Thursday, January 19, 2006

Ethiopians versus the Cv-33

This tale is from the website 'Tanks' http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/
The Ethiopian campaign demonstrated a severe handicap due to the machine guns' narrow traverse capability. In one event, Ethiopian soldiers (who had no tanks are were basically a medieval army with muzzle loading cannon) actually attacked a troop of CV33's. After the initial fear and worry had worn off, and getting a bit hot under the collar because their beloved leader had fallen, they formed a plan. Noting the limited traverse of the MG's, they simply attacked from the side! In the narrow area in which this occured, the poor CV33 tankers simply could not turn around. After a liberal stabbing of port slits with sabers and knives, the angry soldiers then poured gasoline on the tanks and set them afire. To add insult to injury, the Ethiopians then flipped the tanks over - barehanded. Only one crew survived to surrender out of 13 tanks in this encounter - and that was by shouting Christo - Christo! Seems that the Ethiopians did not understand that hands up meant surrender... to them, the Italians simply made better targets of themselves!

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