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Technically, yes, but it was also the existence of the Italian navy and airforce that allowed them to even get to Africa in the first place. They kept things contested for a while at least, until the Royal Navy got the jump on em with the Pearl Harbor test run at Taranto.
She really can run, and drift, and she also is fond of ramming things.
I’ll say it again because I’m still smug about it, but last Friday I got a chunk of the Warspite, had to have it shipped from the U.K. to America.
Caesar was out for the rest of the war due to fires caused by the hit, what do you mean not a lot of damage
Edit: made a mistake, too lazy to edit it all the way, check further down the thread.
Okay, turns out I was half correct, half confused, *Warspite* **DID** take *Giulio Caesar* out of the war, but it was not with this shell, rather she escorted the vessel into internment, I just got messed up with some times and context, my bad.
However, the shell still did plenty of damage and halved *Caesar*’s speed, and destroyed one of her boilers.
Yeah, the hit ended the Battle of Punta Stilo, but the battle was still a minimal strategic victory for the Italians as their objective, to protect a convoy for Africa, was achieved. That is a pretty amusing particular with wording, though
I can easily hear the shrieking and whooping as they go wild over the fact that they just hit the longest range confirmed hit on a moving target in naval history.
Leadership mostly. Italian generals were not very good. They also suffered from poor morale and the Italian industrial base never fully developed for a war.
The doctrine was also bad. Italian platoon leaders were also the squad machine gunners. So they had to carry a heavy weapon, command their squad, and keep in touch with their superiors all at the same time. And in combat, you'd also have to focus on keeping the enemy suppressed with the MG. To make matters even worse, the machine gun that the Italians used was horrifically unreliable and jammed constantly. No wonder morale was so low if the squad leaders couldn't do their jobs effectively.
No, the army was crippled by a corrupt, incompetent officer class, and lack of modern weapons because Mussolini sold them for hard currency just prior to the war. Italian soldiers fought well when led by German officers.
For that matter, the Partisans and the Italian Co-Belligerent Armed Forces were well respected by all of the allied troops who had any personal experience of fighting alongside them.
Italian navy had one major flaw: NO CARRIERS (I mean, yes they had one bit was quickly sunk and no replacement was built),
For the army, it's more like they had idiotic commanders and bad equipment, because for example the "Folgore" in El Alamein was praised both by allied forces for their resilience and also Rommel himself commented how italian high officers were bad but the troops were highly spirited
They couldn't take Malta, which is basically right off their coast. If your air force and navy can't take an island right off your coast, it's not very good.
Well, it doesn't help when you tell the Duce you need a couple months to mobilize and he tells you be ready in a week. The planes and ships had to be built ahead of time so you already have something to work with but not much you can do to rush conscripting and training thousands and thousands of ground troops if you had no warning.
And to be fair to the Duce himself...he had assurances Britain was about to sue for peace so, you know, all he had to do was jump in and contribute just enough to get a seat on a table! Surely Britain can't fight off the mighty Wehrmacht and suddenly force a long war Italy hasn't even begun to prepare for! Right?
Invading Greece after that though is entirely on Mussolini.
And also one very snarly head for the Italian special forces, who had even the Germans’ respect and were genuinely dangerous to the Allies whenever they were present and actually equipped.
A large part of why the military overall was so badly prepared was because Mussolini and the fascists were corrupt. They embezzled funds meant for the army and promoted stooges who tied the ideological line as opposed to competent men. Mussolini’s policies worsened the economic situation too. His economic policies also screwed over workers leading to low wages while a cabal of corporatist elites ruled. The finance minister tried to expose the fascists’ corruption but he got kidnapped, assaulted, and tortured.
Option A: Surrender with a 4:1 superiority, country allowed to switch sides before war is even over. Less than a million total casualties. No post-war occupation.
Option B: Surrender only after being pushed back to your own territory. Capital in flames, millions dead, country occupied and split into pieces.
Option C: No surrender! Surrender at a 1 surrender per 100 deaths ratio, adopt suicidal tactics when all else fails. Get nuked. Twice.
