Carcano rifle

[The Basket]

Engaging targets at 400 metres or hitting targets at 400 meters. Question is using Carcano irons what is the distance the average Italian infantryman can hit a man reliably every time?
The Italians post war used the Garand and it would be interesting to find out if the change from the Carcano made any difference to thier infantry training and tactics.

 

[tyrodtom]

The biggest problem with hitting a man at 300 or 400 meters is knowing the range, easy to know on a firing range, but not so easy in a real life .
I know there's markings on scopes you can use to estimate range, but if there's nothing in sight of a know size, those markings are not going to help.

People aren't very good at taking a WAG at range estimation, unless they do it a lot, and then cross check themselves.

 

[Shortround6]

I am not sure of the reasoning that demands a man in combat be able to hit his enemy with every shot fired?

One would think that even a reasonable percentage would work just fine. And reasonable could be well under 10%. After all even artillery doesn't kill one soldier with every shot fired and artillery shells are much larger, heavier and expensive to deliver to target area than rifle bullets.

The gun and ammo have to be better to allow for the human errors.

Here is an old British ballistics chart.

Please note the Mark VI ammo is the old 215 grain round nose bullet while the Mark VII is the 174 grain spitzer flatbase. The most common round used in WW I and the "issued" round for rifles in WW II.

The firing opportunities at men standing nearly erect and stationary at 500-600yds are going to be few and far between but one can see that the spitzer bullet offered a range advantage.

Some armies had "battle sight" settings and those varied. ANd some issued instructions for holding on the enemies belt at close ranges and on his shoulders at longer ranger ranges, This of course assumes your enemy will so kind to expose himself from about the knees up and stand still.
Some of this may have been for morale boosting, or confidence building. The flip side of that is close misses sap morale/confidence. Distant misses may tend to blend into the battle ground noise.
I do know that when pulling targets on the hi-power range most of us could tell by the sound when a bullet hit our target or the target next to ours. once the bullets were hitting targets a dozen or so feet away they tended to blur.
You don't always have to kill or wound ALL of the enemy. You do have to cause enough casualties and convince the remainder to either retreat or surrender.

For a rifle squad or platoon to engage at longer ranges (like 400 yds/meters and beyond) it had better be at the direction of the squad/platoon commander and not up to the individual soldiers (unless there is a general order for harassing fire) And then it should be up to the squad/platoon commander to give a range estimation or to watch a few trusted troops fire a few ranging shots before ordering the entire group to fire.
In a dug in defensive positions ranges to certain landmarks (buildings, trees, large rocks, etc. should be known (or the leaders are not doing their job).

 

[yulzari]

Thus in a defensive position one can put out ranging marks.

 

[Shortround6]

True, I believe the British (at least?) would set out range stakes during some of the Colonial wars.

A rifle, with appropriate ammunition (spitzer bullet, decent velocity) should be effective, IF the conditions allow, to 4-500 meters. after that things get a lot more difficult really quickly. For example the area that a soldiers bullets will fall into (assuming good aim and proper sight settings for range) at 600 meters will be 2.25 times the area that they will fall into at 400 meters. This is just simple geometry but shows the diminishing returns. Throw in the more difficult aiming "mark" at the longer range, mistakes in range estimation and wind and things get bad really quick.
Limiting the effective range of your rifles to 250-300 meters with poor sights seems like a poor choice.

to reply to this part of an earlier post:

"I do recall a Bundeswehr report of the 1950's where they surveyed ex WW2 soldiers experiences and over 50% of Mauser 98K users had never ever adjusted their sights. I recall my L2A1 SMG training where the instructor said that the weapon had sights for 100 and 200 yards. 'Do not use it at 200 yards as it will only draw you to the attention of the enemy and may annoy them'. He was the same chap in L9A1 pistol training who passed each of us a house brick and invited us to throw it down range. 'Right' he said ' don't bother to use this pistol at any greater range except to make the buggers duck or run away'"

As to the ex german Soldiers it is an interesting number but leaves several questions.
1. what percentage were pre-war trained vs mid war or late war.
2. what areas did they fight in? North Africa, Russian steps, Cities, Normandy Bocage, Black Forrest?
3. what was their "job"/MOS in modern terms. Riflemen or assistant machinegunner/heavy weapon crewman or ammo carrier?

