Italian losses in A.S. battles

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Italian losses in A.S. battles

#1

Post by jwsleser » 30 Dec 2015, 23:55

Lorenzo

This is what I have so far. List is uff/Suff e Truppa:

Sidi Barrani (10-11 December 1940). Source is La prima offensiva Britannica in Africa Settentrionale tomo I allegato 32 (page 374):
47/2147 dead, 78/2208 wounded, ~3,000 prisoners

Bardia (16 December-5 January). Source is La prima offensiva Britannica in Africa Settentrionale tomo I allegato 32 (page 374). There is no data from the 1 e 2 divisioni CC.NN. :
44/1,659 dead, 138/3,602 wounded, ~40,000 prisoners

Fall of Tobruk (January 1941). Source is La prima offensiva Britannica in Africa Settentrionale tomo I allegato 32 (page 376):
18/750 dead, 30/2250 wounded, ~20,000 prisoners

Beda Fomm: No accurate data is available. ~25,000 dead, wounded and prisoners.

Still working on these.

Gazala (26 May-21 June 1942)
First El Alamein (1-27 July 1942)
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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#2

Post by LColombo » 01 Jan 2016, 19:51

Thank you. May I add also the Nibeiwa and Tummars battles in early December 1940? For Nibeiwa I found 490 killed, 700 wounded and 2,000 POWs on a booklet by Enzo Biagi, or 800 killed, 1,300 wounded and 2,000 POWs from Internet (source unknown). For the Tummars I found no source at all.

(Also, is there a figure of killed/wounded/prisoners during entire Operation Compass?)


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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#3

Post by jwsleser » 02 Jan 2016, 21:22

Lorenzo

The Sidi Barrani numbers above were for the 9-10 December, not just Sidi Barrani proper.

The info on page 374 breaks down the following (9-10 Dec) :

Ragg. Maletti: 19/800 dead, 38/1300 wounded.
1a div. libica: 3/72 dead, 6/106 wounded (these numbers were recreated in May 1941)
2a div. libcia: 26/1327 dead, 32/804 wounded (number reflects period 26 June-11 Dec).
4a div. CC.NN.: no numbers available
Div. Cirene: 2/20 dead, 8/104 wounded.
Also, is there a figure of killed/wounded/prisoners during entire Operation Compass?
A working number of 115,000 total losses is all I can find. If you total the numbers I have provided, you are in that ballpark.

CORRECTION: the Bardia numbers in my first post are from page 375, not page 374.

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#4

Post by Urmel » 04 Jan 2016, 21:00

The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#5

Post by LColombo » 05 Jan 2016, 11:23

Thanks again. Does the books provide a killed/wounded/prisoners breakdown for Italian losses in these three campaigns?

Western Desert from 1940 to January 1943
Tunisia
Sicily

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#6

Post by jwsleser » 11 Jan 2016, 19:44

Sicilia

From Le operazioni in Sicilia e in Calabria pages 400-401

Italian: 4,678 dead, 32,500 wounded, 36,072 missing, 116,681 prisoners.

German: 4,325 dead, 13,500 wounded, 4,583 missing, 5,523 prisoners.

it is assumed that many of the missing were dead, being buried on the battlefield or at imprecise locations.

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#7

Post by LColombo » 11 Jan 2016, 21:27

it is assumed that many of the missing were dead, being buried on the battlefield or at imprecise locations.
But, as the prisoners are in a separate figure, what else could the missing be? In addition to dead with grave unknown, I mean.

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#8

Post by jwsleser » 12 Jan 2016, 01:19

Not always :D

it can include desertion and men that didn't immediately return to their units. Causality numbers are usually based on units returns within a very short period after the event described. Men can rejoin their units over a period of time after the returns were completed. I have read many histories where the losses are given, then the author points out the X number of men rejoined over the following X [time period]. Sicilia, being an island that was lost, meant that any missing (dispersi) men, if not reported as prisoners, mostly likely died.

It also means that few unit returns were collected. The author uses the total strength of the island's garrison before the invasion, minus the known dead (counting the known graves on the island), wounded, prisoners, and evacuated to determine the number of dispersi.

I included the comment because the author makes this specific statement because he needed to explain/clarify the method used to determine the numbers. It is an assumption.
I dispersi furono pertanto 40.655, di cui 4.583 tedeschi e 36.072 italiani, e tra di essi è compreso un numero imprecisato di morti sepolti in fosse comuni, oppure rimasti sul campo.
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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#9

Post by LColombo » 12 Jan 2016, 10:08

Understood, thanks. Is there a breakdown for the battles of Gela and Troina? I found 214 officers and 7,000 men of the Livorno Division and 30 officers and 600 men of the Hermann Goring Division at Gela, but no breakdown of killed/missing/wounded/prisoners.

