The Breda Model 30 Light Machine Gun,Being an Italian infantryman during World War II must have real

The Breda Model 30 Light Machine Gun,Being an Italian infantryman during World War II must have really sucked.  Incompetent leadership, inferior equipment, and dated tactics all plagued the Italian Army.  Take for example the common light machine gun used by Italy, the Breda Model 30.A crap-tacular weapon, the Breda Model 30 first saw service with the Italian Army in 1930.  It utilized a fully automatic blowback mechanism which fired from a closed bolt, most fully automatic weapons of this type use an open bolt system.  As a result the weapon suffered from serious reliability problems including separated cases and terrible jams. To increase reliability, a lubrication device was mounted near the magazine to oil each cartridge as it entered the chamber.  However this mechanism completely negated its purpose, as the oil would attract dust and dirt, especially in the sands of the North African desert. The closed bolt design also made for insufficient cooling.  To solve the problem of overheating, the barrel could be easily detached and replaced with another barrel.  However since both the front and rear sights were mounted on the body of the gun, only one barrel could be zeroed in.  Once the barrel was changed the gun was no longer sighted in and would most likely be off target. Finally the Breda 30 was chambered for the 6X52mm Carcano cartridge, an anemic machine gun round compared to its contemporaries such as the .30-06, .303 British, or 8x57. Out of all the Breda 30’s flaws, perhaps the worst was the gun’s 20 round magazine.  Unlike other light machine guns which fed from a detachable magazine, the Breda 30 used a fixed magazine.  Any firepower accomplished by the Breda 30 was negated by its slow reloading mechanism.  Whereas most other light machine guns were reloaded by removing the empty magazine and replacing it with a new magazine, the magazine of the Breda 30 could not be removed.  Rather the Breda 30 was loaded through the chamber using stripper clips.  The specific stripper clips issued with the Breda 30 were delicate and complicated compared to clips used by other countries.The overall result of all this madness was a light machine that wasn’t very powerful, had overheating problems, had reliability problems, and was inaccurate after changing barrels.  More importantly the weapon’s slow reloading time and need for barrel changes made it a terribly slow firing weapon, comparable to a regular US infantryman with an M1 Garand semi automatic rifle.  Today its legacy is shared as among the worst weapons of World War II. -- source link

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