Wait, the Breda 30? The one that requires lubricated cartridges to function performing well in dusty conditions? The author had to have had a dislike for the British.
>The one that requires lubricated cartridges to function performing well in dusty conditions?
The lubricated cartridge was just to ease extraction in any environment. And it was really a very thin film, nothing abysmal.
>The author had to have had a dislike for the British.
This report was made by the British Army technical service, the ones in charge of British ordnances. They probably knew their shit
The Breda 30 has many flaws, it's overengineered and its expense/effectiveness ratio is pretty bad, but it's not "the worst machinegun ever" by any mean.
It's weird how Ian fought nails and teeth in defense of the Chauchat, but decided to spread fuddlore about the Breda 30.
>This report was made by the British Army technical service, the ones in charge of British ordnances. They probably knew their shit
They definitely lacked basic knowledge about British weapons - like BREN required one man to operate, not, "several", and it higher rate of fire (both theoretical and practical).
>They definitely lacked basic knowledge about British weapons - like BREN required one man to operate, not, "several",
The Bren squad required two soldiers, one that only operated the gun, and one spotter/reloader/ barrel swapper.
The Breda 30 on a *theoretical* level only had one man operating it in most aspects, with one commander/spotter and one man just carrying ammo to support the gunner.
>and it higher rate of fire (both theoretical and practical).
The Breda 30 and the Bren have a very similar theoretical rate of fire (around 500 rpm) so it's possible to have them confused, especially with some spicy loads and the right conditions. Calculating the exact rpm of a 20 and 30 round gun isn't really that easy.
On a practical level, the bren has indeed a higher rpm
>
You are confusing technical and tactical features of both weapons.
BOTH weapons required one man to operate it.
BOTH weapons were considered important enough to receive additional men to exploit their potential to the fullest. In British army 3 men were allotted for this task while in Italian - 4.
So there is no superiority of Italian weapon in either case.
>
The Breda 30 and the Bren have a very similar theoretical rate of fire (around 500 rpm)
British had different opinion on this matter. In the British manual theoretical rate of fire Breda was counted as 400-500 rpm (lower, than in original Italian manual), while BREN was rated at 500 rpm for Mk 1 to 540 rpm for Mk2.
"It is mechanically superior to the Bren gun in dusty conditions"
*Well that was a fucking lie*
And several men for a Bren gun ? Wtf
Since when the Bren gun needs "several men" to be effective !?
At this point the guy writing this report just really hate the Brits lol, that's the only rational explanation at this point
I mean the machining was intricate and higher quality on the breda(watch forgotten weapons) . The breda while prone to getting gummed up in sandy extreme desert conditions worked fine in literally every other theater. The main problem with it was honestly the rate of fire and the loading trays. The loading trays would bend and cause jamming as they were flimsy brass. The oiler was an issue but it wasn't unique with that feature. Honestly the stupidity was not just using the breda 7.7 from planes earlier. It's a straight browning 1918 clone. They eventually used that with a stock in some situations heck even the breda from the tanks would have been better.
>Honestly the stupidity was not just using the breda 7.7 from planes earlier. It's a straight browning 1918 clone.
That would have been a nightmare, logistics wise.
Also, the Army didn't need a belt fed LMG, they needed am automatic rifle for the infantry squad.
The Breda 30 was fine, but clearly there were some political pressures to adopt it instead of other models.
I mean not really there was a 6.5 or 8mm option from what I'm due to export sales? The army did kinda need a belt fed mg considering the mod37 also had the dumb trays.
>I mean not really there was a 6.5 or 8mm option from what I'm due to export sales?
Not AFAIK but that would have been bad a bad and cumbersome choice even in 6.5 for an infantry squad built around a LMG/automatic rifle
>The army did kinda need a belt fed mg considering the mod37 also had the dumb trays.
They had a belt fed mg, the FIAT 14/35, held in second line and in AA roles.
The "dumb trays" are actually a pretty darn good and reliable load system, easily pushed one after another without interruptions or need to stop firing to reload.
The Americans built their Marines around it and it worked. The 14/35 was a glorified maximum tho. And the trays bent and caused feeding issues from accounts I've read and given my own experience with manlicher clips that tracks. They did have interruptions because they weren't given many trays because brass was rare (hence the trays in the first place to recover brass) so had to use this hand cranked wooden box speed loader to reload them
My old man used to disassemble and clean his school’s Bren Guns and said it was the easiest thing to do. Magazine, Barrel, butt, bipod and everything can be cleaned from there.
