National Advantage - Italy

@taamvan:

There was a scandal when several new Italian Cruisers were manufactured with Mild Steel instead of cemented Krupp armor, which reduced the price by two thirds but decreased survivability to zero…

Italian Cruisers defend at 1?

Interesting idea.  Then you would make them cost like 8 IPCs?
So Italian cruisers stats would be:
Attack = 3, Defense = 1, Move = 2, Cost = 8

I think that would be a good advantage to give to Italy.  Not too much of an advantage but gives them a little something.

Italy did fairly well in Eritrea. They beat back waves of UK troop, remember reading a couple of big battles.  They just ran out of Ammo.

They also did fairly well in USSR , till Stalingrad.

Being descendents of old civilization, that has held the Med… and also had Europe in its grip during various times, they are a little more practical when it comes to knowing when to cut their losses.

Loss of fleet at Taranto did not help much either.

@MeinHerr:

Being descendents of old civilization, that has held the Med… and also had Europe in its grip during various times, they are a little more practical when it comes to knowing when to cut their losses.

So Julius Caesar was leading Italy’s troops in WWII?  I really don’t think how the Ancient Romans fought 2,000 years prior had anything to do with Italy’s prowess or lack-there-of during WWII.

On the whole, Italy performed poorly throughout the war, and had far more debacles than stand out moments. There will always be isolated incidents of bravery and courage with any army, including Italy… but overall, Italy did poorly given the potential and opportunities of their forces.

the MAS fought like crazy, human torpedos and sabotage and stuff.  Yes their equipment sucked, but not that badly by the standards of 1937-1938.

The most consistent problem is that Moosalini was playing hitler to his own advantage.  He asked for what was essentially 2-3 years of coal, oil, metals, rail assets, new fighters etc. just as a bribe to enter the war at critical times.  He constantly pursued Italian politically-focused objectives rather than aiding the Nazi’s as a adjunct or auxillary force.  As AXA depicts, the Germans had very little in the Mediterranean at the beginning of the war and very little way of getting any down there.

However, this was a massive oversight, because there were about 5+ specific times where Germany was forced to suddenly forced to divert massive air fleets and invasion forces in order to shore up gaps in its southern front (siege of Malta, Crete, Battle for Greece, Rommel begins, Rommel needs help to win, Rommel needs help to survive and evac).

Since Germany isn’t a real life naval power, and it was right in the midst of the Barbarossa/Blitz campaigns, these piecemeal interventions were a running disaster.  Hitler had some interesting military insights and skills (contrasted with his generally suicidal approach to Total War) but he does not appear to have had any grand plan to control the Mediterranean or work closely with his Italian allies to help them gain and hold strategic objectives.  The failure to take Malta or mount a successful UBoat campaign in the med made general victory impossible and it denied Rommel any chance of a successful stratagem.

@taamvan:

Hitler had some interesting military insights and skills (contrasted with his generally suicidal approach to Total War) but he does not appear to have had any grand plan to control the Mediterranean or work closely with his Italian allies to help them gain and hold strategic objectives.  Â

By his own admission, Hitler had little understanding of naval strategy and little interest in naval affairs in general.  His WWI combat experience was limited to the infantry, and he never really evolved beyond that perspective when he assumed high command in WWII – though he did have a fondness for sketching battleship designs on the proverbial backs of envelopes.  He once proposed the construction of a battleship armed with 800mm main guns similar to the Schwerer Gustav railway gun – almost double the 406mm (16") caliber of the Iowa class main guns.  One of his admirals pointed out that a battleship large enough to carry guns of that size would be too big to fit in any existing German port; Hitler, in a somewhat atypical display of common sense, thereupon trashed the idea.

You would think Hitler would just do the old “Do I have to think of everything?  Build a BIGGER port, duh?!?!”

@Wolfshanze:

You would think Hitler would just do the old “Do I have to think of everything?  Build a BIGGER port, duh?!?!”

It wouldn’t necessarily have helped.  An even stronger argument against arming a battleship with 800mm guns is that their firing rate would have been much too slow for effective range correction based on the observation of the fall of each salvo.  An Iowa class battleship with top-notch gun crews could fire a 406mm main gun salvo every 30 seconds.  The Yamatos, with 460mm guns, could manage a main gun salvo every 30 to 45 seconds, depending on the firing elevation.  The Gustav 800mm gun had a rate of fire of 1 round every 30 to 45 minutes (that’s minutes, not seconds), and therefore was about sixty times slower to reload.  Against a moving target like a ship, this would have been utterly impractical for range-correction purposes.  If Hitler wanted to indulge his propensity for gigantism, he would have been much better to stick to the domain where he felt comfortable, land warfare, and urge the construction of a 188-tonne tank armed with a 128mm main gun.  Come to think of it, he actually did approve the construction of such a monstrosity, and got precisely one fully complete prototype out of the project for his trouble.

I wasn’t serious, I was making a joke.

@Wolfshanze:

I wasn’t serious, I was making a joke.

I know, but it’s hard to pass up an opportunity to make fun of Adolf’s fondness for megaprojects.  To paraphrase James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies, “I think he suffered from an edifice complex.”

Well you might want to watch this then…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxRwhOo-2u0