Italian Alpini divisions

[DesertedFox]

Nice to know you still can't see past the end of your nose.

Do you see any similarities between my reference and the Osprey reference?

Order of battle
231. Avellino Infantry Regiment
232. Avellino Infantry Regiment
9. Artillery Regiment
IX Mortar Battaltion
XXVI Machine Gun Battalion
CDLXXIX Coastal Battalion
CXI Mixed Engineer Battalion
99. Motor Transport Section
60. Supply Section
80. Wagon Train Section [2][nb 1]
Notes
Footnotes
↑ An Italian Infantry Division normally consisted of two Infantry Regiments (three Battalions each), a Artillery Regiment, a Mortar Battalion (two companies), a Anti Tank Company, a Blackshirt Legion (Regiment of two Battalions). Each Division had only about 7,000 men, The Infantry and Artillery Regiments contained 1,650 men, the Blackshirt Legion 1,200, each company 150 men.[3]
Citations
↑ Jowett, pp 5-6
↑ Jump up to:2.0 2.1 Wendal, Marcus. "Italian Army". Axis History. Archived from the original on 2009-04-29. Retrieved 2009-04-13.
↑ Paoletti, p 170
Jowett, Philip S. (2000). The Italian Army 1940-45 (1): Europe 1940-1943. Osprey, Oxford - New York. ISBN 978-1-85532-864-8.
Paoletti, Ciro (2008). A Military History of Italy. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-98505-9.

The 5,400 mules might go a long way to explaining the difference in various sources as to the makeup of not only the alpine divs, but many Italian divs.

It could be inferred that 7,000 was the actual fighting troops number and anything above that support elements. I don't know the absolute answer to that with access to the reference above.

However, as you have a bug up your arse on this subject and refuse to look at or discuss the wider picture feel free to lobby the devs to add a further 7 to 9,000 support elements to the alpine divs, adding nothing to the CV but vastly increasing their supply usage.

[DesertedFox]

This might be a better reference than wiki (cough cough).

Pages 52 and 53.

https://archive.org/details/TME30-420/page/52/mode/2up

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: DesertedFox

ORIGINAL: cameron88

I don't know if you're this stupid or if you are simply trolling, but you posted an Italian security division, when the subject is clearly about Italian Alpini divisions, which are listed everywhere as having 15,000+ strength.

What an imbecile.

...

really to both of you - keep it polite, neither of these posts are acceptable by the forum rules.

the debate is interesting, Trey has indicated a willingness to listen - and a suspicion that these formations have a long non-combat tail

[EwaldvonKleist]

Nigel Askey's "operation barbarossa" is a good resource for such questions. Here is a photo of Vol1,p76. It confirms that Italian divisions as of 1941 were bigger than ingame.


The volume with detailed information on the Axis allies is work in progress.
https://www.operationbarbarossa.net/blog/

[AlbertN]

Quite sure Alpini troopers were caring of their own mules.

Plenty of pictures all around the place where the mules pratically march all along the soldierhood to ferry their equipment and where Alpinis guiding the mules are armed up and not exactly 'support' personnel.

[Naughteous Maximus]

Hello all, I have decided to throw myself onto this fire [:D]. I have a book, the Italian Army Order of Battle: 1940-1944 by W. Victor Madeja, and in it, it states that the Alpine divisions has a strength of between 10,500 to 13,000 soldiers, 228 light/heavy MG's, 24 medium howitzers (75/13), 78 mortars, 5,400 animals, and 50 trucks.

[nikdav]

I think this is very interesting:
The German Gliederung for Julia Alpine Division during "Little Saturn " with the combat strength (nearly 11.000 men)without the service and rear area troops!
There is also the indipendent Elite Ski Battalion " Monte Cervino " (422 men)

[thedoctorking]

Great conversation, just the sort of thing we should be debating in this forum.

Can we cool it with the personal attacks? You all seem to have useful and interesting things to say when you stick to the subject.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: nikdav

I think this is very interesting:
The German Gliederung for Julia Alpine Division during "Little Saturn " with the combat strength (nearly 11.000 men)without the service and rear area troops!
There is also the indipendent Elite Ski Battalion " Monte Cervino " (422 men)

This is very interesting. Do you have an exact date from when this is? Do you have any more? Mostly agrees with the Italian original source document from the Alpni Cuneense site above. Though the write up for the Italian source incorrectly gives every Battalion 12x81mm Mortars, the linked source shows only 12 per Regiment. The above is a strength report while the Italian document is an official TOE, however not necessarily useful for our purposes.