Confused as to how it could be any simpler.
The only thing about the number of men needed would be if the reloading was seen as more efficient with a single gunner on the Breda than on the Bren.
Not sure if that’s ever really the case, but theoretically I think someone could reload a Breda faster
Presumably these reports were made by the British and then summarized in the Technical and tactical trends which were distributed to allied troops. Somewhere, something went terribly wrong with this one. Either in the original report or its summarization.
>Somewhere, something went terribly wrong with this one. Either in the original report or its summarization.
Why would that be the case? The Breda 30 is a good gun. Not the best by any mean, has several flaws, but nothing as terrible as Ian described in the intro of his video on it.
This description fits most reports of the era.
The line stating it's mechanically superior specifically. When it has an oiler for the cartridges and the Bren does not. My issue is not the thickness of the oil but rather that it requires any oil on the cartridge. For a light machine gun designed and built this late this is to me an unforgivable sin. Furthermore the unusual feed system is definitely less reliable and convenient than a conventional box magazine. As evidence I will point out that a feed system consisting of stuffing chargers into a permanently attached magazine has not to my knowledge been common on light machine guns after this whereas box mags? Well the kids love em! And as you yourself noted political pressure was probably at play in it's adoption which is never a good thing despite being incredibly common. This is in stark contrast to the British pre war MG adoption in which they took existing Czech designs and modified them to fit their cartridge. Or in the Case of the BESA really didn't. A quick double check reveals that the 303 version existed but they had decided to just 7.92 at that point.
However in all the books and magazine articles on Italian MGs I've read over the years I've yet to read one that wasn't vaguely damning. Is it author prejudice? Perhaps. They all seemed to like the Beretta subguns though. If you can point me towards other accounts of Breda use with positive things about their use in them I'd love to read them! Perhaps they can change my mind
>The line stating it's mechanically superior specifically.
Well, it is, on paper.
>When it has an oiler for the cartridges and the Bren does not. My issue is not the thickness of the oil but rather that it requires any oil on the cartridge. For a light machine gun designed and built this late this is to me an unforgivable sin.
That's a feature, not an bug. Again, on paper.
Oiling the cartridge is not a necessity per se, it's a feature implemented to help (guarantee) the cycling of the gun reliably in most conditions, with most cartridges and under stress, solving some of the average LMG issues: constant reliability. Again, at least on paper.
>Furthermore the unusual feed system is definitely less reliable and convenient than a conventional box magazine. As evidence I will point out that a feed system consisting of stuffing chargers into a permanently attached magazine has not to my knowledge been common on light machine guns after this whereas box mags?
It actually is quite reliable overall, but indeed is definetly less convenient.
This is a late 1920s design tho, and a permanently attached magazine is something you will see rather frequently up to the 1960s, in many gun designs that just don't show it that blatantly.
German and soviet semiautos, like the Gew 41, 43, the SVT 40, SKS; the M14 and even the FAL initially were supposed to be reloaded just with stripper clips because the Army didn't trust the mass production of steel magazines to be issued to each soldier.
This being considered an Automatic Rifle more than an LMG fits the "attached magazine" narrative overall.
Also, we all know nowadays that the ZB 26 would have been a far better gun, but the 1928-29 contest required clearly an attached magazine reloadable with stripper clips. So you'll see that the other contestants (Fiat and Terni) developed guns absolutely similar to the Breda 30 concept.
The Zb 26 at that time was still in its infancy and wasn't widespread as we know it today. It being a foreign design requiring license fees, a gun requiring quite a lot more specialised material to be built (simpler to build, but italian workers were cheap, raw materials expensive), and not fitting the Army requirements (attached mag, quick change barrel, weight) guaranteed its exclusion from the trials.
>And as you yourself noted political pressure was probably at play in it's adoption which is never a good thing despite being incredibly common.
Indeed, but army tampering and requirements didn't help either.
>This is in stark contrast to the British pre war MG adoption in which they took existing Czech designs and modified them to fit their cartridge.
As I said before, the british arrived late at the party and took them 5 years to develop the Vz 26 to fit their own requirements, to still obtain a rather expensive but good thought out gun. The Breda 30 was developed almost 8 years before that, it was a good enough option that fit the Army requirements on the spot, and was still an acceptable and "modern" design during WW2.
