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history-nerd — Italian tanks presentation : M13/40
Published: 2013-01-30 15:20:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 2225; Favourites: 13; Downloads: 6
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Now for the early version of the most numerous tank produced and deployed by Italy in World War 2.Basically designed as the definitive version of the M11/39, of which had the same chassis and engine, it finally had in a two-man turret (which was widespread in 1940) a gun that has been bad-mouthed since the end of the war : the Cannone Ansaldo-Böhler da 47 mm. But frankly, it was quite a good gun, capable of firing either AP or HE (and later HEAT) rounds, which the similar British 2-pounder couldn't, and had more or less the same performance of similar caliber foreign guns; the mistake was focusing production on this gun till 1943, even as divisional artillery, instead of switching on more powerful and more AT capable guns (like the Cannone da 75/32). So, the gun was capable of holding its own against the 2-pounder mounted on the British cruiser tanks, there is no arguing about it; the problem was that the engine was the same as the M11/39, so the tank was underpowered and slow (at most 32 km/h); the armor, already not thick, was often made of substandard steel and it cracked often; there was a delay getting the radio on the tanks, so the early ones hadn't one; and only a few, assigned to platoon commanders, had a compass which could be used inside the vehicle (the others had to dismount, otherwise the tank's metal would have rendered it useless!). And don't forget that amongst the soldiers preparation about tank tactics was very low, and had to be earned on the field. When they did, this tank proved it was tolerable, at least against the enemy cruiser tanks, up to the Crusader; against the Matilda and the Valentine, it was in big trouble (but against the former, even the German tanks were pretty much powerless, I'd like to point out).
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Comments: 19
You forgot to say unreliable. On one occasion, Erwin Rommel organized a shooting contest between 4 Panzer IIIs, and 4 M13/40s, but only one M13/40 showed up because the other three had broken down on the way to the contest!
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Yes, I know. But in my opinion part of the fault for that can be attributed to the lack of proper training and organization that plagued the Italian divisions for quite a long period of time; that included also lack of trained crewman and repair stations, therefore damaged or malfunctioning vehicles were out of service for long periods of time.
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Now wait just a minute here. I will not have you bad mouth the Italian training, their command and control was seriously flawed, but the average Italian tanker understood their machines, but couldn't make field repairs for lack of spare parts. Italy had been in several small wars from 1924 to 1939, therefore by the time they entered WWII in 1940 they had already exhausted their stockpiles of spare parts. The blame should not be heaped on the average Italian soldiers, but on their political leaders, and Mussolini in particular for failing to take the condition of the army into consideration.
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I agree, but we should keep in mind that up to 1939 the only tanks in service were either the obsolete Fiat 3000s or the CV tankettes. In a frenzy of new units, many tankers simply didn't have the chance to get to know the new tanks when they arrived, and were kind of thrown into battle with minimal training on how to keep them properly.
For crying out loud, the units fielded in late 1940 - early 1941 received the following training: a few days of theoretical studies, then for the drivers two or at most three hours of driving practice, and for gunners six shots to be fired. In those conditions, even the best soldier in the world is rather hampered, I would say. And the responsability for this falls squarely on the major leadership.
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Yes, and no. The "newer" tanks in late 40 and early 41 were based on older models, and had many similar features and controls. So much so that those used to the CV and Fiats didn't need anymore training than what they received to be effective in them. Lets look at the most common problem, which was a failure in the trundles, a problem that while time consuming to fix, isn't impossible with spare parts and grease. The Allies had the same problem with the Sherman, even as late as early 45 crews reported being unable to move quickly because they needed time to grease seized wheel axles and replace cracked trundles, and Western Europe is much nicer terrain than the rocky outcrops of North Africa. But the Allies had the manufacturing capability to keep their crews in spare parts. The Italians focused on new tank production, and not the production of spare parts for the vehicles already in the field, and with these spare parts unavailable, a seized wheel axle became near impossible to fix, and those who tried to compensate often overworked their engines, causing an increase in engine failures.
You seem to know your stuff, so you might know this fact; by November 1940, 2,000 of the 5,140 vehicles Italy had in Libya were unserviceable because they had been cannibalized for spare parts. Neither the Germans nor Italians ever seemed to quite grasp the importance of spare parts, look at how ineffective Panther, Tiger, and King Tiger tanks proved to be, almost two thirds were abandoned and destroyed by their crews because of breakdowns!
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Hmmm... well, you make some really good points, but I'm still a little bit skeptical. While the features were all the same (same mechanical layout, more or less same kind of suspension, I think same kind of transmission), some things did change. The engines sure did, and they did perform quite differently: I think it would have been somewhat difficult to go from a tankette in which the engine was adequate to a medium tank in which the engine was perpetually strained, and therefore required a different degree of attention.
I don't discuss the lack of spare parts; the production of complete new tanks was in itself inadequate and inefficient, therefore that of spare parts must have been at least as bad.
Regarding the numbers you cited, while I do not argue about the critical situation, they seem to be a little too high; for the war, the sources I have cite that in 1940 some 12000 (more or less) trucks were requisitioned in Italy (and the reliance on requisitioning proved to be wrong, as it yielded modest results because of too many exemptions). It seems unlikely that almost half of them had been sent in North Africa, even considering the presence of two armies there (but there were 10 in total).
What is your source for those numbers?
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I must admit an error, and abandon part of my argument as indefensible. I was under the impression that the Panzer II was comparable to the M13/40. I dug deeper and found I was wrong. The Panzer II was not only lighter than what I realized, but also had a slightly more powerful engine than the M13/40. A 13.5 ton vehicle with a 125 horsepower engine, no wonder they had so many breakdowns. That is downright disgusting design work, the engineers should have been ashamed of themselves.
