I agree with Bluesman it was more of a problem of leadership than armament. I remember Rommel complaining the Italian officers in Africa treated themselves like kings while the average soldier had a rotten time.
Comparing the professionalism of a German Officer (from top to bottom) to the Aristocratic mentality of the Italian officers is very telling.
Besides there has to be operational flexibility in the terrain and the average education of the Italian soldiers was poor as most of them came from the poor countryside. They had no desire to fight Mussolini’s war. When something didn’t go according to plan or there was bitter fighting they would surrender or flee more easily. They lacked in training, leadership and will to fight.
A German joke of that time was to say Italian tanks were designed with 5 gears (or something) too: 1 forward and 4 reverse.
I also agree the quality of the Italian Army equipment was mediocre compared to Allied and German standards but it is stretching it to say it amounts to more breakdowns per tank (going for hyperbole).
As an earlier poster pointed out, the italians entered WWII with an army equipped with 1920’s vintage equipment. Italy simply had too small of an industrial base, and was too poor to modernize their equipment. Despite this, they were able to make some excellent aircraft-the “Macchi” fighter of 1944 was an example-however, it used a german engine.There is also no doubt that Italian designers made mistakes-the Italian Navy had the fastest battleships in the world (the “VITTORIO VENETO” was capable of 36 knots speed); but this class of ship lacked the armor of a comparable US or British battleship. This meant that Italian ships could not take the hits and survive.Finally, the Fascist leadership was totally corrupt, and weapons contracts were padded to pay for bribes and kickbacks. Given this, the performance of the Italian soldiers was predictable-it is a muiracle that they did as well as they did.
This wasn’t a mistake, it was a deliberate design decision. In battleship combat, speed is as important as armor. If you can dodge the incoming fire, you don’t need armor, and this was the Itallian philosophy. Further, with battleships faster than many countries destroyers, the Itallians had a mainforce that could show-up unannounced, do some serious dammage, and skeddadle before their opponent’s more ponderous heavy units could arrive.
The English were extremely worried about this force, and went far out of their way to catch it at anchor where they could be sure of crippling it (which they did).
Well, the Itallians may have thought they were smarter than Mahan. We’ll never know, for sure, because no one ever challanged an Itallian main force with another main force.