As to the British instructor, I have no idea how much time he had or how how much time/ammunition each soldier had for training/practice.
Was a "familiarization" course of instruction or real marksmanship course of instruction?

 

[yulzari]

Shortround. The survey was drawn from my memory but I believe it was a crude assessment drawn of all troops in all theatres in all periods.

The L2A1 SMG and L9A1 pistol were familiarisation at that point. SMG training went further into it's use. Principally as personal defence. If you can keep the b*ggers 200 metres away then that is your chance to leg it. If you have enough of you to go offensive then the 200 metre fire will act as suppressive fire to let you advance to an accurate range. Ideally right on top of them. Essentially classic section/platoon assault without a gun group. I found it to be a perfectly good weapon within it's range as long as you made the users use the stock and actually aim it. Unaimed ill trained fire will get through magazines as fast as they can load the things. A lightweight burst fire short automatic rifle with good magazine capacity.

Pistol marksmanship in the British Army? Unless you were set for using it clandestinely there was no such thing in the 70/80s. Unless you had to conceal the thing I could see no point in them anyway.

 

[Elmas]

Assuming that a normal person offers a maximum target 60 cm wide, at a distance of 400 meters that is less than one tenth of a degree.
Look at a protractor to appreciate how much (not much..) is one tenth of a degree.
And of course the target must cooperate standing perfectly still, if possible in perfect light,and with no smoke or dust around.
And the shooter? Is he moving or still, standing, kneeling or prone, is using the rifle belt or has the rifle resting on a sand bag, is he perfectly trained or not, brave or coward?
I can perfectly understand that to the Carcano many improvements could have been done, first to the bullet, but I understand also the Generals that thought the Carcano suitable in a general operational environment for the the 95% of an army of conscripts of a poor country like Italy of the '30s.

 

[Shortround6]

Assuming that a normal person offers a maximum target 60 cm wide, at a distance of 400 meters that is less than one tenth of a degree.
Look at a protractor to appreciate how much (not much..) is one tenth of a degree.
And of course the target must cooperate standing perfectly still, if possible in perfect light,and with no smoke or dust around.
And the shooter? Is he moving or still, standing, kneeling or prone, is using the rifle belt or has the rifle resting on a sand bag, was he perfectly trained or not, brave or coward?
I can perfectly understand that to the Carcano many improvements could have been done, first to the bullet, but I understand also the Generals that thought the Carcano suitable for the the 95% of an army of conscripts of a poor country like Italy.

Again I am not sure were this idea that we need 100% effectiveness or else we can revert to a lowest common denominator comes from.

Back in the days of muzzle loading muskets they sometimes fired thousands of rounds of musket balls to cause one causality. With the coming of muzzle loading rifles and Minie balls the distance increase between the combatants but the number of rounds fired didn't go down much, hundreds or thousands of rounds fired per casualty. Of course the troops didn't line quite as close together in multiple ranks any more (at least after the first few battles) and after a few years were often taking cover when they could.

Perhaps only few soldiers out of every 10 can put even 30-40% of their bullets through a building window at 400 meters when laying down and resting the rifle, but by using poor bullets and crappy sights you take that option away from them and their squad/platoon leaders. If your enemy has that option and IF the terrain allows such shots you are at a disadvantage.
I doubt the Islamic extremist enemy in the Middle east is comprised of skilled marksmen that hit with every round fired but their use of long ranged rifles has forced the US and NATO forces to rethink the whole 5.56mm from short barrels idea as even with optical sights they cannot effectively return fire, however hand the short rifles are for house clearing/jumping out of/into vehicles.

If you are too poor to put even a minimally adjustable sight on a rifle and train the conscripts to use then don't go to war in the first place.