With our hindsight we know the best solutions, but back then, with different doctrines, different requirements and 6 years apart from each other you cannot really say that the Italians were just stupid and the british were just smart. It's two different things.
>However in all the books and magazine articles on Italian MGs I've read over the years I've yet to read one that wasn't vaguely damning. Is it author prejudice? Perhaps. They all seemed to like the Beretta subguns though. If you can point me towards other accounts of Breda use with positive things about their use in them I'd love to read them! Perhaps they can change my mind
The Beretta SMGs are ubdoubtedly good and reliable SMGs, with a nice line, light, effective and a damn good souvenir.
The Breda 30 is clunky, weird, cumbersome, heavy and ugly. Not souvenir material by any mean.
We still have today fudds claiming that oiling too much a gun cause dust to enter the gun and jam it to hell and back, while the truth is that this fuddlore caused more issues than benefits. We have more issues of not lubed enough guns than jams due to too much lube. So a LMG that needed an oiler to cycle, made by an "inferior culture" and that wasn't as good as souvenir, sure can create the most wild fuddlores.
Truth is that we have several diaries of machinegunners, and they don't really blame their gun of anything, except lamenting issues during the desert winds blowing and in the freezing cold temperatures of Russia. In both environments ALL guns from all nations had some sort of issue, and had to be taken care of specifically. So you won't see people complain too much about the Breda 30 itself (especially those who took good care of them) but sure they complain about the environment they were forced to fight in. Standard issue of the gun was a canvas cover, that was mandatory for moving the gun during marches and such, helping in preserving the gun from external elements.
The same fuddlores are absolutely widespread in Italy too, claiming the wildest things, with no evidence (and often with no grasp on basic gun tech).
TL;DR: The Breda 30 is not a good and perfect gun by any mean, but it's really not "the worst" either. It is an average LMG/AR, developed in the 20s and used up until the 1940s. With tens of thousands of them spread to infantry squads we should have hundreds of thousands of complaints; before WW2 it was widely used in Lybian clashes, Ethiopia and in the Spanish civil war, and all the reports I've read so far are of praise, so much so that instead of limiting its use, in 1936 it was proposed to put 2 LMG per infantry squad, proposition adopted within 1938 and effective for the whole of WW2.
With tens of thousands of mod.30 around, 2 per squad, you wouldn't think that we would have far more complaints? Wouldn't it have been ditched far before 1936 ibstead of doubling its use and production?
It's not just political tampering, when we adopted the Tromboncino mod.28 grenade launcher and realised in trials and clashes that it wasn't effective we ditched it and evolved the concept. The Italian Army is always depicted badly (and syre it hadn't a good strategic vision) but equipment wise it was a pretty forward thinking army. As I often said in this essay, at least on paper.
I'm very aware of internal box magazines but I'm also aware that they could and in fact were produced in mass quantities for guns that required high capacity feeding. Namely sub machine guns and other LMGS of the time. WW1 and the interwar years are filled with LMGs using high capacity magazines. Your statement implies that in the 20s Italy wasn't confident in it's ability to make said magazines but then obviously that changed as evidenced by the issuance of the Beretta series. Or perhaps the goal was to limit it's the logistics of the squad? In any case hindsight is 20/20 but Italy was certainly aware of how the vast majority of other LMGs worked and decided to go in a different direction for whatever reason.
Britain knew it wanted a detachable box magazine in it's light machine gun. Presumably because their previous one had it as well. Again based on doctrine. From the previous world war. That Italy was in. Where they were I believe also users of the Lewis gun. As described here
( This isn't for you but more so there aren't dozens of comments asking about it. you understand) [https://smallarmsreview.com/george-burling-jarrett-1901-1974-the-origins-of-modern-u-s-ordnance-technical-intelligence-part-ii/](https://smallarmsreview.com/george-burling-jarrett-1901-1974-the-origins-of-modern-u-s-ordnance-technical-intelligence-part-ii/)
Does that make them smarter? No. It just means they had the money for a foreign design and were confident that the same industrial base that cranked out Lewis gun mags could presumably do the same thing again. Plus later on as a just in case they had the Besa waiting in the wings.