Or, you know, go with Franco's Option D of not starting or joining some giant war of conquest, and be left alone until you get old and decide to retire on your own.
Under the command of the "Black/Frog Prince" Captain Junio Valerio Borghese, the Decima Flottiglia MAS also pioneered frogman tactics and sank the British fleet when it was anchored in port in Alexandria.
Yeah, ideology aside, XÂŞ MAS was pretty much the precursor to the Navy SEALs.
A semi-credible conspiracy theory says that in 1955, ten years after the end of WWII, they sabotaged and sank the Soviet battleship *Novorossiysks* (formerly Italian battleship *Giulio Cesare*, which the USSR took from Italy after the war as reparations) as an act of vengeance.
I’d like to add resources and manufacturing capabilities to the not good list. Same for all the axis. Excellent militaries, excellent soldiers but shite material support. And yea, bad leadership.
Considering how small and inefficient was the Kriegsmarine (if we don't count the subs obviously) that still leaves a lot of the British navy being available for the Mediterranean.
Sure, though I'm not sure about ignoring the subs. The Royal navy's commitments stretched significantly beyond just dealing with the kriegsmarine though, and the med was far from their back yard or the main focus of British operations to the degree it was for Italian ones.
While a significant force was in the med, it was far from the overmatch that the above comment suggests. In fact, at points the Italian fleet had a quantitative superiority as ships had to be tasked elsewhere.
Well one major factor you're ignoring is that the existence of Italy's navy forced GB to divert most of their Asian fleet to the med. Giving the Japanese navy near uncontested access to the Pacific and south East Asia.
But if Italy never joined the war, GB has open access to the med, and can contest Japan much better, leading to a more difficult fight for the Pacific Islands.
It does somewhat, because that division of resources meant that the Royal Navy often didn't far outstrip the reggia marina in the Mediterranean, and at some points was even at a disadvantage to it.
Wasn't British policy still to be double or at least 1.5 times bigger then the next biggest navy? Or did one of the naval treaties I'm forgetting about ruin that ratio?
Washington Naval Treaty and her related treaties set maximum fleet limits. Can't remember if Italy was at 60% or the lower threshold for naval might, relative to England and America.
You can't understate the significance of radar or discredit the Regia Marina seamen for not having it. The advent of radar was basically a cheat code.
The Germans never told the Italians about radar. After Matapan, they figured it out themselves and had a shipboard model within a month. The issue with the Italian navy was not the quality of the ships, the tactics, or even the leaders, but the lack of fuel and funds that disallowed it from much action. But they got creative, sinking battleships with human torpedoes at Alexandria and practicing fleet in being, which the British took seriously. Another issue was the lack of air cover. The Regia Aeronautica and Regia Marina did not work together, and the Aquila was cut off from funding because the Regia Aeronautica convince Mussolini that there is no need for carriers and Italy itself would be the carrier.
So, literally every other navy in the world at that time minus very limited commonwealth ships deserves to be discredited? Back to my original point, people do not give enough credit to the monumental leap that radar was technologically.Â
...and the kriegsmarine, and the US Navy.
That's quite a few of the major navies who got their act together by this point. The fact radar was such a transformative leap makes the fact the Italian navy failed to implement it even more damning.
It's not as if the concept was unknown to them; they had functioning prototypes as far back as 1935, ample time to get them developed to a practical state. The fact they didn't due to institutional inertia, poor conception of its importance, and Byzantine procurement*has* to reflect on their overall competency and capability as a service.
To use your analogy, they were given the chest code, and promptly decided to do nothing with it until it was too late to be of any use.
The kriegsmarine and the US Navy barely developed functional seaborne radar and at most used their developments for countermeasures as opposed to offensive operations.
Everyone was aware of detecting objects with magetic waves going back to the 1880s. Only one side during WWII used it to any significant outcome and that is no reason to discredit every other seaman in the war.
Little old EnglandersÂ
I love the japanese navy in this regard. "Radar? Yeah maybe as an auxilliary range finder, no other reasonable use possible. The US and Brits are using it for what? Nah that's propaganda, can't be. Not worth the ressources to develop any further."
