GHQ Models Forums

On the Romanian list, the equipment is a mixture of Romanian specific equipment and French and German equipment. This got me thinking, what other countries could GHQ do this too without duplicating the entire German list on the Soviet list and vice verse.

Germany:
Panhard AMD-178

Hungary:
BT-7 Model 1937
Hotchkiss H-35
Hotchkiss H-39
Pz35
Pz38A through G and S
PzIA
PzIB
PzIIIG
PzIIIH
PzIIIJ1
PzIIIJ2
PzIIIM
PzIIIN
PzIVD
PzIVF1
PzIVF2
PzIVG1
PzIVH
Panther 1D
Panther 1G
Tiger 1E
Renault R-35
Somua S-35
M-3A1 Stuart
T-26S m38
T-34/76 m41
T-34/85 m44
TKS
Hetzer
Marder IID
Marder IIF
StuG IIIG
BA-6

Italy:
PzIIIN
PzIVH
Pather 1D
Tiger 1E
Renault R-35
Somua S-35
StuGIIIG

Romania:
Pz38 A through G and S
PzIIIG
PzIIIH
PzIIIJ1
PzIIIN
PzIVF2
PzIVG
T-34/85 m44
Marder IID
SU-76M
StuGIIIG
Komsomolet
Renault UE2
SdKfz 250/1
SdKfz 251/1
BA-64

Harlan

May you give any reference for Tiger and Panther in the Italian Army? I have knowledge of Italian soldiers trained on German Tiger but no news of Tiger or Panther in force to the Italian Army or the RSI Army.

I am away from my books right now, I will be able to cite the sources next week. If I remember the articles correctly, they where with the Italian Army not RSI and where in very limited numbers. If I remember correctly, 12 to 14 Tiger 1s. I do not rember on the others.

The Germans delivered to Italiy PzIII N, Pz IV and StuGIII (12 each) assigned to M Division under formation. These tanks nevet fought under Italian command and were later returned to Germans. The RSI had no panzer units worth of this name.

For the Tigers there were plans and a few soldiers were trained by the 2nd company of the 504th Schwere abteilung, at the time in Italy, in the spring of 1943.

However any active cooperation ended with the fall of Mussolini on 25/07/1943. So no more training. As far as I know there were no plans for the Panthers. Not surprising considering that in July 1943 it was quite a new tank, difficult to deliver it to an untrust ally.

Regarding the suggestions on the Romanian list:

Pz38 A through G and S
Agree about some Pz38ts, but don't see the need for every sub-variant. The Romanians received several dozen from the Germans in 1943. All had been up-armored, so effectively were G varients. (And it seems they never managed to get more than 15 running at any one time -- Germany was big on transferring worn-out discards to their Romanian allies.)

PzIIIG
PzIIIH
PzIIIJ1
PzIIIN
As far as I have found, the Romanians only ever received about a dozen Pz IIIs in the fourth quarter of 1942. These were all the N variant.

PzIVF2
PzIVG
PzIV is a key piece of kit for the Romanians. But the F2 or G are not the most important varients. Again about a dozen Gs were received in the fourth quarter of 1942. As with the PzIIIN, they were lost within two months of coming on strength when the Romanian 1st Armored DIvision was crushed in the Soviet flank attacks at Stalingrad. However, in the first half of 1944 the 1st Armored was re-equipped with German kit, and the PzIVH was taken on strength in some numbers, remaining the most important tank in the Romanian inventory through the rest of the war in their battles against the Soviets, and then against the Germans and Hungarians.

T-34/85 m44
The Romanians made use of captured equipment whenever they could. But T-34/85s would have been exceedingly rare during the war. Few were available to be captured from Soviet formations prior to the summer of 1944, and when the Romanians changed sides in August the Soviets confiscated any and all captured Soviet equipment they found in Romanian hands.

Post-war, however, after the communist take-over, T-34/85s were supplied to the Romanian military.

Marder IID
Never heard of this in Romanian service. Don't deny it, though. The Romanians came to like the Marder concept, producing two of their own Marder-like vehicles using their remaining R-2 (Pz 35t) and captured T-60 hulls.

SU-76M
Once again I don't know much about SU-76s in Romanian service during the war. This was a later war vehicle (only came into production after the T-70 was taken out of production in the summer of 1943). The Soviets would have confiscated any they found in Romanian service in the fall of 1944. But it was supplied to the new Romanian government in the post-war years.

StuGIIIG
Agree with this choice. As with the PzIVH, this was supplied in some numbers in the first half of 1944, and would be a key piece of kit for 1944 and 1945 Romanian armored forces.

Komsomolet
Agree with this choice. The Romanians captured large numbers in 1941. It used an Ford licensed engine which was produced by the Soviets but also by the Romanians, so the Romanians were able to keep these in service longer, and in larger numbers, than most captured kit.

Renault UE2
Agree with this choice. License-built in Romania as the "Malaxa". Saw extensive service throughout the war.

SdKfz 250/1
SdKfz 251/1
Many German half-tracks were used after the 1944 re-equipping of the 1st Armored. But I don't know enough about which varients to comment.

BA-64
Not sure whether this is an important model or not. I know the BA-6 and BA-10 armored cars were taken in some numbers in 1941, and used in the "Heavy" armored car units. Again these used license-built Ford engines, and so the Romanians were able to keep them in the field until they were siezed by the Soviets in the fall of 1944. The BA-64 only started to show up in large numbers mid-war, and so would not have been in service for very long before being taken away. Most of the "Light" armored car units used German A/Cs, which stayed in service after the switch, but that is not to say that the Romanians wouldn't have used any BA-64s that they had.