The strength report shows the Regiments seriously understrength, but it doesn't seem to have affected weapons TOE or combat performance, at least I can't remember it being mentioned that the Alpini were seriously understrength when the offensive kicked off. This might mean that the shown fielded strength has a lot of the extra support manpower already stripped out. Mules are very manpower intensive and inefficient and they might have transitioned away from them by this time. An Alpni Division needing 4900 animals is a lot compared to the much larger German Infantry Division "only" needing 5300.

It would be interesting to know if there are strenght reports from earlier to cross reference.

Either way the Alpini Battalions/Regiments were huge, comparative numbers for 1941 German Infantry would be 860/3000 at full strength, and very lightly equipped for the number of men fielded.

[cameron88]

What has been collected so far by this all is that there is overwhelming evidence that the Alpini division was significantly larger then what is represented ingame, 9800 men ingame, while sources vary from 13,000 > 17,000 total men depending on 1940-1942 TOE for Alpini divisions.

[DesertedFox]

Leo W.G. Niehorster seems to be somewhat of an expert of TOE's for armies of many periods and has a 3 volume set out on the Italians in WW2.

Some of his books are listed below.

https://www.waterstones.com/author/leo- ... ter/647510


On this site of his, there is a lot of valuable information.

http://niehorster.org/

Digging a little deeper you can find this TOE on the Alpine divisions, with a special note about the extra units attached to those deployed in Russia.

It doesn't state what the total number of troops is, but I am sure it will help the devs come to an objective as opposed to a subjective conclusion.

quote:

Teal Units:
Units not part of the normal organization. Added on a permanent basis to those units on the Russian Front.



http://www.niehorster.org/019_italy/org ... ni_42.html

[Zovs]

From that same site, more importantly:

http://www.niehorster.org/019_italy/41- ... _csir.html

[DesertedFox]

ORIGINAL: Zovs

From that same site, more importantly:

http://www.niehorster.org/019_italy/41- ... _csir.html

Careful about talking about anything other than Italian Alpine Divs as that may earn you a sharp rebuke from the OP.

However, given the lack of suitable reliable sources for the Italians in general, I believe it's a subject (that is why I raised it earlier in this thread) that may require further investigation.

One thing I found in my recent readings was how well the ill-equipped (for open plains combat) Italian Alpines Divs fought even in the face of overwhelming odds in 42 and 43.

I would think their (Alpine) in-game morale should be higher than that of the regular Italian Divs.

Edit. what I meant was their NM should be higher, but it looks like that is not a possibility. I am guessing their individual div morale is already higher.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: DesertedFox

Leo W.G. Niehorster seems to be somewhat of an expert of TOE's for armies of many periods and has a 3 volume set out on the Italians in WW2.

Some of his books are listed below.

https://www.waterstones.com/author/leo- ... ter/647510


On this site of his, there is a lot of valuable information.

http://niehorster.org/

Digging a little deeper you can find this TOE on the Alpine divisions, with a special note about the extra units attached to those deployed in Russia.

It doesn't state what the total number of troops is, but I am sure it will help the devs come to an objective as opposed to a subjective conclusion.

quote:

Teal Units:
Units not part of the normal organization. Added on a permanent basis to those units on the Russian Front.



http://www.niehorster.org/019_italy/org ... ni_42.html

Niehorster is certainly one of the first go to's but in this case he's contradicted by both the Italian original TOE? for Cuneense and the German strength report for Julia.

[nikdav]

ORIGINAL: MechFO

Do you have an exact date from when this is? Do you have any more?

The document is dated 8 jan.43, the JULIA was attached to XXIV Pz.Korps (Gen.Wendel) to help restore a frontline together with the 385.ID and 387.ID, StuG Abteilung 201 and KG Fegelein !

from the book "Alpini e Tedeschi sul Don " by Alessandro Massignani 1991 (ISBN-13:978-8881300273)

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: nikdav

ORIGINAL: MechFO

Do you have an exact date from when this is? Do you have any more?

The document is dated 8 jan.43, the JULIA was attached to XXIV Pz.Korps (Gen.Wendel) to help restore a frontline together with the 385.ID and 387.ID, StuG Abteilung 201 and KG Fegelein !

from the book "Alpini e Tedeschi sul Don " by Alessandro Massignani 1991 (ISBN-13:978-8881300273)

Thanks. Interesting, the Recon Battalions are classified as ski troops and 2 of the light FH Bttrs have been substituted by 150mm Werfer Bttrs.

