Italy
2nd Alpine Division "Tridentina"(This unit was one of the three alpini unit that was deployed to russia so im just gonna cover their history in russia)
The Tridentina was one of the ten Italian divisions of the Italian Army in Russia, which fought on the Eastern Front. In July 1942 the division, together with the 3rd Alpine Division “Julia” and the 4th Alpine Division “Cuneense” formed the Alpine Army Corps, which was transferred to Eastern Ukraine. From there the Tridentina marched to Millerovo and then onward to the Don river, where it took up positions near Podgornoye by October 1942.
On 12 December 1942 the Red Army’s Operation Little Saturn commenced, which in its first stage attacked and encircled the Italian Army in Russia’s II Army Corps and XXXV Army Corps. On 13 January 1943, the Red Army launched the second stage of Operation Little Saturn: four armies of General Filipp Golikov’s Voronezh Front attacked, encircled, and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don to the northwest of the Alpine Army Corps and pushed back the remaining units of the German XXIV Army Corps on the Alpine Army Corps’ left flank, thus encircling the Alpine Army Corps.
On the evening of 17 January, the Alpine Army Corps commander, General Gabriele Nasci, ordered a full retreat. At this point only the Tridentina division was still capable of conducting effective combat operations. The 40,000-strong mass of stragglers — Alpini and Italians from other commands, plus German and Hungarian Hussars — formed two columns that followed the Tridentina division which, supported by a handful of German armored vehicles, led the way westwards to the Axis lines.
On the morning of 26 January, the spearheads of the Tridentina reached the hamlet of Nikolayevka, occupied by the 48th Guards Rifle Division. The Soviets had fortified the railway embankment on both sides of the village. General Nasci ordered a frontal assault and at 9:30 am the Battle of Nikolayevka began with the 6th Alpini Regiment with the battalions “Verona”, “Val Chiese”, and “Vestone”, the Tridentina division’s II Mixed Alpine Engineer Battalion, the Alpine Artillery Group “Bergamo” of the 2nd Alpine Artillery Regiment, and three German Sturmgeschütz III leading the attack. By noon the Italian forces had reached the outskirts of the village and the Alpine Army Corps’ Chief of Staff General Giulio Martinat brought up reinforcements: the 5th Alpini Regiment with the battalions “Edolo”, “Morbegno” and “Tirano”, and the remaining alpine artillery groups “Vicenza” and “Val Camonica” of the 2nd Alpine Artillery Regiment, as well as the remnants of the Alpini Battalion “L’Aquila” of the “Julia” division. General Martinat fell during this assault.
By sunset the Alpini battalions were still struggling to break the reinforced Soviet lines and in a last effort to decide the battle before nightfall General Luigi Reverberi, commander of the Tridentina, ordered the remaining troops and stragglers, which had arrived over the course of the afternoon, to assault the Soviet positions in a human wave attack. The assault managed to break open the Soviet lines and the Italian survivors managed to continue their retreat, which was no longer contested by Soviet forces. On 1 February 1943 the remnants of the Alpine Army Corps reached Axis lines. Only one third of the Tridentina had survived the battle on the Don and the retreat (approximately 4,250 survivors of 18,000 troops deployed).
Weapon I had in mind
Moschetto Automatico Brescia
Italian Army decided that the use of the 9mm Glisenti cartridge in automatic carbines should be replaced with a light, intermediate rifle
cartridge; a compromise between 9mm Glisenti and 6.5mm Carcano. What resulted from
this was the conception of the new 7.65x32mm cartridge, which was dimensionally similar
to the later German 7.92x33mm Kurz cartridge famously developed during World War II.
The Italian Army specified that it wanted a light automatic carbine to fire this new cartridge,
lighter and shorter than a rifle and giving good accuracy at 400 metres. As with the earlier
submachine gun trials, various firms were commissioned to develop a weapon to meet
these specifications. This time, they were all state arsenals – presumably because the
development of the 7.65x32mm cartridge was still kept secret from private companies at
this point. The participating arsenals were those at Terni, Rome, and Brescia.
The model we see here is from Brescia
The Moschetto Automatico Brescia was built using the Revelli-Beretta as its base, retaining
the same receiver, stock, and action. The chambering was changed to accommodate the
new intermediate cartridge, and the barrel was changed for a longer type. The bolt was
likely also modified, although the angle-delay in the bolt guide was retained, despite it
having no real effect. The most notable change was the magazine feed. The top-loading
system of the Villar Perosa and Revelli-Beretta guns was abandoned in favour of a multi
compartmented magazine similar to the type seen on the Fiat-Revelli machine gun, in
which a square cage-like magazine consisting of 5 rows of 5-round strips, feeding one
after the other. Fitted to the magazine was a fire selector switch, which gave automatic fire
or single shots.
Some clothing option(3set)
1-
2-
3-(Last set is proper winter uniform)
That’s from me
Edit: I changed the gun apparently Pavesi mod.38 was just a mistake from my source though the book is a good read for anybody interested
(From Carcano to FAL ( Dal Carcano al Fal) is the name of the book)