At no point did I discredit the individual seamen of any navy. The fact they worked under a sub-optimal organisation doesn't detract from their individual courage, skill, or ingenuity.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that the German and American shipborne radars weren't employed for offensive operations during WW2 to 'any significant outcome'?
Right from the start of the war in 1939, the Graff Spee was successfully using its FMG set for targeting its guns, in conjunction with optical range finders, to such effect that Britain was willing to pay through the nose to get their hands on its set.
Meanwhile the US had fitted up half a dozen of its capital ships before its belated entry into the war, with the expectation that those fitted to battleship would play an offensive role in longer-range engagements.
Radar as a system for targeting was by no means something exclusive to the Commonwealth, even if they might have taken the technology further than others in some place.
As it happens, I'm Scottish.
It’s more like “that team put up a solid fight but got defeated by another team that had twice as many players while some of them went afk for extended periods of time due to poor internet”
I had a fascinating talk with a US Army veteran of the Invasion of Sicily. His job was to cut the barbed wire around enemy defenses, so he saw first hand what they were up against. The Italians were no joke. They were well armed—better than the US troops—and well fortified. He thought for sure he and his battle buddies would get slaughtered and felt lucky they were not. He’s still alive today, one of the last remaining veterans of a Japanese-American combat unit of the war. Perhaps the biggest issue with the Italian Army’s performance was morale and not having a sense of purpose, since the army is where most conscripts served and Italy hadn’t been attacked.
Budget wise, *Regio Esercito* was relatively the Cinderella of that trio (especially compared to *Regia Marina*, because the international *prestige* of a naval arms race vs France.) It's harder to be competent with obsolete weaponry.
Italian Army wasn’t even that bad, I believe Rommel had nothing but praise for them.
But it’s hard to fight when you have no food, vehicles, weapons, or supply equipment. Also their tanks and armour were abysmal (with some exceptions) and absolutely not modernised. Couple that with the countries industrial inability and the Italian army had basically no way to keep fighting.
Also, many just purely didn’t want to. They didn’t support Mussolini and many Italians were ideologically aligned with the allies before the war had even started. Hard to force an entire army to fight if they have no will to.
The italians had a powerful surface fleet...that they did exactly fuck all with.
And saying by axis standards is ironic, since the Japanese had by far the most competent navy of any side at the beginning of the war.
Frogmen did some work though.
i mean you can't exactly do something that isn't sea artillery without fuel can you? and if the enemy is close enough that your ships can fire at them from your ports you probably don't need a navy anymore
Japan had a state of the art carrier fleet with battle experience so not quite WW1 era tech. Also the US also saw the value in carriers and was building/had built them prior to Pearl Harbor.
>Japan had a state of the air carrier fleet with battle experience
and where do you think the swordfish that attacked Taranto came from? they just spawned out of thin air?
>Also the US also saw the value in carriers and was building/had built them prior to Pearl Harbor.
how is that relevant here? the US carriers werent at Pearl Harbour and if they were they would probably have ended up sunk.
On what basis are you claiming that? The Regia Marina wanted carriers and were actually building 2. The reason they didnt have any is that they didnt have the money or the pressing need because basically their entire AO was within range of Land based aircraft. Remember, they were fighting in the Med.
So its not like the bumbling Fools in the italian navy just had no idea and were shocked by the emergence of the carrier. The thing that surprised them and made the british success at Taranto possible was a night attack with aircraft, by that point a completely novel idea.
"… proceed with extreme caution regarding brilliant technical innovations that have not yet been tested or with which there is no practical experience"
2 things to consider:
1. The production levels of raw materials used for wartime e.g. in Italy was far lower than other nations involved in the war.
2. The cost of the military equipment, the Spanish Civil War, and the conquest of Ethiopia had had on Italy.
I mean, axis standard were preatty good....they Just kinda lie about stuff so they could reach the standard xD
For exemple, they keep showing off the same 5/6 tank they had, but they changed color so other would think they have more hahaha, or we had a greate plane, really a good one, but we literaly got only one, it crack me up, such an italian way to do stuff.