Another important set of models might be trucks. The Romanians used Renault trucks, German Horsch light trucks, and many captured Soviet trucks, the GAZ trucks being particularly useful as they were, once again, license-built Ford models that could be supported by Romanian industry. Also the German horse-wagons, and the Polish 75mm gun with horse carriage, could be added to the Romanian list. And the Italian 100mm howitzer, a WW1 era Skoda gun, was used in some numbers too.

Other interesting and available models that saw some service includes the US M3 Lee and M3A1 Stuart tanks. Both were provided to the Soviets through lend-lease, and captured by the Romanians in early 1943, the Stuart in particular being taken in some numbers during the un-successful Soviet ampibious campaigns on the Kerch penninsula and the Crimean coast. Some of both tanks were taken back to Romania for testing and training, but I expect more than a few were kept on the spot and used in ad hoc support units by the infantry and mountain troops throughout 1943 and early 1944. None escaped the destruction of the Romanian 17th Army in the Crimea in mid-1944.

But I would strongly suggest removing the French 47mm AT gun from the Romanian list. The model is described as a Schneider gun, but is in fact the French Mlle 1937 made by APX, not Schneider. It is the wrong gun for Romanian forces, and was never used by them. They did use the Schneider Mlle 1936 47mm AT gun in some numbers, but it was a different gun altogether, which bore no visual resemblance to the APX gun modelled by GHQ. The Italian 47mm Breda AT gun could be brought in to the Romanian list to replace the mis-named French 47mm, as this gun, produced by Breda under license from Bohler in Austria, was used first by Romanian AT gun batteries, and later by infantry gun batteries, throughout the war.

Without having my liabrary with me I am going to resort to citing a web source. Here is a snimpet from Acktung Panzer website:

In February of 1943, MAN allowed Italian Fiat-Ansaldo to licence produce Panthers but production never took place due to the Italian surrender in September of 1943.

To got a licence does not mean to have a tank in service. So you may delete Italy from the list of users of Panther tank.

Actually we had a lot of pharaonic projects totally beyond our own industrial capability both in quantity and quality.

Our modest tank industry was unable to fulfill the requests for old tank of M series and had a lot of troubles to put in production the new P40 tank. I imagine that if we ever started to produce a quite complicated tank like the Panther, the first will not be available before 1945.

Maybe a good location for the Panther is on the Italian "1947" list.

It would have been possible..

Consider the following program for Panther production agreed upon in an high level meeting kept from 13 to 24/02/1943 in order to define support of Germany to Italy.

Delivery of complete drawings within 3 months. Start of the production 12 months after the translation of the drawings. Production of more than 25 tanks per month after 18 months. Any number above 25 per month had to be deliverede to Germany.


On paper that means that the first deliveries Italian produced Panthers wuold have been around end 1944/start of 1945. The drawings were never received nor pressed for (mainly because FIAT-Ansaldo pushed for the production of the P40 tank of their own production).

Just as comment to the success of this type of liicence producion. Italy got the licence for Pz III in August 1941 and Pz IV in 1942. No one was ever built,

Beside these plans there was a proposal to supply from Germany 10 Panthers per month starting from December 1943.

About the Tiger tanks in service with the Italian Army it is a legend. I think to have found a possible reason for the mistake. I have found two sites giving 36 Tigers delivered to the M Division. Now the division had 36 tanks but PzIII N, Pz IVG and Stug IIIG (12 each), no Tigers at all.

TAMMY wrote:Actually we had a lot of pharaonic projects totally beyond our own industrial capability both in quantity and quality.

Our modest tank industry was unable to fulfill the requests for ...

True, true, true.

Italy's military did not achieve a glorious reputation during WW2. Many students of military history, though, seem to overlook the fact that Italian theororists were at the fore-front of modern thinking on military matters throughout the 1920s and 1930s. By 1936 Italy had the second or third largest armored force in the world, and since the Soviets kept the size of their army very secret, Italy was actually known as one of the top two nations in armored warfare capability.

The concept of the Celere Divisions was every bit as advanced as the German Light Divisions and the French DLMs.

But alas, Italian industry had no where near the capacity for modern mechanized warfare. They could build a tank force, but it took years of dedicated work, and they could not sustain it through its losses in combat, nor upgrade across the board as the technology of armored warfare advanced. One might say that the army peaked 5 years too soon. Also, the Italian industrial base was not "rationalized" across the demands of the different arms of the military -- the varous projects of the Army, Airforce and Navy were all competing for the industrial capacity of same few large firms (Fiat, Breda, Ansaldo). Every new capital ship built meant a delay in re-building the tank force.

And so one sees the odd setting of an Army, with well conceived doctrine, fighting with hopelessly out-classed equipment, while a large and powerful Navy, with some of the most modern fighting ships in the world, sits in port for lack of petrolium.

"What-if" wargames can be quite interesting with the Italian forces. I find early-war "what-if's" to be the most interesting, as it was in the very early stages of the war that Italy still looked like a military power-house.

But as they say: "Fra dire, y il fare, che di mezzo il MARE!"

Good quotation and quite right too (It is actually: Fra il dire e il fare c'è di mezzo l mare!).

However I prefer to use a different image for Italy in this period, surprising as it may be for a dictatorship: an orchestra where everyone is playing his own music. You may still have some good single player but the result will always be terrific.

Take for example the airplanes. We had a lot of different models, many of them of indifferent characteristics, just because every company wanted to build his own model and was allowed to do so. No one had the power, or the will, to rationalize the production on the better models only and optimize the resources.