The Carcano could have been improved rather cheaply by just changing the bullet, as was done by both the Japanese and Swedes in 6.5mm caliber and by many other nations between the the years 1900 and 1930. Even the US changed from the .30-03 (220 grain round nose bullet) to the .30-06( 150 grain Spitzer) well before the 1st world war. The British .303 that the Italians held in high regard went form the 215 grain round nose to the 174 grain spitzer before WW I and the "wounding power" came not from the difference in diameter but from the spitzer bullet shape combined with a nose filler made of aluminium (and other materials during wartime) that shifted the center of gravity rearwards and helped the bullet tumble on impact. Bullet going sideways has 3-4 times the frontal area of one staying point on making nonsense out of a 35-36% increase in frontal area. Not every bullet will flip/tumble but_____
There was no real need to change to the 7.35mm round.

 

[The Basket]

A few points. Italy was the weakest of the colonial industrial powers so this must always be seen in reference to what they do. They were in no position to fight Ww2 although Mussolini thought otherwise.
I agree the change to 7.35 was silly because it didn't offer much and a 6.5mm spitzer bullet offered just as much. Although the 7.35mm was weak sauce and the Japanese did at least make a 7.7mm with more power.
Maybe another thread to start the 7.62mm debate.
If my memory serves the sights on the SMLE were set for 2000 yards and that is stupid beyond belief. As the sights themselves were expensive to make

 

[yulzari]

There was a period from the introduction of the rifle musket up to the introduction of the man portable machine gun when the possibility of using massed long range rifle fire had a very useful role. Not least in keeping field artillery and cavalry at a great distance. Also in engaging bodies of infantry at similar distances of 800 to 1,600 metres. This by officer directed mass fire creating a beaten zone. Few rounds would hit the objective but they would make that area hazardous. The classic example was Plevna. When breechloading rifles allowed fire from prone positions expedient intrenchment became the norm which removed bodies of infantry from the list other than whilst advancing and recuperator barrelled field artillery removed most of them from the list too later on whilst cavalry reluctantly accepted that they were too vulnerable and operated principally as mounted infantry and reconnaissance . The long range rifle sights were then a sensible and useful part of the military use of the rifle.

Once the machine gun became along in numbers it proved to be the better choice as it could direct and maintain such fire by a limited number of specially trained troops. Bar the few sharpshooters riflemen reverted to the closer ranges as a sort of much better musket. To take and hold ground. The long range volley sights disappeared with WW1 as machine guns became commonplace over time.

So the Carcano began it's life in the days when fire at long ranges was necessary and ended when it was superfluous.

The decision to make short range sighted Carcanos must indicate the Italian Army understanding of these changes. That also meant the provision of sufficient modern long range alternatives. To which we must then add the mortar as well as the machine gun.

The criticisms might be best directed at the failures in these than at their supporting rifles. On the good side they did eventually get to a complement of 2 LMGs per section. On the bad side they were Breda 30's.

I do agree that they might have been best served with a better 6.5mm bullet than a wholesale change to 7.35mm but it is fair to say that, by the 1930's, the better 6.5mm was the 7.35mm. Changing the 6.5mm as well would have meant not only producing new/ converted 7.35mm rifles but also converting the sights on all the existing 6.5mm ones. I suspect, but do not know for certain, that the 7.35mm was a big a round as existing tooling could accommodate in making new barrels.

If we look at the users. Italian troops seem to have been quite happy with the Carcano, especially the short ones, other than the alleged weak effect of the usual 6.5mm bullet. The 38 TS seems to have been one of the most popular versions so the customers were not complaining.

One might well put it all down to being stupid enough to go to war when you are not ready and don't even have to. A machine gun that needs to oil it's rounds is a sign that you are barking up the wrong mechanical tree.