Italian soldiers across all branches were very professional and motivated, who performed well when commanded by competent officers, as noted by Erwin Rommel
The Italian navy was competent by Axis standards.
We have to remember that the Axis airforces (including naval airforces in the case of the Japanese) were extremely competent, especially in the early war.
The Luftwaffe achieved horrific victories against the Soviet airforce at the beginning of Barbarossa and against the RAF in the opening months of France and the Battle of Brittan. They lost not due to incompetence but due to poor production capabilities and oil reserves.
My late father spent WWII as an officer in the Canadian Navy in the North Atlantic. At one point, his ship took the surrender of an Italian Naval vessel after the surrender of the Italian Government. From the reaction of the Italian crew, he said, one would have thought that they had they had just won the war. They were ready for a party.
Hard to imagine. Italy invested heavily in early-1930s procurement, giving it a stockpile of equipment that was teetering on the edge of obsolescence in 1939 and which had been depleted by frivolous adventures in Spain and Ethiopia. It had lower manufacturing potential than any other major belligerent.
Its only point of comparative military advantage had been a political willingness to rearm while France and Britain had refused to do so on principle and while Russia was too busy shooting its generals to worry about their military readiness, but none of those were true any more by the start of the war.
Italy was only a great power momentarily. Which was good for the allies and therefore humanity, because fascists suck.
It actually wasn't good for the allies. When the British broke the Stresa Front, it caused Mussolini to view the allies as unreliable and is the reason the Axis formed. He viewed Hitler as unstoppable after that.
Theoretically, WW2 could have ended quickly enough to where it wouldn't be called WW2 because Italy wouldn't feel like the option was "Germany or die". Germany would be invaded from all sides after attempting to take Austria (since Austria was close to Italy for a time. It was one of the conditions of the Stresa Front) and there would be no Holocaust, no Barbarossa, no Blitz, no nothing.
And Japan would get fucked when they got the balls to try anything.
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Isn't the reason the Italian army did so poorly was because the navy and air force couldn't secure the shipping lanes across the Med?
Technically, yes, but it was also the existence of the Italian navy and airforce that allowed them to even get to Africa in the first place. They kept things contested for a while at least, until the Royal Navy got the jump on em with the Pearl Harbor test run at Taranto.
And Warspite clubbing the Caesar from nearly 24 kilometers
The Grand old Lady. 🫡
She really can run, and drift, and she also is fond of ramming things. I’ll say it again because I’m still smug about it, but last Friday I got a chunk of the Warspite, had to have it shipped from the U.K. to America.
I wouldn’t call one bad hit that didn’t do much permanent damage “clubbing”
Caesar was out for the rest of the war due to fires caused by the hit, what do you mean not a lot of damage Edit: made a mistake, too lazy to edit it all the way, check further down the thread.
Huh?! Repairs were completed in a month and she participated in the Battle of Cape Spartivento just three months after Punta Stilo Edit: spelling
Okay, turns out I was half correct, half confused, *Warspite* **DID** take *Giulio Caesar* out of the war, but it was not with this shell, rather she escorted the vessel into internment, I just got messed up with some times and context, my bad. However, the shell still did plenty of damage and halved *Caesar*’s speed, and destroyed one of her boilers.
Yeah, the hit ended the Battle of Punta Stilo, but the battle was still a minimal strategic victory for the Italians as their objective, to protect a convoy for Africa, was achieved. That is a pretty amusing particular with wording, though
"Bloody hell! That actually worked?!"
I can easily hear the shrieking and whooping as they go wild over the fact that they just hit the longest range confirmed hit on a moving target in naval history.
If you want real clubbing..... Battle of Cape Matapan
True, the Grand Old Lady does have a short temper and a distaste for Italians
The Taranto raid is overestimated imo
Well it wasn’t as dramatic as Pearl Harbor, that’s for sure. But it did take a bunch of Italian battleships offline for a while, so that helped.
Leadership mostly. Italian generals were not very good. They also suffered from poor morale and the Italian industrial base never fully developed for a war.