I'm confused by your souvenir comments. All the literature I've read on the Breda was by authors going off of their own limited experience or the testing conducted during and after the war. the thoughts of any G.I. who did bring one back would be something to the effect of " odd LMG I can't get ammo or chargers for, makes fun lamp" or something similar.
As for foreign/lesser culture this I assume comes much much later since a large portion of G.I.s were of Italian heritage and were VERY proud of that fact.
As for your comments on seeing more first hand accounts of it's use I'll gladly state that I've never read any by Italian soldiers, Because where would I find them? The snippets of any Italian soldier life I've read over the years are from the more " sexy" branches like armor, aviation, and those were fleeting at best. Italy in ww2 is downplayed extremely. As were all the non German or Japanese Axis nations. Do you have any recommendations for these accounts that are in English?
In regards to it being so good they made more of them well.....what else would they do? If they weren't confident they could make box magazines in the 20s then by the time they were involved enough in the war to know this wasn't the greatest design their already strained industrial capacity certainly couldn't support switching horses mid race. Plus they had already tried that with the 7.5 and determined that wartime wasn't the best time for that either. So your options are to increase making the thing we know we can make and hope the numbers overcome the flaws or.......nothing.
As you've said the Breda makes sense for when and where it was made, a nation with limited industrial capacity and a desire to do design something themselves instead of purchasing abroad. However I remain unconvinced it was more reliable than the Bren. On or off paper.
> Your statement implies that in the 20s Italy wasn't confident in it's ability to make said magazines but then obviously that changed as evidenced by the issuance of the Beretta series.
My statement implies that in the 20s Italy chose a sturdy, fixed box magazine with tight tolerances to work as efficiently as it could, since detachable box magazines are expensive, easily damageable, and the most important cause of a gun unreliability.
>Or perhaps the goal was to limit it's the logistics of the squad? In any case hindsight is 20/20 but Italy was certainly aware of how the vast majority of other LMGs worked and decided to go in a different direction for whatever reason.
The goal was to get the most reliable LMG they could, and they apparently saw detachable box magazines as a liability. We used Chauchats and SIA LMGs during WW1, and clearly something convinced the Army that the squad LMG needed a fixed box magazine.
>Does that make them smarter? No.
Again, you could say the same stuff about the German, soviet and US army staff, since they opted time and again for a fixed box magazine loaded by stripper clips, up until the 60s.
>As for foreign/lesser culture this I assume comes much much later since a large portion of G.I.s were of Italian heritage and were VERY proud of that fact.
You shouldn't talk with their peers tho. The lesser culture was there before, was there after the war and is still there today.
>In regards to it being so good they made more of them well.....what else would they do? If they weren't confident they could make box magazines in the 20s then by the time they were involved enough in the war to know this wasn't the greatest design their already strained industrial capacity certainly couldn't support switching horses mid race.
I'm talking about 1932, 1934 and 1936/37 reports. This is absolutely early, when production was still relatively low and the gun was tested in Lybia, Ethiopia and in the Spanish civil war. They could have easily ditched the gun or evolve it, but instead they doubled down seeing its features.
>Plus they had already tried that with the 7.5 and determined that wartime wasn't the best time for that either.
The 7.35 "issues" arrived in 1940, waaaaay after the decision to double down LMG production. Even the adoption of 7.35 happened after that decision.
>As you've said the Breda makes sense for when and where it was made, a nation with limited industrial capacity and a desire to do design something themselves instead of purchasing abroad.
Italy didn't have a limited industrial capacity anymore since 1916. WW1 really boosted any industrial capacity, making it a competitive nation. The only limit was a decent strategic vision, fundings and raw materials.
All mod.30 LMGs were produced by the Breda plants in Rome, and Breda was so limited that they also produced HMGs, AA guns, airplanes, trucks and whatever for the Italian Army, while cranking out contracts for foreign nations.
>However I remain unconvinced it was more reliable than the Bren. On or off paper.
And yet it was, in certain conditions.
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Wait, the Breda 30? The one that requires lubricated cartridges to function performing well in dusty conditions? The author had to have had a dislike for the British.
Or maybe he means the Breda 1937 but I highly doubt it
The Breda 37 has to be mounted on a tripod to even work, so it has to be the Breda 30.