 

[The Basket]

The type I Carcano is an interesting one as it used the 6.5mm Japanese round.
Changing to 7.35 Spitzer round in 1938 is woeful and 28 years after the British.
Volley sights were added to Lee Enfields for long range but it was certainly expected that new smokeless powder meant that combat was going to be 1,000 metre rifle duels and the British experience in the Boer War played that out. Which is why the P13 was tested and why the Ross rifle was a made for long range. The Carcano was remarkably unchanged for so long and the carbines were certainly small and light and handy. If the 6.5mm round nosed Carcano was so longed lived then I would say that's a weakness of Italian industry and not the strength of the gun.

Oilers were still on Japanese guns as well and thier are similarlity to Italian and Japanese guns. Feels to me anyway.

 

[Shortround6]

The 7.35 was chosen as the size needed to clean out the rifling of the 6.5 barrel and then recut the grooves.
The Swedes had gone from a 156grain round nose to a 139 grain Spitzer for their 6.5mm round and the Japanese had done the same thing. Both had done it several decades before the Italians came up with the 7.35.
There was also several advances in powder during the almost 5 decades between 1891 and 1938 models (R&D taking a few years before production) so better performance could be had with no increase in peak pressure.
The Carcano rifle/carbine as a mechanical device was not as bad as most post war comments make it out to be.

However unless the real intention on the 7.35 project was to "save" worn out barrels it was a pretty useless exercise as better performance, both external ballistics and terminal ballistics, could be had by using a new bullet in the 6.5mm case.
It would still need new sights. However in an emergency the new and old rounds could at least be fired in the same guns.
The Germans had more than one type of 7.9mm. The US had two different 30-06 rounds that needed different sight settings as did the British with the .303, granted one of them was intended for machine guns but at least it would fit and be fairly close to the sights at under 200 yds.
The Italians complicated things even more by going to an 8mm round for the tripod mounted machineguns.
Soldiers tend to like light rifles/carbines to lighten the load. For the Italian soldiers marching around in North Africa (Italians being very short on trucks) I would imagine having a light/short carbine was nicer to carry than long heavy rifles. The US troops tended to pick up the M1 carbine when they could although it had serious shortcomings as a battle rifle in other than jungle/urban conditions.

With the Italians being dissatisfied with the round nose Carcano bullet in the African wars they fought in the 1920/30s one would think that they would have realized the importance of being able to fire at more than 200-300 meters, however the the campaign in Abbyssinia was so lopsided in terms of weapons used that perhaps that lesson was lost.

 

[The Basket]

From a surplus point of view, especially today...the Carcano rounds are not readily available and there are better rifles.
Unless you're Oswald. So probably the worst choice of the main powers. Only the Mosin could be worse.
One point that Ian on forgotten weapons maybe fudged it to say that the 6.5mm or 7.35mm is intermediate and a forerunner of AK. Er...no. Carcano is a main battle rifle of its era not a 1950s Soviet assault rifle. It has to be judged against the K98 or the MAS 36.

 

[Shortround6]

The type I Carcano is an interesting one as it used the 6.5mm Japanese round.
Changing to 7.35 Spitzer round in 1938 is woeful and 28 years after the British.
Volley sights were added to Lee Enfields for long range but it was certainly expected that new smokeless powder meant that combat was going to be 1,000 metre rifle duels and the British experience in the Boer War played that out. Which is why the P13 was tested and why the Ross rifle was a made for long range. The Carcano was remarkably unchanged for so long and the carbines were certainly small and light and handy. If the 6.5mm round nosed Carcano was so longed lived then I would say that's a weakness of Italian industry and not the strength of the gun.

Oilers were still on Japanese guns as well and thier are similarlity to Italian and Japanese guns. Feels to me anyway.

The Ross and the P13 were both designed and "adopted" (in theory anyway) at a time when the Machine gun had yet to make it's presence really felt. The rifle was still the primary weapon of the battalion or regiment. Even in 1914 many European armies only had 4-6 machine guns per battalion or even regiment. (the US had, for the most part, four Bennet-Mercier machine rifles per regiment in 1914)
Scale of equipment, tactics, doctrine and thinking changed fairly quickly in four years compared to the 20-25 years before WW I.
While a lot of thinking went on during the 20s (some of it nonsense) there was very little purchasing of new guns as budgets were small and nations were tired of war. Purchases increased and new weapons gained traction in the 30s due to the political situation/s. some of the WW I stuff wearing out, and the extra peacetime allowing for enough R&D to allow new designs to come out fairly well thought out and refined.