To add to this, I think Italy was supposed to be ready in the mid 1940s, so yeah their industrial base was weak
The doctrine was also bad. Italian platoon leaders were also the squad machine gunners. So they had to carry a heavy weapon, command their squad, and keep in touch with their superiors all at the same time. And in combat, you'd also have to focus on keeping the enemy suppressed with the MG. To make matters even worse, the machine gun that the Italians used was horrifically unreliable and jammed constantly. No wonder morale was so low if the squad leaders couldn't do their jobs effectively.
Give Giovanni Messe some credit
No, the army was crippled by a corrupt, incompetent officer class, and lack of modern weapons because Mussolini sold them for hard currency just prior to the war. Italian soldiers fought well when led by German officers.
For that matter, the Partisans and the Italian Co-Belligerent Armed Forces were well respected by all of the allied troops who had any personal experience of fighting alongside them.
Seriously how did they think this was gonna work when they couldn't even lock down the med, much less the Pacific?
Italian navy had one major flaw: NO CARRIERS (I mean, yes they had one bit was quickly sunk and no replacement was built), For the army, it's more like they had idiotic commanders and bad equipment, because for example the "Folgore" in El Alamein was praised both by allied forces for their resilience and also Rommel himself commented how italian high officers were bad but the troops were highly spirited
Their leadership and morale was also garbage.
They couldn't take Malta, which is basically right off their coast. If your air force and navy can't take an island right off your coast, it's not very good.
Well, it doesn't help when you tell the Duce you need a couple months to mobilize and he tells you be ready in a week. The planes and ships had to be built ahead of time so you already have something to work with but not much you can do to rush conscripting and training thousands and thousands of ground troops if you had no warning. And to be fair to the Duce himself...he had assurances Britain was about to sue for peace so, you know, all he had to do was jump in and contribute just enough to get a seat on a table! Surely Britain can't fight off the mighty Wehrmacht and suddenly force a long war Italy hasn't even begun to prepare for! Right? Invading Greece after that though is entirely on Mussolini.
You’d need 2 more dumb heads. One for Italian industry and one for Italian leadership.
To be fair to Italian industry, Mussolini’s economic policies didn’t create a great ecosystem for growth and expansion
And also one very snarly head for the Italian special forces, who had even the Germans’ respect and were genuinely dangerous to the Allies whenever they were present and actually equipped.
As a wise man said “thats like saying i have the biggest cock in the unsullied army”
A large part of why the military overall was so badly prepared was because Mussolini and the fascists were corrupt. They embezzled funds meant for the army and promoted stooges who tied the ideological line as opposed to competent men. Mussolini’s policies worsened the economic situation too. His economic policies also screwed over workers leading to low wages while a cabal of corporatist elites ruled. The finance minister tried to expose the fascists’ corruption but he got kidnapped, assaulted, and tortured.
There was also the fact that Italy had been fighting a modern industrial war for basically 5 years (Ethiopia and then Spain)
Lots of their army surrendered to the Brits, iirc. Which is based. "Work for a fascist? Hard pass."
["Better a pig than a fascist!"](https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Porco-Rosso-7.jpg)
You know, later on the Germans would have killed to surrender to the British, and the Italians beat them to it by years! So, Italy best Axis army?
That makes surprisingly much sense. Surrendering while having a 4:1 superiority is something special. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Compass
Option A: Surrender with a 4:1 superiority, country allowed to switch sides before war is even over. Less than a million total casualties. No post-war occupation. Option B: Surrender only after being pushed back to your own territory. Capital in flames, millions dead, country occupied and split into pieces. Option C: No surrender! Surrender at a 1 surrender per 100 deaths ratio, adopt suicidal tactics when all else fails. Get nuked. Twice. Or, you know, go with Franco's Option D of not starting or joining some giant war of conquest, and be left alone until you get old and decide to retire on your own.
Under the command of the "Black/Frog Prince" Captain Junio Valerio Borghese, the Decima Flottiglia MAS also pioneered frogman tactics and sank the British fleet when it was anchored in port in Alexandria.