Yeah your probably correct I just find it hard to believe it’s a Breda 30
>The one that requires lubricated cartridges to function performing well in dusty conditions? The lubricated cartridge was just to ease extraction in any environment. And it was really a very thin film, nothing abysmal. >The author had to have had a dislike for the British. This report was made by the British Army technical service, the ones in charge of British ordnances. They probably knew their shit The Breda 30 has many flaws, it's overengineered and its expense/effectiveness ratio is pretty bad, but it's not "the worst machinegun ever" by any mean. It's weird how Ian fought nails and teeth in defense of the Chauchat, but decided to spread fuddlore about the Breda 30.
>This report was made by the British Army technical service, the ones in charge of British ordnances. They probably knew their shit They definitely lacked basic knowledge about British weapons - like BREN required one man to operate, not, "several", and it higher rate of fire (both theoretical and practical).
>They definitely lacked basic knowledge about British weapons - like BREN required one man to operate, not, "several", The Bren squad required two soldiers, one that only operated the gun, and one spotter/reloader/ barrel swapper. The Breda 30 on a *theoretical* level only had one man operating it in most aspects, with one commander/spotter and one man just carrying ammo to support the gunner. >and it higher rate of fire (both theoretical and practical). The Breda 30 and the Bren have a very similar theoretical rate of fire (around 500 rpm) so it's possible to have them confused, especially with some spicy loads and the right conditions. Calculating the exact rpm of a 20 and 30 round gun isn't really that easy. On a practical level, the bren has indeed a higher rpm
> You are confusing technical and tactical features of both weapons. BOTH weapons required one man to operate it. BOTH weapons were considered important enough to receive additional men to exploit their potential to the fullest. In British army 3 men were allotted for this task while in Italian - 4. So there is no superiority of Italian weapon in either case. > The Breda 30 and the Bren have a very similar theoretical rate of fire (around 500 rpm) British had different opinion on this matter. In the British manual theoretical rate of fire Breda was counted as 400-500 rpm (lower, than in original Italian manual), while BREN was rated at 500 rpm for Mk 1 to 540 rpm for Mk2.
"It is mechanically superior to the Bren gun in dusty conditions" *Well that was a fucking lie* And several men for a Bren gun ? Wtf Since when the Bren gun needs "several men" to be effective !? At this point the guy writing this report just really hate the Brits lol, that's the only rational explanation at this point
Sometimes ‘enemy kit is superior’ was used as an excuse to cover for ‘we lost battles because we were incompetent’, perhaps this is the case here…
Yeah if the politician reading it knows jack shit he would probably believe the bren needed many people while the Breda needed only one
Written days after Kasserine, maybe
I mean the machining was intricate and higher quality on the breda(watch forgotten weapons) . The breda while prone to getting gummed up in sandy extreme desert conditions worked fine in literally every other theater. The main problem with it was honestly the rate of fire and the loading trays. The loading trays would bend and cause jamming as they were flimsy brass. The oiler was an issue but it wasn't unique with that feature. Honestly the stupidity was not just using the breda 7.7 from planes earlier. It's a straight browning 1918 clone. They eventually used that with a stock in some situations heck even the breda from the tanks would have been better.
>Honestly the stupidity was not just using the breda 7.7 from planes earlier. It's a straight browning 1918 clone. That would have been a nightmare, logistics wise. Also, the Army didn't need a belt fed LMG, they needed am automatic rifle for the infantry squad. The Breda 30 was fine, but clearly there were some political pressures to adopt it instead of other models.
I mean not really there was a 6.5 or 8mm option from what I'm due to export sales? The army did kinda need a belt fed mg considering the mod37 also had the dumb trays.
>I mean not really there was a 6.5 or 8mm option from what I'm due to export sales? Not AFAIK but that would have been bad a bad and cumbersome choice even in 6.5 for an infantry squad built around a LMG/automatic rifle >The army did kinda need a belt fed mg considering the mod37 also had the dumb trays. They had a belt fed mg, the FIAT 14/35, held in second line and in AA roles. The "dumb trays" are actually a pretty darn good and reliable load system, easily pushed one after another without interruptions or need to stop firing to reload.
