Italy...

yes really

 

Which charge exactly are you talking about?

 

The Savoia cavalry on the Isbuschenski Steppe on August 23-24th 1942

 

appearently a lot

Italy did a cavalry charge in 1942. I'm stunned that the Italians use cavalry. I know they were low on thanks but that low.

 

It was against the russians, and the battle was a success.A 600 man italian cavalry unit took on 2000 soviets. The italians overran them wiping out 2 battalions and sending another into retreat across the Don river, leaving behind 500 prisoners of war, four big guns, 10 mortars, 50 machine guns-- and a collpsed offensive.

 

I counter that with:
8. cavalery corps raid on german positions that began on the 8th or 9th of February 1943 as part of Operation Gallop.

Entire Soviet 8. cavalery corps staged a raid on german positions that began on the 8th or 9th of February 1943 as part of Operation Gallop.
Following link has the article translated by the US Army's FMSO regarding this raid:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=105240

Map from: Klatt, Paul: Die 3.Gebirgs-Division 1939-1945.

 

The Italians did successfully invade British Somailand in August 1940 with a force of over 100,000 against a British garrison of 7,000. The garrison did hold up the invading forces for a while until their position was outflanked, at which point the British successfully evacuated their troops by sea. The British* then regrouped their forces in Kenya and the Sudan and launched a counter attack during January 1941 with a force 77.000 strong, this led to the total destruction of all Italian* forces in the region, nearly 290,000 in total.
Battle casualties for the British in the counter attack were 1154.


* In both the Italian and British forces a large number of the troops were locally raised.
ie, The British force contained 33,000 men of the East African Rifles

 

One thing that has to be understood that in A.O.I. (Africa orientale Italiana = Somaliland and Ethiopia) campaign is that from the first day of the war Italian forces were almost completly cut off from resupplying of weapons and ammunition. Some supplies were delivered by SM-82 (Marsupiale) and SM-81 (Pipistrelo) among them few disassembled Cr-42 fighters but generaly this was much too little. While Commonwealth forces were able to ressuplied and rearm with more modern eqipment regularly, every loss was a blow for Italians.
Last Italian forces in A.O.I. surrendered only in november 1941.

 

when the itallians invaded greece they chased the greek troops way up into slippery mountain passes with their great advantage in tanks ,planes and wheeled transport... then the itallians heard an allarming clank as the greeks closed the gate behind them and then dropped the hammer ..its said , the pell mell headlong itallian retreat that followed caused worried french border gaurds to post signs on the french / italian alpine frontier that read ...GREEK ARMY PLEASE STOP !!! YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FRANCE... all bashing aside though ,there were some elite itallian units that fought with great bravery and skill in every theater..but for whatever reason the stuff that made the roman legions of old the worlds best infantry for hundreds of years was lost somewhere in antiquity...

 

how come the italian weapons were so weak? i mean the tanks had to have sand bags for extra armor, and they used the Caracano, which was a crappy rifle.

 

Depends what you are talking about.
Machi Mc-202, Mc-205 were on par with german Bf-109, Fiat G-55 was considered as better than Bf-109G-6 when it was rolled out of the factory (spring/summer 1943). Their 90mm AA/AT gun was better than famous german 88...

 

The Carcano seemed to work well enough for Lee Harvey Oswald (allegedly :roll: ) - though British & Commonwealth forces who capturted lots of Italian weapons in North Africa were glad of everything except the rifles as the British ones were much better. After the war Italy initially replaced its Carcanos with British Enfields and then Garands - so clearly they didn't like them much either.

 

Two reasons.

1) Italy underwent huge re-armament programmes in the mid-1930s. At that point in time, tanks with 18mm of armour were perfectly adequate, and tankettes were just wonderful. :roll:

2) Italy lacked heavy industry, resources and money. So when they needed to start producing large numbers of newer, better designs of tanks they simply could not afford them, did not have the materials to build them, and did not have suitable factories to build them in.

This point, of course, does not relate to objects such as planes and guns, which do not requre such a heavy industrial base, and use less resources. Italy's planes, however, did suffer from the fact that Italian engines tended to be quite low-powered. It took German high-performance engines to make their fighters great.

 

The Italians had some good guns. The 90mm AA gun is already mentioned but there's also the 75mm Modello 37. A very good canon, so good that the germans tried to get all of them when Italy switched sides.
Problem as Ricky pointed out was the lack of industry. It just couldn't produce what the army demanded. Nice example was the P40. A medium tank that took 3 years before the prototypes were there.

Another problem was this one. The Airforce was given higer priority then the army (resulting in some good aircraft with german engines) + the fleet took a lot of facilities and raw materials for building ships, guns and repairs. No wonder the army had almost nothing. When Italy entered the war, the majorety of their guns were dated from WW1 or even before that.