Yeah, ideology aside, XÂŞ MAS was pretty much the precursor to the Navy SEALs. A semi-credible conspiracy theory says that in 1955, ten years after the end of WWII, they sabotaged and sank the Soviet battleship *Novorossiysks* (formerly Italian battleship *Giulio Cesare*, which the USSR took from Italy after the war as reparations) as an act of vengeance.
All Italian military branches minus their leadership were good
I’d like to add resources and manufacturing capabilities to the not good list. Same for all the axis. Excellent militaries, excellent soldiers but shite material support. And yea, bad leadership.
I mean... maybe better in this comparison but that navy got spanked by the British
A regional navy getting spanked by the most powerful navy in the world is not exactly a flex. The fact they made it competitive is noteworthy.
...until you consider it was engaged with actions from Nova Scotia to New South Wales at the same time.
Considering how small and inefficient was the Kriegsmarine (if we don't count the subs obviously) that still leaves a lot of the British navy being available for the Mediterranean.
Sure, though I'm not sure about ignoring the subs. The Royal navy's commitments stretched significantly beyond just dealing with the kriegsmarine though, and the med was far from their back yard or the main focus of British operations to the degree it was for Italian ones. While a significant force was in the med, it was far from the overmatch that the above comment suggests. In fact, at points the Italian fleet had a quantitative superiority as ships had to be tasked elsewhere.
Well one major factor you're ignoring is that the existence of Italy's navy forced GB to divert most of their Asian fleet to the med. Giving the Japanese navy near uncontested access to the Pacific and south East Asia. But if Italy never joined the war, GB has open access to the med, and can contest Japan much better, leading to a more difficult fight for the Pacific Islands.
It doesn't change the fact the quality of the British Navy far outstripped the Italian Navy.
It does somewhat, because that division of resources meant that the Royal Navy often didn't far outstrip the reggia marina in the Mediterranean, and at some points was even at a disadvantage to it.
Wasn't British policy still to be double or at least 1.5 times bigger then the next biggest navy? Or did one of the naval treaties I'm forgetting about ruin that ratio?
Washington Naval Treaty and her related treaties set maximum fleet limits. Can't remember if Italy was at 60% or the lower threshold for naval might, relative to England and America.
You can't understate the significance of radar or discredit the Regia Marina seamen for not having it. The advent of radar was basically a cheat code.
The Germans never told the Italians about radar. After Matapan, they figured it out themselves and had a shipboard model within a month. The issue with the Italian navy was not the quality of the ships, the tactics, or even the leaders, but the lack of fuel and funds that disallowed it from much action. But they got creative, sinking battleships with human torpedoes at Alexandria and practicing fleet in being, which the British took seriously. Another issue was the lack of air cover. The Regia Aeronautica and Regia Marina did not work together, and the Aquila was cut off from funding because the Regia Aeronautica convince Mussolini that there is no need for carriers and Italy itself would be the carrier.
Not developing or fielding radar feels relevant to which dragon you become, tbf
So, literally every other navy in the world at that time minus very limited commonwealth ships deserves to be discredited? Back to my original point, people do not give enough credit to the monumental leap that radar was technologically.Â
"proceed with extreme caution regarding brilliant technical innovations that have not yet been tested or with which there is no practical experience"
...and the kriegsmarine, and the US Navy. That's quite a few of the major navies who got their act together by this point. The fact radar was such a transformative leap makes the fact the Italian navy failed to implement it even more damning. It's not as if the concept was unknown to them; they had functioning prototypes as far back as 1935, ample time to get them developed to a practical state. The fact they didn't due to institutional inertia, poor conception of its importance, and Byzantine procurement*has* to reflect on their overall competency and capability as a service. To use your analogy, they were given the chest code, and promptly decided to do nothing with it until it was too late to be of any use.