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#10

Post by Gooner1 » 12 Jan 2016, 12:33

jwsleser wrote:Sicilia

From Le operazioni in Sicilia e in Calabria pages 400-401

Italian: 4,678 dead, 32,500 wounded, 36,072 missing, 116,681 prisoners.

German: 4,325 dead, 13,500 wounded, 4,583 missing, 5,523 prisoners.

it is assumed that many of the missing were dead, being buried on the battlefield or at imprecise locations.

Pista! Jeff
Given that most of the Italian troops would have been locals isn't it more likely that the large numbers of missing were simply those who took off their uniform and went home?

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#11

Post by Attrition » 12 Jan 2016, 14:50

Could it be that this thread is the source of the recent additions to Wiki articles, so generously supplied?

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#12

Post by Urmel » 12 Jan 2016, 15:27

Gooner1 wrote:
jwsleser wrote:Sicilia

From Le operazioni in Sicilia e in Calabria pages 400-401

Italian: 4,678 dead, 32,500 wounded, 36,072 missing, 116,681 prisoners.

German: 4,325 dead, 13,500 wounded, 4,583 missing, 5,523 prisoners.

it is assumed that many of the missing were dead, being buried on the battlefield or at imprecise locations.

Pista! Jeff
Given that most of the Italian troops would have been locals isn't it more likely that the large numbers of missing were simply those who took off their uniform and went home?
I think that's far more likely then having 9 times the number of dead lying around the Sicilian countryside unburied.
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#13

Post by LColombo » 12 Jan 2016, 15:29

Could it be that this thread is the source of the recent additions to Wiki articles, so generously supplied?
Indeed; I am updating my own info and in the meantime I take the chance to improve those articles with datas coming from reliable sources.

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#14

Post by LColombo » 12 Jan 2016, 15:41

For the missing, I think it is both causes. It is unlikely that all, or probably even most, of those 36,000 missing were killed. But I think that several thousands actually were. Consider the number of wounded among the Italian troops, 32,500. That would be six to seven times the number of killed; from what I have seen about combat casualties suffered in most battles fought by the Italian Army in WW2 (say El Alamein, Keren, Bardia, Nibeiwa, the whole Greek campaign and so on), the ratio between killed and wounded was usually between 1:1 and 1:3.

Also, here is a 1957 ISTAT study of Italian casualties in WW2: http://lipari.istat.it/digibib/causedim ... timizz.pdf
One should notice that the numbers of killed/missing provided by this study are often underestimated. A noticeable example: "only" 349 killed and 3 missing are listed as casualties in France in June 1940, whereas it is known that the actual losses in the failed attack on France were 631 killed and 616 missing. For the months of July and August 1943, ISTAT lists 12,426 killed or missing (the ISTAT missing are dead missing) in the Italian armed forces, and during that period the only significant fighting happened in Sicily.
Surely if someone had made a more in-depth study about the missing, when writing the official history, it would have been useful, to understand how many were indeed killed and how many deserters.

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Re: Italian losses in A.S. battles

#15

Post by jwsleser » 12 Jan 2016, 17:22

I had a sense from the previous posts that Wiki was involved. Always good to examine the numbers. :wink:
Given that most of the Italian troops would have been locals isn't it more likely that the large numbers of missing were simply those who took off their uniform and went home?
That is why I stated that dispersi means deserters as well as killed. Note that that the author pointed out the issue of mass graves that complicates determining a final number.

>Also, here is a 1957 ISTAT study of Italian casualties in WW2

A good source to determine the ACTUAL losses. This was collected after the war, when many of the dispersi returned home. claimed pensions, etc. But that isn't a valid number if you are addressing the military impact of the losses at the time. The reality in 1943 is that the Italian military effectively lost 36K. It really doesn't matter whether they were killed or deserters. In terms of the Wiki article, this a valid number when discussing the impact of the invasion of Sicilia in 1943.

Much depends on what numbers are being used. Again going to Le operazioni, the author states that there were a total of 320K men on Sicilia. This includes all services (R.E., R.A., e R.M.) and support troops for both Germany and Italy.

62.000 Italians and 39.569 Germans were evacuated at the end of the campaign. An additional 32.500 Italians and 13.500 wounded were evacuated during the campaign. That leaves 172.000 men unaccounted for (page 400). The numbers I previously presented are the calculations for that last number. Note I didn't check the author's math.

One change. Of the 39.569 Germans evacuated, 4.444 were wounded (page 398). The footnote on that page states that this number is not included in the total of 13.500 wounded (fn 98). The author cites H. Pond Sicilia page 334 for the German data. So total German wounded is 17.944. No similar info is provided for the Italians, so I assume that any wounded evacuated at the end is already included in the Italian total.

Pista! Jeff

NOTE: I am using the word deserter only in the basic definition of being 'unaccounted for' by their unit. I am not using it to identify those men as actual deserters in the legal sense.
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