Paolo Viti1 hour ago (edited)
As an Italian I knew quite well the Italian military situation especially during the thirties, almost handled by real amateurs starting with the combined major staff, army, navy and aviation that hardly communicated with each other. This staff had little knowledge, among many matters, on techinical issues and as a consequence they gave bad directions/advice to important firms like Ansaldo or FIAT in order to improve their productivity yet those same firms in order to save money pocket as much they could never did serious research and stuck to bolted/riveted armour, very slow production and ensuing obsolete tanks before even being drafted. Without writing a book it is curious to know that already during the end of the 1st WW knew that bolted/riveted armour was dangerous and knew that sloped armour offered better protection. They knew very well that the Germans in the late twenties were already mastering welding techniques and Ansaldo has been welding massive slabs of armour but nothing came out of it. Finally I want to mention about the the P26/40: altrough the design started in 1940 by direct order of Mussolini (jumping over the bureaucracy!) it was much better than the contemporary Italian tanks yet it was riveted with better sloped armour, it was hydraulic operated and probaby because of a narrow ring so it only had a crew of two on the turret, it had an obsolet suspension that was not effective on high speed. The real problem was the engine that wasted so much time because it was not available for that tank so instead of opting for a powerful in-line aereo engine, I think only on was in production, instead it was decided to devope a new 330 HP SPA 8V diesel engine instead of putting a license production 12-cylinder Maybach HL120 TRM 300 that would have been available in less then one year with it's grearbox so the rest is history but what they did was far too late with very limited resources. Hope I did't bore you....
dcanmore2 days ago
Good video, however, Matilda II is an infantry tank not a cruiser tank. Italians also deployed what is considered one of the best anti-tank guns of WWII, the 90mm Canone da 90/53, it was also used as a naval and anti-aircraft gun, comparable to the famed German 88mm.