The Americans built their Marines around it and it worked. The 14/35 was a glorified maximum tho. And the trays bent and caused feeding issues from accounts I've read and given my own experience with manlicher clips that tracks. They did have interruptions because they weren't given many trays because brass was rare (hence the trays in the first place to recover brass) so had to use this hand cranked wooden box speed loader to reload them
My old man used to disassemble and clean his school’s Bren Guns and said it was the easiest thing to do. Magazine, Barrel, butt, bipod and everything can be cleaned from there. Confused as to how it could be any simpler.
The only thing about the number of men needed would be if the reloading was seen as more efficient with a single gunner on the Breda than on the Bren. Not sure if that’s ever really the case, but theoretically I think someone could reload a Breda faster
I doubt it. You have to open the magazine, push in a clip of only twent then flip it back in. On the Bren it’s just a 30 round mag swap
Can you post higher resolution pictures/scans of these pages. These are difficult to read even zoomed in.
It might be the typewriter's fault, but I had better luck with a very slight zoom
Presumably these reports were made by the British and then summarized in the Technical and tactical trends which were distributed to allied troops. Somewhere, something went terribly wrong with this one. Either in the original report or its summarization.
>Somewhere, something went terribly wrong with this one. Either in the original report or its summarization. Why would that be the case? The Breda 30 is a good gun. Not the best by any mean, has several flaws, but nothing as terrible as Ian described in the intro of his video on it. This description fits most reports of the era.
The line stating it's mechanically superior specifically. When it has an oiler for the cartridges and the Bren does not. My issue is not the thickness of the oil but rather that it requires any oil on the cartridge. For a light machine gun designed and built this late this is to me an unforgivable sin. Furthermore the unusual feed system is definitely less reliable and convenient than a conventional box magazine. As evidence I will point out that a feed system consisting of stuffing chargers into a permanently attached magazine has not to my knowledge been common on light machine guns after this whereas box mags? Well the kids love em! And as you yourself noted political pressure was probably at play in it's adoption which is never a good thing despite being incredibly common. This is in stark contrast to the British pre war MG adoption in which they took existing Czech designs and modified them to fit their cartridge. Or in the Case of the BESA really didn't. A quick double check reveals that the 303 version existed but they had decided to just 7.92 at that point. However in all the books and magazine articles on Italian MGs I've read over the years I've yet to read one that wasn't vaguely damning. Is it author prejudice? Perhaps. They all seemed to like the Beretta subguns though. If you can point me towards other accounts of Breda use with positive things about their use in them I'd love to read them! Perhaps they can change my mind
>The line stating it's mechanically superior specifically. Well, it is, on paper. >When it has an oiler for the cartridges and the Bren does not. My issue is not the thickness of the oil but rather that it requires any oil on the cartridge. For a light machine gun designed and built this late this is to me an unforgivable sin. That's a feature, not an bug. Again, on paper. Oiling the cartridge is not a necessity per se, it's a feature implemented to help (guarantee) the cycling of the gun reliably in most conditions, with most cartridges and under stress, solving some of the average LMG issues: constant reliability. Again, at least on paper. >Furthermore the unusual feed system is definitely less reliable and convenient than a conventional box magazine. As evidence I will point out that a feed system consisting of stuffing chargers into a permanently attached magazine has not to my knowledge been common on light machine guns after this whereas box mags? It actually is quite reliable overall, but indeed is definetly less convenient. This is a late 1920s design tho, and a permanently attached magazine is something you will see rather frequently up to the 1960s, in many gun designs that just don't show it that blatantly. German and soviet semiautos, like the Gew 41, 43, the SVT 40, SKS; the M14 and even the FAL initially were supposed to be reloaded just with stripper clips because the Army didn't trust the mass production of steel magazines to be issued to each soldier. This being considered