WesWorld

Taken from "Italy: Her Impact and Influence in the Twentieth Century" by Conte di Rosso pp.388

The new year of 1935 brought profound changes to the makeup of Italy with the historic referendum on the monarchy that created the modern Italian Republic. Following the results in the first week of January the government was lead by King Umberto and his close pool of advisors. They succeeded in stabilising the country, but most work was done on writing the new constitution which came into effect on the 1st June. This lead to the creation of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. King Umberto stood down after the results of the free elections were announced bringing the Liberals to power once more after a 20 year gap. The first act of the Senate was to create King Umberto a life senator. The first leader of the Senate, and Italy, was the illustrious Duca d'Aosta, newly elected from his native Valle D'Aosta after resigning from the Regia Aeronautica. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Amedeo strove to create stronger European links in his early years. It is his political actions on the international stage that he is best remembered for, but he was directly responsible for the rapid growth of Italy in the technology sector after his initial investment. The project for a transatlantic aircraft, which resulted in the Piaggio P.125, had considerable start up investment in the development side from the government.

The most notable event of 1935 was the South American war. Italy herself had a fairly small impact on the events despite her close links with Argentina. Italy's willingness and capability to supply weapons to the Argentines lead to a distinct peak in the economy in mid 1935. The only military aid supplied to Argentina was the arrival of the combat air school from Desenzano, the opportunity of real combat experience being a great boon in the following years. This would lead to one of the strangest encounters of the war when Italian fighters would engage bombers from Nordmark. All through this, Italy maintained cordial relations with South Afrika through a mist of deception. South Afrika's occupation in South American gave Italy an excellent chance for negotiations on East Africa which would lead to a mutually beneficial solution.

Other events;

• Reggiane Falco flies with redesigned Alfa-Romeo V12 engine, due to enter squadron service in late 1936
  
• First testing of Beretta MAB submachine gun in Cyrenaica which fires the 9mm Lungo cartridge. Initial tests are very promising, especially with regards as to the accuracy at range.
  
• Also being tested at the ground in Cyrenaica is a modified Gebauer 34M for the requirement for a new machine gun. Changes include rechambering to 6.5x52 and lowering the rate of fire.
  
• China's air attaché is treated to a guided tour of Guidonia by Italo Balbo. The highlight of the visit is a flight in one of the prototype Piaggio P.50s
  
• The first M.25/35 medium tanks start being delivered to Romania.
  
• Ing. Campini runs the first successful test of his new propulsion system. Work is undergoing by CANT to adapt one of the Z.1015s to mount the engine in the tail.
  
• The opening of the new electrified train line from Rome to Naples reducing the travelling time by 1h 30m

• Record profits announced by Fiat's land division. There has been a significant uplift in business in the past few years which have necessitated a large expansion of the existing capacity to cope with foreign orders. The recent profit announcement comes shortly after two very large orders were taken from eastern Europe. This has resulted in a large subcontract to the Terni steelworks (part of OTO) for the production of the vehicles.
  
  
• Request received from Poland for Italian troops to act as peacekeepers on their Eastern Border. The request is politely refused by King Umberto, stating that it would not be correct to do so whilst there is no government in place. He did promise that it would come up when the Senate first convenes in June.
  
  
• Testing of the M.25/35 medium tanks finishes in Cyrenaica. The Regia Esercito has decided not to order any, preferring to wait until the preliminary designs to it's spec earlier this year are finished.
  
  
• An incident on the border with Yugoslavia. Border police attempted to apprehend a number of smugglers whilst crossing the border. The smugglers opened fire which was replied to in kind by the carabinieri. After some minutes the smugglers proceeded back over the border leaving one of their number behind who was wearing the uniform of the Yugoslav army. The Italian ambassador demanded an explanation from the Yugoslav government.

Quoted

Ing. Campini runs the first successful test of his new propulsion system. Work is undergoing by CANT to adapt one of the Z.1015s to mount the engine in the tail.

Is that the piston-jet hybrid?

I'm actually trying to convince my fellow classmates to build one of those!

Yes. You'd probably be easier off trying to convert a turbocharger into a turbojet though.

• The submarines Ettore Fieramosca andEritrea secretly leave port from Taranto bound for South America. The submarines were chosen for their watertight hangars, usually used for weapons testing. On this trip the space is being used for spare engines and parts for the small Italian squadron outside Cordoba. The pace of the action over March has lead to a number of the aircraft being grounded. Also as cargo is a radio aid for the pilots.
  
• Esercito Italiano releases a draught specification for a new medium tank to supplement the Semoventes in service and replace the aging Fiat 3000 and M15/30 models. Fiat-Ansaldo and OTO are both expected to tender, but SuperEsercito has mentioned that they are keen to get foreign input, the new tank design from the Netherlands being cited in example.
  
