Re: German Army's knowledge of Russia's tanks 1940

Don Phillipson wrote:

No, we cannot draw from this one case (British victory over Italians)
the lesson that Italian tankettes were "not really obsolete."

Yes, we can.

A lot of the British "armor" consisted of Vickers MkVIB and armored
cars, and the reason why the Italians lost that particular engagement
wasn't the technical obsolescence of their vehicles but inadequate
doctrine and tactics.

It was more a case of the Italian tank arm being unskilled than that
of Italian "tanks" being obsolete. Good equipment can go a long way to
offset inferior training and tactics, as the French B1bis & Soviet
KV-1 / T-34 demonstrated, and the Italians had to cope not only with
inferior tactics but with at best mediocre equipment as well.

However, Haydn's point is IMO valid: the failure of Italian armored
units can't be just attributed to technical obsolescence, and in that
particular engagement it definitely wasn't. To put it differently, if
the unit had been a German armored unit that had somehow captured a
whole Italian L3 battalion, complete with stores and supplies, the
British would probably have lost that fight.


LC

.

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