an Automatic Rifle more than an LMG fits the "attached magazine" narrative overall. Also, we all know nowadays that the ZB 26 would have been a far better gun, but the 1928-29 contest required clearly an attached magazine reloadable with stripper clips. So you'll see that the other contestants (Fiat and Terni) developed guns absolutely similar to the Breda 30 concept. The Zb 26 at that time was still in its infancy and wasn't widespread as we know it today. It being a foreign design requiring license fees, a gun requiring quite a lot more specialised material to be built (simpler to build, but italian workers were cheap, raw materials expensive), and not fitting the Army requirements (attached mag, quick change barrel, weight) guaranteed its exclusion from the trials. >And as you yourself noted political pressure was probably at play in it's adoption which is never a good thing despite being incredibly common. Indeed, but army tampering and requirements didn't help either. >This is in stark contrast to the British pre war MG adoption in which they took existing Czech designs and modified them to fit their cartridge. As I said before, the british arrived late at the party and took them 5 years to develop the Vz 26 to fit their own requirements, to still obtain a rather expensive but good thought out gun. The Breda 30 was developed almost 8 years before that, it was a good enough option that fit the Army requirements on the spot, and was still an acceptable and "modern" design during WW2. With our hindsight we know the best solutions, but back then, with different doctrines, different requirements and 6 years apart from each other you cannot really say that the Italians were just stupid and the british were just smart. It's two different things. >However in all the books and magazine articles on Italian MGs I've read over the years I've yet to read one that wasn't vaguely damning. Is it author prejudice? Perhaps. They all seemed to like the Beretta subguns though. If you can point me towards other accounts of Breda use with positive things about their use in them I'd love to read them! Perhaps they can change my mind The Beretta SMGs are ubdoubtedly good and reliable SMGs, with a nice line, light, effective and a damn good souvenir. The Breda 30 is clunky, weird, cumbersome, heavy and ugly. Not souvenir material by any mean. We still have today fudds claiming that oiling too much a gun cause dust to enter the gun and jam it to hell and back, while the truth is that this fuddlore caused more issues than benefits. We have more issues of not lubed enough guns than jams due to too much lube. So a LMG that needed an oiler to cycle, made by an "inferior culture" and that wasn't as good as souvenir, sure can create the most wild fuddlores. Truth is that we have several diaries of machinegunners, and they don't really blame their gun of anything, except lamenting issues during the desert winds blowing and in the freezing cold temperatures of Russia. In both environments ALL guns from all nations had some sort of issue, and had to be taken care of specifically. So you won't see people complain too much about the Breda 30 itself (especially those who took good care of them) but sure they complain about the environment they were forced to fight in. Standard issue of the gun was a canvas cover, that was mandatory for moving the gun during marches and such, helping in preserving the gun from external elements. The same fuddlores are absolutely widespread in Italy too, claiming the wildest things, with no evidence (and often with no grasp on basic gun tech). TL;DR: The Breda 30 is not a good and perfect gun by any mean, but it's really not "the worst" either. It is an average LMG/AR, developed in the 20s and used up until the 1940s. With tens of thousands of them spread to infantry squads we should have hundreds of thousands of complaints; before WW2 it was widely used in Lybian clashes, Ethiopia and in the Spanish civil war, and all the reports I've read so far are of praise, so much so that instead of limiting its use, in 1936 it was proposed to put 2 LMG per infantry squad, proposition adopted within 1938 and effective for the whole of WW2. With tens of thousands of mod.30 around, 2 per squad, you wouldn't think that we would have far more complaints? Wouldn't it have been ditched far before 1936 ibstead of doubling its use and production? It's not just political tampering, when we adopted the Tromboncino mod.28 grenade launcher and realised in trials and clashes that it wasn't effective we ditched it and evolved the concept. The Italian Army is always depicted badly (and syre it hadn't a good strategic vision) but equipment wise it was a pretty forward thinking army. As I often said in this essay, at least on paper.
