Excerpts from
Sit Pax: The Armed Forces of the Italian Republic, 1940-1950
The state of the Army, Navy and Air Defense forces [1] at the beginning of 1944:
At the beginning of 1944, the state of two of the Republic's three military branches were in states of minor flux. The Army was in the middle of the Celeri division's mechanization process, the first of which was almost completed at this time. The process involved a expansion of the existing motorized transport assets to improve both strategic and tactical mobility. The mainstays of this process were armored cars, lorries, and halftracks; Tanks did not play to great a role, but they were included. A second division was rather far along in the mechanization process, with the third just beginning to procure additional mechanization assets. The fourth Celeri division would not begin the process till late in the year.
During this period, the M34/44
Triarii medium tank [2] was entering limited service. It kept the same four man crew as its predecessor. The design did not mount a upgraded gun at first but featured heavier armor all around in comparison to the M26/39, at 85mm on the front plate, 75mm on the sides, and 50mm on the rear. The turret had 85mm front and 80mm sides with a 60mm rear. Power was provided by a 600hp [3] engine, and speeds of 50kph were recorded during trials. Secondary armament consisted of two 8mm machine guns, one in the front hull and one above the commander's hatch. Still in testing at this point was a larger turret capable of housing a 90mm gun[4] but service entry was still more then a year away as the gun had not yet cleared trials. A second project involving adding two spaced layers of armor to the front plate and gun mantle to turn the design into a sudo-heavy also began. A tank destroyer with a converted 100mm AA gun built on the same chassis was still undergoing trials. Initial results were not encouraging, and it would be almost a year before the type would see limited service, effectivly pushed out by the forthcoming 90mm armed
Triarii variants.
The small arms used by the Army changed very little during this era. Most of the so-called improvements came from more universal adoption of the weapons adopted in the late 1930's. The real changes were still on the testing grounds and in the minds of there inventors in 1944, with some man-portable Anti-tank weapons undergoing trials. Assault rifles had yet to enter into any sort of prototyping stage.
[1] Per
this post, Italy has its stike aircraft directly attached to the Army and Navy, with air defence assets being under a different perview.
[2] Stats based on the OTL
T-43.
[3] A 600hp engine was mentioned by RA to be involved in the successor to the M26/39. Here I am ideally using the additional 100hp advantage over the OTL T-43 to improve its handling, the top speed remains the same.
[4] Will be
this gun.