I would also note that even such technical advances as field phones or field telegraph could make a difference it how a battle was conducted. During the Boer war for instance the Artillery had to be able to see the enemy in other than seige conditions or else reliance was placed on semaphore flags or blinking lanterns or runners to correct fire for hidden guns. All are time consuming, limited as to how far the observer can be from the guns and thus limited in poor visibility.
With either telegraph or phone wires the artillery observer could be several miles from the guns. The guns could be well out of rifle fire range. Corrections could be more speedily given or artillery fire supplied to targets in front of a infantry battalion or regiment.
With the provision of 8-12 tripod mounted machineguns per battalion ( 24-36 per regiment?) the long range firepower of the battalion/regiment shifted from the rifle to the machinegun. Long range being 800 yds and up if not shorter, The provision of bipod mounted machine guns at squad/platoon/company level meant that fire could be under taken by these guns at 500-800 yds. The difference in ranges being pretty much the stabilty of the mount/s and nothing to do with the gun or cartridge.
Please note the US, British and Germans all introduced boat tail bullets to extend the range of tripod mounted MGs by hundreds of yds (extreme range went up over 1000yds ) French 8mm round already had a boat tail.
However the training needed not to mention the problems of observing the the effects of the fire (fall of the bullets) tended to put a damper on this long range use.
The adoption of the 81mm mortar (the British 3in was really 81mm or close enough) also tended to take over the long range fire mission from the tripod mounted MGs. or supplement them.

However to jump to the conclusion that the regular rifleman in the squad/platoon/company no longer needs to able to fire at even 300 yds (200 yd or meter battle sight) or more is quite a leap. It places a real burden on the squad/platoon/company machineguns and mortars (if an army is so equipped)

 

[Shortround6]

From a surplus point of view, especially today...the Carcano rounds are not readily available and there are better rifles.
Unless you're Oswald. So probably the worst choice of the main powers. Only the Mosin could be worse.
One point that Ian on forgotten weapons maybe fudged it to say that the 6.5mm or 7.35mm is intermediate and a forerunner of AK. Er...no. Carcano is a main battle rifle of its era not a 1950s Soviet assault rifle. It has to be judged against the K98 or the MAS 36.

I think that he was making the point the 7.35 was ballisticly the fore runner of the 7.62 x 39. It also has the low recoil impulse of the intermediate round.
The last I can appreciate as I had a target rifle built in 6.5mm x .308 well before the .260 Remington came out because I was tired of taking the recoil from my .30-06. we were firing 88 rounds per match from prone. It was actually my left hand that was taking the punishment from the hand stop. Using 120 grain match bullets at pretty much the same velocity as a .308 could fire 168 grain bullets (about 2600fps) I had about the same trajectory and wind drift at less recoil. I later had another rifle built using a case about 1/2 in shorter that used less powder for the same velocity.

Given a 120-130 grain spitzer bullet at 2500fps and the 6.5 Carcano could have matched the British .303 for for trajectory over 400-500 meters. recoil would still be low.

 

[Elmas]

Already told but...
A Friend of mine served from 1943 to 1945 in the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. He told me that, before 8th of September 1943, in the Italian army MPs (say Beretta M 38 etc.) were scarce as hen's teeths (Tommy guns were a prized prey among Italians in N.A.) while immediately after 8th of September they appeared in thousands.
Same sparing attitude of the Italian Generals that sent our troups in Africa in 1896 armed with old fashioned Vetterli-Vitali Mod. 1870/87, stating that for an African Campaign they were "more than enough" and so favouring the terrible defeat of Adua.