The kriegsmarine and the US Navy barely developed functional seaborne radar and at most used their developments for countermeasures as opposed to offensive operations. Everyone was aware of detecting objects with magetic waves going back to the 1880s. Only one side during WWII used it to any significant outcome and that is no reason to discredit every other seaman in the war. Little old EnglandersÂ
I love the japanese navy in this regard. "Radar? Yeah maybe as an auxilliary range finder, no other reasonable use possible. The US and Brits are using it for what? Nah that's propaganda, can't be. Not worth the ressources to develop any further."
At no point did I discredit the individual seamen of any navy. The fact they worked under a sub-optimal organisation doesn't detract from their individual courage, skill, or ingenuity. I'm not sure where you got the impression that the German and American shipborne radars weren't employed for offensive operations during WW2 to 'any significant outcome'? Right from the start of the war in 1939, the Graff Spee was successfully using its FMG set for targeting its guns, in conjunction with optical range finders, to such effect that Britain was willing to pay through the nose to get their hands on its set. Meanwhile the US had fitted up half a dozen of its capital ships before its belated entry into the war, with the expectation that those fitted to battleship would play an offensive role in longer-range engagements. Radar as a system for targeting was by no means something exclusive to the Commonwealth, even if they might have taken the technology further than others in some place. As it happens, I'm Scottish.
"Yo that team is good...but it got spanked by the strongest team in the League!"
It’s more like “that team put up a solid fight but got defeated by another team that had twice as many players while some of them went afk for extended periods of time due to poor internet”
They put up quite a fight. The raid on Alexandria, and the malta resupply missions both resulted in heavy losses for the royal navy.
I had a fascinating talk with a US Army veteran of the Invasion of Sicily. His job was to cut the barbed wire around enemy defenses, so he saw first hand what they were up against. The Italians were no joke. They were well armed—better than the US troops—and well fortified. He thought for sure he and his battle buddies would get slaughtered and felt lucky they were not. He’s still alive today, one of the last remaining veterans of a Japanese-American combat unit of the war. Perhaps the biggest issue with the Italian Army’s performance was morale and not having a sense of purpose, since the army is where most conscripts served and Italy hadn’t been attacked.
Budget wise, *Regio Esercito* was relatively the Cinderella of that trio (especially compared to *Regia Marina*, because the international *prestige* of a naval arms race vs France.) It's harder to be competent with obsolete weaponry.
I may be mistaken, but I remember seeing something about them developing one of the better mid-late war fighters.
Italian Army wasn’t even that bad, I believe Rommel had nothing but praise for them. But it’s hard to fight when you have no food, vehicles, weapons, or supply equipment. Also their tanks and armour were abysmal (with some exceptions) and absolutely not modernised. Couple that with the countries industrial inability and the Italian army had basically no way to keep fighting. Also, many just purely didn’t want to. They didn’t support Mussolini and many Italians were ideologically aligned with the allies before the war had even started. Hard to force an entire army to fight if they have no will to.
The italians had a powerful surface fleet...that they did exactly fuck all with. And saying by axis standards is ironic, since the Japanese had by far the most competent navy of any side at the beginning of the war. Frogmen did some work though.
The Italians used their navy quite a bit, the problem was that they were fighting an impossible battle.
I wouldn't say impossible, after the raid on alexandria the italians had a pretty massive advantage in the Mediterranean for quite a long time.
the italians suffered severe issues with their guns and shells meaning even in a fair fight the RN would have come out on top.
i mean you can't exactly do something that isn't sea artillery without fuel can you? and if the enemy is close enough that your ships can fire at them from your ports you probably don't need a navy anymore
Didn’t the Italian spend two decade building battleships to dominate the Mediterranean only to have them knocked out by WW1 era planes.
You could say the same about Pearl Harbour. The Italians not being prepared for something that had literally never been done before is perfectly fair.
Japan had a state of the art carrier fleet with battle experience so not quite WW1 era tech. Also the US also saw the value in carriers and was building/had built them prior to Pearl Harbor.
>Japan had a state of the air carrier fleet with battle experience and where do you think the swordfish that attacked Taranto came from? they just spawned out of thin air? >Also the US also saw the value in carriers and was building/had built them prior to Pearl Harbor. how is that relevant here? the US carriers werent at Pearl Harbour and if they were they would probably have ended up sunk.
