How are you going to get it through the slot? It’s made of metal thick enough to resist gunfire. The very tip of your spear might go an inch or two into the vision slit, leaving an inch at the most sticking out but that’s not going to hit the driver – his face isn’t going to be pressed up against the metal.
I seriously doubt you’ll be able to push a spear through steel armor meant to resist bullets no matter what your motivation is.
Doubtless true. However, the Italians also fought poorly long before Pearl - they needed their hands held pretty much all through Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete and North Africa while the Americans were still sitting with their feet up. And even before they came into the war they had a dubious reputation. I remember reading a biography of Charles Upham VC* and an acquaintance of his - prior to his winning even one Victoria Cross or, for that matter, firing a shot in anger - opining that Upham could capture a hundred Ities just by pointing the stem of his pipe at them.
The rest of your post advances a good argument as to why.
African stabbing spears had thin blades around 15 inches long and looked more like a bayonet on a stick than a European pike, so I’d think one of those would cause the driver to have a very bad day, even if it might not be immediately fatal. The model here is a Zulu spear, but similar spears existed in east Africa. http://www.rrtraders.com/weapons/iklwa3.htm
It should also be pointed out that the Ethiopian army at the time of the Second Italo–Ethiopian War was by no means medival. The reason they Italians had a bone to pick with the Ethiopians (and the reason it was the SECOND Italo–Ethiopian War) in the 1930s was a generation eariler invading Italian forces had suffered a crushing defeat the Battle of Adowa.
Menelik II did a very skillful job at playing one potential colonial invader off against another in such a way as they not only survived, but had some reasonably up-to-date military equipment (in particular British rifles). They may not have been able to keep that up in the ensuing 40 years of military advancement, but that didn’t mean all they had were spears.
I’m not sure if this link will work, but here is the 12/26/35 edition of The Winona (Minn) Republican-Herald, with an interesting AP article (page 4). In it, a grizzled Ethiopian colonel is quoted as saying of his surprisingly young Italian adversaries, “Poor boys… Those Italian youths cannot stand up to the sabre.” He goes on to engage in the shrewd military strategy of telling your opponent exactly how you plan to fight him:
Getting a tank stranded in mud, then poking long blades into the vision slits and air vents? I can see that being kind of bad for the guys inside.
Yes, that’s obvious. The slit is thinner than most bullet calibers in use at the time, though. Which means, yes, you could conceivably get a really thin blade and stick it through. But a spear is generally not going to be that thin all the way back to the shaft of the spear. The spine on my kitchen knife is a little over 1/4", and it’s not made to be as durable.
The hatch is about 3/4" thick steel as well, so that spear would have to be exactly perpendicular.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to get something into the tank, just that actually stabbing the dirver of a tank is going to be a lot trickier and mroe difficult than just chucking a spear or sneaking up (which would be hard since you have to be right where the driver is looking) and sticking something in there.
It’s probably more realistic to go with what actually happened, which was that the Ethiopians used gasoline, ambush tactics, pit traps, and had some successes against tanks because they had skillful leaders and a good understanding of how to fight them.
The whole “spear penetrating a tank” thing is not very feasible without a lot of other things going on, like the tank is burning, etc. Sticking a blade through the vision slot means you have to approach the tank from the front (where it has machine guns and pistol ports), and not get shot or run over, and make a perfect stab at precisely the right angle. All of this is much more easily done when the tank is disabled by other means.
Some of the assault/self-propelled guns of that era were nothing more than a heavy artillery gun mounted onto a motorized chassis. This Semovente was an Italian assault gun, and as near as I can tell the crew would have had to exit the vehicle to reload the gun, leaving them vulnerable to pointy sticks.
On the left side of that page it lists all of Italy’s tank types, with pictures. None of them have any sort of open driver’s compartment unless the visor is up. (Though the M13 was the only one deployed in serious numbers, the other ones don’t have an exposed driver either.)