He himself, during the whole war, was armed with an MP, and this was one of the three or four stories he told me about his experience.
So, my Fried told me, everybody in the platoon wanted to carry one, but as a machine pistole in certain circumstances is not effective as a rifle, after some scaring situations, the Tenente commanding the platoon had to establish who had to carry MPs and who rifles.

 

[yulzari]

Going back to the original post. I would say that the Carcano was right at the back of the leading pack but still fit for purpose. A sound piece but there are better. The weakest part being the ammunition which was adequate but could have easily been better.

 

[Shortround6]

In WW I the Carcano may have been no better than many others (but not a leader) but also no worse than many others.
By WW II the failure to adopt a spitzer bullet in the original 6.5mm caliber was probably a mistake but that is ammo and not really the rifle.
The adoption of the 38 TS carbine in 7.35mm was certainly ill timed and the combination of the Breda 30 with the Carcano carbine was not a good pairing at all. A few Breda 30s were made in 7.35mm but even if that version had gone on into mass production you had a machine gun that, technical issues aside, had one of the shortest effective ranges of any LMG used in WW II. That leaves the Platoon/company commander with few options if trying to fight in an open landscape. An urban or wooded/hilly landscape equalizes things.
we argue a lot about the US M1 rifle (not carbine) and the BAR. The Bar only needed a few decent rifle men per squad (not even 1/2 of the riflemen) using semi-automatic rifles to make up for it's deficiencies as a LMG. Subject to question if the US got that many decent riflemen with wartime training.
The Italians had no such "back-up" for the Breda 30. The Carcano carbines, of either caliber, didn't have the rate of fire or ballistics (or sights) to plug the gaps in the Breda 30s capabilities.
Had the Italians been using a Version of the Cz 26/Bren gun or MG 34 and had greater numbers of them and then used the Carcano equipped troops as ammo carriers and short range defense/close assault troops perhaps the deficiencies of the Carcano wouldn't be as important. But they didn't and the other platoon weapon, the 45mm Brixa mortar had problems of it's own.
If, as Yulzari says, the Italian army horded the Beretta Submachine guns in storage, then the Italian troops also had a short range firepower deficiency.
One source says that of the different models of Italian hand grenades, one widely issued model had around a 1/3 dud rate which does little for the Italian's ability in close combat.

People want to find an easy answer to the Italian's poor performance in WW II and find it easy to blame one weapon or another. On average the Italian soldier did rather well considering the range of weapons they had to work with and the logistic support and fire support (artillery) they got. Throw in training/leadership issues and the average Italian service man gets a bum rap.

 

[mikewint]

From Pearl Harbor to VJ Day American industry supplied 47 BILLION rounds of small arms ammunition. Most shots on the field of battle (probably above 90%) are fired simply to provide the enemy with an excuse to keep his head down, and not with intent to kill, nor to wound, nor even particularly aimed at the enemy but simply fired in his general vicinity.
In WWII estimates were 20,000 rounds per kill
Vietnam saw this climb to about 180,000 rounds
Iraq/Afghanistan estimates are at over 250,000 rounds per kill

Battle reports and field studies suggest that almost all soldiers -- regardless of the nature of their country, government, society, religion, culture; regardless of when and where they fight; even, to a lesser extent, regardless of the weapons used (so long as one side doesn't have an overwhelming technical advantage) -- will adapt their behavior to control the level of casualties.

With or without the approval of their leaders (and the front-line leaders they respect and must contend with most are inclined to feel the same way they do), the troops will invent tactical responses that limit their exposure to approaching ammunition. That in fact is WHY it takes so much of the stuff to kill them. They'll hide, they'll dig in, they'll even run away if they have to. Rarely will they stand up and let themselves be shot in droves.

Interestingly, the level that soldiers can tolerate without going completely nuts right away (as opposed to post-trauma) seems to hover right around 10 percent throughout military history. That's a rough-and-ready general figure that seems to apply to many individual fights and to most full wars.

If you refer to a book about a unit that fought through an entire war and if that book includes a list of unit members and their fates, you may be surprised how few men actually got killed in action. This is true even of extended, heavily fought wars like WW2.