• King Umberto expressed his concerns over India's actions in Indonesia stating that it once again shows that Satsuma is trying to use force to remove legitimate governments. The Chinese invasion of the Paracel islands has been of more concern recently, the Chinese only withdrawing under considerable international pressure.
  
• King Umberto has been meeting the Romanian and Polish ambassadors for conversations over the deteriorating situation in Eastern Europe.

The Dutch would be most pleased to share design details of the tank with SuperEsercito.

The Dutch ambassador will also convey their appreciation for the statements regarding India's support for insurgents, but the pain felt when their own Ally refers to the islands by the nationalist moniker of Indonesia instead of the proper NEI/DEI or Malay Archipelago.

Fiat-Ansaldo unveils their mockup of their new tank design to be offer to the Esercito Italiana. It is heavily based on the Semovente 105/35, sharing suspension and transmission systems. The weapons planned are either a 75/18 or a 47/32 in addition to 3 machine guns.

OTO are still putting together their offering, being relatively new to the design of armoured vehicles. It is expected that SuperEsercito will order a few prototypes from each company in addition to some LT-35 units from the UKN.

OTO release a sketch of their new tank design to compete with the Fiat and LT-35 designs. This first offering from their design office makes use of a number of novel features, drawing from the expertise of the other parts of OTO. The design is considerably lighter than the Fiat and LT-35 designs at around 19tons (as opposed to 25-28tons). The intended armament is a 47/40 weapon and 2 Gebauer 6.5mm machine guns. The 47/40 is interchangeable with the 75/18 weapon. The slope of the frontal armour increases protection considerably for a small increase in weight. Considerable thought has been put into ease of manufacture, with mostly angular shapes being used. The hull is of riveted construction, allowing the vehicle to be built in other factories whilst the all-welded turret is able to be produced in Terni.

Sloped armour and the like - pretty advanced. Nice looking.

The amount of slope is pretty high for the period. Also, I'm a bit dubious about the pintle mounted MG, while they're common on late-war and post-WWII tanks, they're not common on pre-war tanks.

reminded me of the IKV-91, a particularly nice looking vehicle in my opinon.

The amount of slope is high which means that a machine gun can't be mounted in the hull. It was desired to have two such weapons and so the extra was added to the turret roof. Terni has considerable experience in armour design, they did most of the ship armourschemes. Unfortunately the plates aren't thick enough for face-hardened plates. This would require around 100mm thickness, which is massive overkill at the moment and so thinner plates of lighter weight are used.

Maybe advanced compared to OTL but not here. Problems might be the torsion bar suspension system. The vertical sides to the design do sacrifice protection but it was deemed worth it for the extra volume (=more fuel) and ease of manufacture.

I still think, even for wesworld, her armour slope is a bit advanced. Not only that but I'd suspect the design would be very cramped due to its hight.

Looking at the two tank pictures shown above the lower one seems decades ahead of the upper one.

However, some tanks _looked_ quite advanced even though their technology was not. An example is the RSAAs Gazelle light tank for which I used a picture of the Swedish Landsverk L-60B tank (or known from Hungria as Toldi Tank). Without those guys crawling all over the tank she would look quite advanced regarding her general layout. But actually the L-60 was a very small tank with lots of problems. I only chosed her to have a nice picture at hand. Btw, she looks less modern here .

The question now is - does RAs tank look advanced only or is it really a design decades ahead of everything else? Even if sloped her armour might be (weakly) rivetted, truely making her a child of the mid-30s (think British Crusader tanks for example). Should her engine tends to overheat and break down, that would be normal for the time being. She´s also much larger and heavier armed than the Toldi which makes me wonder what experience the Italians based this design on. I can´t remember to have seen Italian armoured vehicles in combat but radical designs or major steps forward were (always) based on combat experience etc......

To sum it up - the pic alone doesn´t allow enough insight. She just appears to be advanced and her sloped armour makes her look sort of "fast". Reading about increased range and heavy 75mm guns combined with sloped armour just makes me ask some things. :o)

Being a NOOB, the lower picture looks pretty much as a scaled up Verdeja

Well we don't really have all that much in the way of stats, nor a picture of a historical Italian tank design done to the same scale to compair.

Whats her speed, armour demensions ect?

If the design doesn't have room for a bow gunner, who operates the radios? Or is the radio equipment (I'm guessing there is a radio, by the aerial at the very back of the vehicle) very limited?

but do all the comments about RA's tanks sloped armour, pintle mount, lack of bow gunner etc., also apply to the Bille???

Yes. (Well, other than perhaps the bow gunner, he said there was no room for one, which seems questionable if there's room for an offset driver.)