My source is Osprey Publishing, Men-at-Arms 349, The Italian Army 1940-45(2) Africa 1940-43. (About the middle of page 8.) Its not talking about requisitioned vehicles though, the author is talking total of Italian military vehicles in Libya, not just trucks, but cars, motorcycles, tanks, etc. Libya was an important Italian colony for some time before War broke out. And fighting had been going on early in 1924 because of various uprisings. So the Italians had a military presence there already.
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I'll second that. Since they took too long to realize the need of gun-armed tanks, they had to hurry so much that there was no time for real all-around redesigning, so for the M13/40 they had to keep the hull and the engine of the M11/39. Even without considering the mechanical headache, it meant that the Italian tanks suffered from a grave tactical handicap, being unable to pursue a retreating enemy or to disengage against a superior force.
Besides, I read that there were many kinks and bugs that weren't worked out when the tanks were hurried to North Africa, and the cooling system was so problematic that the commander of the "Ariete" division himself once asked directly for a new tank engine (which led to the M14/41, with 20 hp more and some improvements to the cooling).
Well, if we're talking about all of these vehicles it's alright.
However, while I have read the book and I think it's adequate, I find it somewhat strange that no bibliography is given.
Besides, one thing I find completely wrong is the author's claim that the Italians' attempt at using the 75/46 AA gun was without particular success. The contrary is true, the gun was suitable for anti-tank use (the only guns outperforming it were the Italian 90 mm and the German 88 mm), but the problem was that too few of these were ever built. The ultimate proof for that is that the Germans selected this very gun to replace the 105 mm field gun on the M43 "Bassotto" SPG/Tank destroyer; would have they done it had it been unsuitable for the task?
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That's why I think the Italian stereotype of cowardice is inaccurate, they had to be pretty damn brave to climb into those vehicles when they knew what faced them. Proper prototyping is often an unfortunate victim in times of war.
The bibliography is in the third book, complete for the whole series, an odd way of doing it, but probably done because all of the books are paperback. Overall the series is good, and I trust many of the Osprey books. The part about the 75mm being ineffective is probably because only HE shells were made for it before the German Occupation, even the 88 needed AP shells to be effective against armor. The Germans discovered during the Spanish Civil War, why the Italians didn't I don't know. Once again, poor planning produced piss poor performance.
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Yes. For Italy, the war had been already lost on an industrial basis before it started.
Hmmm... well, while I know that initially both the 75 and the 90 mm lacked anti-tank ammo, many authors later cited that at least in 1942, even if in inadequate quantities, armor-piercing shells had been made for these guns.
As for the 90 mm, I think it wasn't deployed to Spain during the Civil War, while the 88 mm was. However, about this peculiar gun there are many witnesses about its efficiency both as a long-range gun for indirect fire (although this was a rather stupid way to use it) and as anti-tank gun.
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Really? Huh, I didn't know that about the AP shells. I read in a History magazine that the Germans were the ones who developed AP shells for the Italian guns. Guess I should have known better than to trust those things without any collaborating evidence.
And indirect fire can be very useful for gun crews, its a very useful firing mode. Especially in defensive positions.
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It is true that these Italian guns often lacked armour-piercing shells, but not that there weren't any. Unfortunately, witness report on the use of these weapons are scarce; from the Allied point of view, this was compounded by the 90 mm's similarity to the 88 mm (and some authors also suggested that, whenever Allied soldiers tanks were fired upon and they couldn't spot who was actually firing on them, they tended to assume that an 88 mm was responsible).
It's true, but fire support should be performed by guns designed for that. Unfortunately, with most of the Italian artillery pieces being WWI vintage guns, they were not enough to give adequate cover, so other guns had to be used for this.
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Yeah, I believe its called "Blaming the Spider," or...maybe "Blaming the Ghost," anyway, its were you blame the thing you fear most when you're under attack from an unknown foe. The British heard over exaggerated stories about the effectiveness of the German 88, and then passed them on to the Americans. So when all your tanks blow up, you blame a section of 88s, and later Tigers.
Yeah, that was in the book series too, how the cannon barrels were 40 years old, but looked modern because they replaced the wood wheels with steel ones. A half hearted attempt at modernization if you ask me.
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Pretty much.
Yes... the fact is, from the 1920s to 1940 the Army kept asking for funds to renew the artillery, but these were never granted. As a result, they were forced to use the old guns, and to modernize them they used new mounts and new carriages, but this wasn't particulary successful (also because there were never enough adequate tractors). As for modern guns, even though some sufficiently modern designs had emerged by the late 1930s, they were greenlighted for production too late, and were never produced in enough quantities.
Besides, the insistence by the Italian Army on the 75 mm caliber for medium field artillery proved to be counterproductive, as it was rapidly becoming obsolescent (the Soviet too had to learn this lesson, but they could cope with that).
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Incredible, for a regime that supposedly wanted to make Italy more militaristic, more marshal, and the like, it really didn't spend that much on their Armed Forces did it?
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It was just the facade; Mussolini wanted to use money to improve the standing of the Fascist regime in the eyes of the Italian people, and there wasn't that much money to go around in the first place.
Although, until the invasion of Ethiopia, with the exception of the occupation of Corfu in 1923, the Italian foreign policy wasn't particularly aggressive or hostile towards the UK or France; Mussolini wasn't a fool, and knew that each of them could wipe the floor with Italy. So, only in the late 1930s it began to appear an ever growing abyss between an increasingly aggressive policy and the modest means of the Italian armed forces, that would have required years to fill.
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Thanks for pointing it out! Nice model!
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I'm sorry.
My reply was overdue for about 1 year.
My best regards in the future!!!
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