Of course, there are exceptions: Japanese soldiers fighting to the death in the Pacific, massacres of tribal warriors by Europeans with machine guns, etc. Sometimes a force will win a lopsided, bloody victory over even a good enemy force, thanks to better training, or tactics, or leadership, or luck.

Even then, it may be surprising how many survive, not only as POWs but also as fugitives who later regroup and fight on. In the aftermath of Gettysburg, Lee quickly gathered in his local and dispersed forces, recovered his stragglers and wounded, got new recruits, and restored the Army of Northern Virginia to its pre-Gettysburg strength before the Army of the Potomac.

One need not focus on post-1900 wars to encounter this "soldiers-are-hard-to-kill" phenomenon. The American Civil War is notorious for the amount of firepower employed without direct effect on the enemy (indirect effects, such as running away or huddling behind a rock, are a different matter). Trees were chopped down by rifle bullets in some battles. Yet most troops did avoid death and wounding even in these hellish fights.

Total casualties were often appalling emotionally. Yet, objectively evaluated, they are remarkably low compared to what one would expect from so much concentrated firepower. Civil war total deaths are generally put at 600,000 lives (some now estimate 800,000). But we must remember that most of those deaths were due to disease. Battle deaths amounted to roughly 100,000 on each side. That's in the general neighborhood of the 10 percent, as a portion of all who served. For the Union the percentage was even lower. Naturally a few units suffered much worse then again some toted up only minor casualties.

Consider the tactic of walking in formation across open fields which happened in a lot of Civil War battles. Those who survived such advances and became veterans owed their lives to (1) to poor enemy marksmanship (Civil War troops got limited training and consistently fired too high); and (2) to the thick gun smoke that rendered them invisible much of the time (chemistry that yet to develop smokeless powder to replace black powder).

Soldiers soon learned what it took to survive. Consider the Confederates' gallant charge on the third day at Gettysburg. Perhaps half of Longstreet's corps never climbed over the fence at mid-field, huddled behind it during the heaviest fighting, and retreated as soon as the charge was broken and it was respectable to move back to the Confederate lines. It has been estimated that Union firepower was sufficient to have guaranteed 100 percent casualties in the Rebel ranks, IF all the gray-clads had charged as far as the ones in front did.
It is difficult to deny one of the Civil War soldier's most common and perceptive principles: "Never send a man where a bullet can go."

 

[Elmas]

Certainly if Italy lost the war it was not because the soldiers were armed with the Carcano, as in due order main causes were, by my personal point of view, of course:

1 – lack of food for the whole population

2 – lack of oil, coal and raw materials

3 – lack of confidence in the Nazi Germany, both in the ordinary people and in the Monarchy, except a tiny number of high ranking fascists

4- lack of suitable electronic hardware, in numbers, for Army, Navy and Air Force

5 – lack of a consistant aviation and in particular of engines

6 – lack of up to date armoured forces and artillery (the best italian artillery was wasted in Russia)

7 – lack of a consistant logistic chain, included transports, with troops still going by train in the best case, by foot generally

8 – lack of a clear strategic vision in the High Command

9 – lack of adequate training, expecially for the Navy

10 – lack of adequate individual equipment, in particular shoes and winter garment

11 – lack of a suitable individual armament

and so on.

So, by my personal point of view, individual armament of the average italian soldier during WWII is not very high in the list of shortages of the Italian Army in WWII.

My Father was 14 when the war broke so he could not, but some older friends of him did volunteer, and the vast majority was sent to North Africa. After some months some, mostly wounded, they did return.

"Vittorio, we are overwhelmed" they said to my Father "do not believe in the Mussolini's propaganda. We are practically starving, our shoes are broken, we are infested by lice and our tanks are tin of sardins in comparison the those of the enemy..." And that was in 1940/1 well before the massive american human and industrial power entered the war. Not difficult to understand that, after losing the Ethiopia, and the food in the nation getting more and more scarce, the whole italian population perfectly knew that the war was lost and there were no German tricks that could change the cards.