Brady wrote: ↑08 Aug 2019, 20:13
"since the autumn of 1941 German technical help was provided to the Regia Marina for the recovery of 200,000 t of oil sludge from the bottoms of oil bunkers (a chemical process that required some consumption of fuel, in turn)."
Was this the actual amount that was rendered usable, presumably it was lower ? And that what ever the amount, it was not counted as an import ?
This is the input, the output was much lower, but no data are available. Anyway, in Raspin's and Sadkovich's books there are the data about the Regia Marina's stocks during the war.
"Germany never delivered the agreed 12,000,000 t per year, even though it came close to this figure until 1943."
Was this due to the fore mentioned bottleneck created by a Rolling stock Shortage, or because the Coal was simply not to be had, that is there was will to send it but not the means ?
I don't know, but usually it is blamed on German bad will and blackmail.
" Italian Army had already planned, since 1925 (Zamagni, p. 168), that it would have heavily relied on requisitioned civilian trucks, at least at the beginning of the war."
Any idea how much of an influx were looking at hear ?
I had wrote the wrong page, it's 168. Returning to your question, in 1939 there were 90,000 civilian trucks in Italy, which were barely sufficient for the peacetime needs, I don't know the exact amount requisitioned, but I guess it was limited.
I keep coming back to the issue of "capacity" , that the rail net work could only move so much of anything and that the mention of increased troop movements seamed to impact the Movement of coal from Germany, and this again suggests that more could of been had if not for the lack of capacity on the rail networks and the importance of securing the swiss "connection", but also what of Romanian Oil, was this also a factor, rail capacity, or were they taking a different rout and this was not as big an issue for the oil as it was the coal, certainly the option to move at least some of the oil by sea was available for some of the time were looking at so perhaps not for the oil ?
Romanian oil came from the East and therefore saturated different rail lines than coal, coming from the North. Yet, locomotives were anyway a possible bottleneck too. Raspin mentions the idea of building 2,000 tanker trucks in order to diversify the transport of Romanian oil to Italy, but it's unclear if this proposal was ever put into practice (I have never read anymore about it and I assume it remained a mere idea, but it gives an impression of a lack of transport capacity by railways alone). Anyway, as German imports of oil from Romania rose, Italian ones shrunk and thus solved this part of the problem, if we can say it...