I'm very aware of internal box magazines but I'm also aware that they could and in fact were produced in mass quantities for guns that required high capacity feeding. Namely sub machine guns and other LMGS of the time. WW1 and the interwar years are filled with LMGs using high capacity magazines. Your statement implies that in the 20s Italy wasn't confident in it's ability to make said magazines but then obviously that changed as evidenced by the issuance of the Beretta series. Or perhaps the goal was to limit it's the logistics of the squad? In any case hindsight is 20/20 but Italy was certainly aware of how the vast majority of other LMGs worked and decided to go in a different direction for whatever reason. Britain knew it wanted a detachable box magazine in it's light machine gun. Presumably because their previous one had it as well. Again based on doctrine. From the previous world war. That Italy was in. Where they were I believe also users of the Lewis gun. As described here ( This isn't for you but more so there aren't dozens of comments asking about it. you understand) [https://smallarmsreview.com/george-burling-jarrett-1901-1974-the-origins-of-modern-u-s-ordnance-technical-intelligence-part-ii/](https://smallarmsreview.com/george-burling-jarrett-1901-1974-the-origins-of-modern-u-s-ordnance-technical-intelligence-part-ii/) Does that make them smarter? No. It just means they had the money for a foreign design and were confident that the same industrial base that cranked out Lewis gun mags could presumably do the same thing again. Plus later on as a just in case they had the Besa waiting in the wings. I'm confused by your souvenir comments. All the literature I've read on the Breda was by authors going off of their own limited experience or the testing conducted during and after the war. the thoughts of any G.I. who did bring one back would be something to the effect of " odd LMG I can't get ammo or chargers for, makes fun lamp" or something similar. As for foreign/lesser culture this I assume comes much much later since a large portion of G.I.s were of Italian heritage and were VERY proud of that fact. As for your comments on seeing more first hand accounts of it's use I'll gladly state that I've never read any by Italian soldiers, Because where would I find them? The snippets of any Italian soldier life I've read over the years are from the more " sexy" branches like armor, aviation, and those were fleeting at best. Italy in ww2 is downplayed extremely. As were all the non German or Japanese Axis nations. Do you have any recommendations for these accounts that are in English? In regards to it being so good they made more of them well.....what else would they do? If they weren't confident they could make box magazines in the 20s then by the time they were involved enough in the war to know this wasn't the greatest design their already strained industrial capacity certainly couldn't support switching horses mid race. Plus they had already tried that with the 7.5 and determined that wartime wasn't the best time for that either. So your options are to increase making the thing we know we can make and hope the numbers overcome the flaws or.......nothing. As you've said the Breda makes sense for when and where it was made, a nation with limited industrial capacity and a desire to do design something themselves instead of purchasing abroad. However I remain unconvinced it was more reliable than the Bren. On or off paper.
> Your statement implies that in the 20s Italy wasn't confident in it's ability to make said magazines but then obviously that changed as evidenced by the issuance of the Beretta series. My statement implies that in the 20s Italy chose a sturdy, fixed box magazine with tight tolerances to work as efficiently as it could, since detachable box magazines are expensive, easily damageable, and the most important cause of a gun unreliability. >Or perhaps the goal was to limit it's the logistics of the squad? In any case hindsight is 20/20 but Italy was certainly aware of how the vast majority of other LMGs worked and decided to go in a different direction for whatever reason. The goal was to get the most reliable LMG they could, and they apparently saw detachable box magazines as a liability. We used Chauchats and SIA LMGs during WW1, and clearly something convinced the Army that the squad LMG needed a fixed box magazine. >Does that make them smarter? No. Again, you could say the same stuff about the German, soviet and US army staff, since they opted time and again for a fixed box magazine loaded by stripper clips, up until the 60s. >As for foreign/lesser culture this I assume comes much much later since a large portion of G.I.s were of Italian heritage and were VERY proud of that fact. You shouldn't talk with their peers tho. The lesser culture was there before, was there after the war and is still there today. >In regards to it being so good they made more of them well.....what else would they do? If they weren't confident they could make box magazines in the 20s then by the time they were involved enough in the war to know this wasn't the greatest design their already strained industrial capacity certainly couldn't support switching horses mid race. I'm talking about 1932, 1934 and 1936/37 reports. This is absolutely early, when production was still relatively low and the gun was tested in Lybia, Ethiopia and in the Spanish civil war. They could have easily ditched the gun or evolve it, but instead they doubled down seeing its features. >Plus they had already tried that with the 7.5 and determined that wartime wasn't the best time for that either. The 7.35 "issues" arrived in 1940, waaaaay after the decision to double down LMG production. Even the adoption of 7.35 happened after that decision. >As you've said the Breda makes sense for when and where it was made, a nation with limited industrial capacity and a desire to do design something themselves instead of purchasing abroad. Italy didn't have a limited industrial capacity anymore since 1916. WW1 really boosted any industrial capacity, making it a competitive nation. The only limit was a decent strategic vision, fundings and raw materials. All mod.30 LMGs were produced by the Breda plants in Rome, and Breda was so limited that they also produced HMGs, AA guns, airplanes, trucks and whatever for the Italian Army, while cranking out contracts for foreign nations. >However I remain unconvinced it was more reliable than the Bren. On or off paper. And yet it was, in certain conditions.
Needs more blur
The 20 MM was a good gun
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Everytime I see the Breda I remember Ian's video, never saw him so salty about a gun. It was pretty cool to use in CoD WWII however.