[MechFO]

ORIGINAL: nikdav

I think this is very interesting:
The German Gliederung for Julia Alpine Division during "Little Saturn " with the combat strength (nearly 11.000 men)without the service and rear area troops!
There is also the indipendent Elite Ski Battalion " Monte Cervino " (422 men)

Also confirms that whoever did the Julia strength report had no idea of Italian TOE but was maybe familiar with Rumanians.

The 47mm and 81mm mortars are classified as infantry guns (Rumanians had 47mm IG and 80mm FG). The maker did know about 47mm AT guns, they are correctly classified both in the Regiments and as Divisional units on the lower left. He was unsure about the allocation of the companies on lower right and listed their equipment with the Art Regiment. Hence why the 20mm AA guns of the 2 AA companies and the Mortars (again misclassed as Infantry guns) are found there. Going by the Italian TOE of Cuneense these companies were part of the Art Regiment so should have bein integrated there as well.

Some questions remain, the 37mm AT company shown makes no sense at all and must be wrong. If we take Niehorsters as a guide about an attached 75mm AT company and cross reference with the orginal Cuneense TOE that lists an 6 gun company attached to the Art Regiment, then the 6 or 4 gun listing could be 75mm AT guns belonging to the Divisional AT company integrated in the Art Reg.

The 3 seperate 75mm listings in the Art Reg make no sense, the 24 have the correct symbology and would fit 2 Art Bat but the 6 and 4 should have added marks to specify what they are. If either number belong to the AT company, what's with other.

The manpower numbers listed don't help much either since the only other numbers from Cuneense show the Art Reg (with a Bttr short), 2 AA companies and an AT company at over 4000 men. A large number of that total must again be supply but it doesn't help us to see if Udine and Conegliano are full strength and probably 3 Bttr Art Battalions while Piave is definitely missing at least a Bttr but is much too large to be singe Bttr Battalion.

[AlbertN]

Alpini Divisions (at least the 5+1 of real Alpini divisions) have 60 NM and the original pre-war ones have 70 as Unit Morale.
That is represented to some extent - and in general I believe the Italian Army has been tried to be modelled in a strange way, to multilayer the variety of units.

There are regular Infantry divisions that are labelled as 'Mountain Division' - netting a +5 NM.
And similarly many of the Infantry Divisions that operated in Africa have been accounted as 'Motorized' even if de facto were leg troops (but I assume the devs sought to represent that way the higher demand in trucks the desert warfare had?)

Some units are labelled as 'Elite' as well because they were superior to the rest of the troops (ie. Ariete, Trento, Folgore, etc - oddly enough not the Bersaglieri indipendent battallion).

So there is this variety of representation of Italian forces that juggles between the 40 baseline and works with the +5 here and there of 'Specialty' or 'Non German Motorized' or +15 of the 'Elite'.

Then we've the individual unit Morale - for the Alpini in question it starts at 70.
But individual unit Morale is a washed value that goes down easily.

Even the regular Infantry division of the CSIR (Which were quality units of pre-war training and consisting of professional soldiers) start with their 50 unit Morale but as they're Infantry for the most have 40 National Morale ... their morale drops fast and hard back to 40.
The same would happen to an Alpini division because troop quality vanishes in thin air if left somehow ... yes even parked guarding a port.

Ideally the finest solution for me is to up Italian NM to 50, give to 'Coastal Division' and 'Security Division' a -10 penalty (exactly like the Luftwaffe Feld - because these formations deserve to have 40 as NM baseline).
The real Alpini should have 70 as NM - and de facto the were the Italian cream of the cream of pre-war forces; at least at divisional size.

[cameron88]

I actually did exactly this in my 1942 overhaul mod i made, might post it here someday but was waiting for editor update to see what else is possible. There's also Bersaglieri regiments, Italian airborne, ski battalions, armored divisions, and some other elite units that needed their morale raised accordingly. Also Italian airforce has an arbitrary morale debuff, which makes it trade 1:1 or sometimes unfavorably against the Soviets, which is completely unhistorical, so raising it to the same as their experience which is around 65, led to more historical results. But anyway this thread is about Alpini TOE, and i hope the developers update it in the base game, because they were by most historical research around the same size as a German infantry division in manpower, and also number of horses/mules, which is not the case ingame currently where their total strength is merely half.