iron and cast iron products-and that a a whole, lEnglish mnanufacturers failed to make the tarnsition from cast iron to cast steel, whereas the two emerging industrial powers of the 1870s (Germany and The U.S) side-. stepped the cast iron age; so to speak and plunged righto into cast steel..that was an argument a British profssor afvanced while l was in graduate scholl....)-but l argued that the railway shops and railway equipment manufacturers in most countries were diverted to tank production in WW2..and such plants have always had large foundry and forge shops..And England , may l add had many wel-locomotive factories and railway repair shops.... At any rate, here's are two pics taken at Aberdeen Proving Gound which show bolted armor in some: an Italian M13/40 and a Japanese Medium Tank Type 89

 

It is probably because of cost...
simply bolting plates of steel together is quicker, simpler, and cheaper than casting huge lumps of tank - especially if your existing production facilities (with the exception of railway works) are mostly geared towards production of sheet metal, not castings. Add in the amount of money the government is willing to spend on armaments after WW1...

Besides which, bolted armour worked fine - at least against the AT weaponry of the 1920s & early 30s.

 

Good point! what also surprises me is that the Canadians opted for cast steel turrets on their "Ram" tank which entered production in 1941 and for the "Grizzly Bear" (the Canadian version of the M4 Sherman) ...and they relied largely on railway plants-some of which were subsidiaries of British firms...