OK, so I’d approach that from the rear, climb on top of the turret, get down on that little ledge in front of the corner of the turret, reach down, and stab my blade in through the view-slit. I can reach the slit just fine that way, and at no point am I in the line of any of the tank’s gun barrels. I’m not saying it would be easy, but it’d certainly be possible, and the question is just “did it happen”, not “did it happen often”.
For what it’s worth, I am currently reading “Panzer Commander”, the autobiography of von Luck who fought in North Africa under Rommel.
He spends a few pages defending the Italians, who he describes as able fighters, and quite capable, but that their heart wasn’t really in the fight at all. That the Italian “mental state” was to survive, and go home, rather than fight and win at all costs.
About 1974 I worked with a guy who was a Para in Italy in WWII.
He said that they would dig slit trenches and lie in them while the German tanks went over, then they would leap out and shoot them up the arse with a sten gun.
He also said that some of the tank drivers were real swine, and they would slew the treads to mince the guys in the trenches. Personally I thought that sensible.
I’ve no doubt that what he said was true, people did crazy things. If you can stop a tank with the odd dinner plate then they are probably a lot more vulnerable than we think.
Shooting a tank with a Sten Gun wouldn’t do anything at all. The most likely way of combating a tank that has overrun your position would be with a a sticky/magnetic mine, or even a molotov cocktail. Also, PIAT anti tank rifles, or Bazookas were often used at short ranges, but these weapons were kind of bulky and I’m not sure about the feasibility of hiding them in such a small trench as this would require. Still, it was standard practice to attempt to shoot at the side or rear of tanks in order for these weapons to be effective, as most German MBTs had a very sturdy frontal armour by 1944. Letting yourself be overrun would be a very effective way of fighting the tank, as the rear armour always is the weakest. Needless to say, tough, nerves of steel required.
Making mincemeat out of infantry hiding in trenches was, and still is, SOP for all tank crews - it’s the only effective way of dealing with infantry at close range. I’d guess this is the reason why tankers refers to infantry as squishes
As for the OP: As have been said earlier, the Ethiopians were very effective dealing with the Italian tanks, as long as they had time to prepare traps/defensive positions, but altough I’ve read extensively about this conflict, and seen several accounts of how the Italian tanks were taken out in close combat, I’ve never seen a reference to a spear being used to disable the driver.
As for the fighting spirit of the italian soldiers, the Ethiopians had a reputation for castracting their prisoners (wheter a rumour or factual I don’t know), which is a morale-sapping rumour to go up against…
To me,anyway. Italy invaded Ethiopia twice-first in the 1890’s-and were badly defeated (at Adowa, the Italians lost large numbers of soldiers, and all of their artillery). Next, under “Il duce”, the Italians had another go at it…God knows why!
I mean seizing the nearly-worthless countries f Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland didn’t make much sense-I’m sure the Italians spend much more on them than they ever got out of them.
As for the Italian armored cars and tanks: the British regarded them as a joke…one British officer referred to the Fiat tanks as “self-propeled coffins”.
The Italians also had the misfortune of powering their tanks with gasoline engines-which meant they were easy to catch fire and burn-afetr being hit by a British 3 1/2 pounder shell.
The countries were only worthless in the sense that they were pre-industrial African societies, they still (to this day) are loaded with natural resources; the British, French and Spanish took many such places and turned them into cash crops for the “Fatherlands.”
However, “Il duce” tried to re-invade Ethiopia in pre-WWII not out of desire of natural resources, but Fascist pride. They spent the last 40 years thinking “We were beated… by blacks!”
So “Il duce” upgraded their military for the sole purpose of defeating the Ethiopians, “wiping their slate clean” and getting their “east-African empire.” An empire which lasted for… 5 years. Yes, roughly as long as German occupied France did. And what changes did they bring with their rule… Well they killed many people by dropping mustard gas, they cut the huge 1700 year old/160 ton Obelisk of Axum into three pieces and shipped the whole thing to Rome (they literally stole the entire thing), and as a finale they forced locals to hold massive parties dedicated to Italian glory.