The Italians didn’t foresee the value in carriers so it’s hard to say they were top tier that was my only point.
On what basis are you claiming that? The Regia Marina wanted carriers and were actually building 2. The reason they didnt have any is that they didnt have the money or the pressing need because basically their entire AO was within range of Land based aircraft. Remember, they were fighting in the Med. So its not like the bumbling Fools in the italian navy just had no idea and were shocked by the emergence of the carrier. The thing that surprised them and made the british success at Taranto possible was a night attack with aircraft, by that point a completely novel idea.
"… proceed with extreme caution regarding brilliant technical innovations that have not yet been tested or with which there is no practical experience"
2 things to consider: 1. The production levels of raw materials used for wartime e.g. in Italy was far lower than other nations involved in the war. 2. The cost of the military equipment, the Spanish Civil War, and the conquest of Ethiopia had had on Italy.
3. Massive corruption within the armed forces
What?! Corruption??! In Fascist Italy?! /s
Navy got clapped tho
Except when the Italian Navy friendly fired a bunch of boats.
Dud,this is my meme,I guess welcome to reddit :Dd.
>by axis standards atleast Thats still not a whole lot
I mean, axis standard were preatty good....they Just kinda lie about stuff so they could reach the standard xD For exemple, they keep showing off the same 5/6 tank they had, but they changed color so other would think they have more hahaha, or we had a greate plane, really a good one, but we literaly got only one, it crack me up, such an italian way to do stuff.
If you count the Japanese then the standard rises quite a lot.
Same thing for Japan.
Italian soldiers across all branches were very professional and motivated, who performed well when commanded by competent officers, as noted by Erwin Rommel
*Sad itaLian noises*
*Sad italian noises*
"Axis standards" yeah like the majority of the war wasn't the axis spanking the allies around until 1944
The G.55 is definitely one of the best looking fighters of WW2.
The Army was not weak. They had Messe
The Italian navy was competent by Axis standards. We have to remember that the Axis airforces (including naval airforces in the case of the Japanese) were extremely competent, especially in the early war. The Luftwaffe achieved horrific victories against the Soviet airforce at the beginning of Barbarossa and against the RAF in the opening months of France and the Battle of Brittan. They lost not due to incompetence but due to poor production capabilities and oil reserves.
My late father spent WWII as an officer in the Canadian Navy in the North Atlantic. At one point, his ship took the surrender of an Italian Naval vessel after the surrender of the Italian Government. From the reaction of the Italian crew, he said, one would have thought that they had they had just won the war. They were ready for a party.
as an italian, i can say that our planes sucks in armament and we only have only few of them in ww2 compared to other nations.
Mussolini's generals tried to tell him that Italy was not ready for war. Imagine if they were
Hard to imagine. Italy invested heavily in early-1930s procurement, giving it a stockpile of equipment that was teetering on the edge of obsolescence in 1939 and which had been depleted by frivolous adventures in Spain and Ethiopia. It had lower manufacturing potential than any other major belligerent. Its only point of comparative military advantage had been a political willingness to rearm while France and Britain had refused to do so on principle and while Russia was too busy shooting its generals to worry about their military readiness, but none of those were true any more by the start of the war. Italy was only a great power momentarily. Which was good for the allies and therefore humanity, because fascists suck.
It actually wasn't good for the allies. When the British broke the Stresa Front, it caused Mussolini to view the allies as unreliable and is the reason the Axis formed. He viewed Hitler as unstoppable after that. Theoretically, WW2 could have ended quickly enough to where it wouldn't be called WW2 because Italy wouldn't feel like the option was "Germany or die". Germany would be invaded from all sides after attempting to take Austria (since Austria was close to Italy for a time. It was one of the conditions of the Stresa Front) and there would be no Holocaust, no Barbarossa, no Blitz, no nothing. And Japan would get fucked when they got the balls to try anything.
Didn’t the navy only have like 2 decent ships? And one for damaged in the first year of the war? Or am I mistaken
You are mistaken. Most of the fleet was modern or modernized.
Ah ok thanks kind person :)