So why did so many such barrels get so corroded before arriving here?[
I suppose that I just mentioned the Italians because they seemed to embrace surrender like they embraced soccer.
Accounts I've actually read in books with accounts from UK troops have mentioned the individual Italian crunchie as a fairly good chap in an abysmal caste system divided ineffective leadership. The bore of the Carcono my father ( who landed in and fought in and from North Africa shortly after the Torch landings, in the USAAF [as shown on his DD-214]) purchased for me had a shootable but not pristine bore by visual examination at time of purchase that improved after vigorous cleaning with Outer's Nitro Solvent with its highly effective nitrobenzene solvent component.
I have no ethnic Italian in my ancestry, but imagine how things might have gone if reverence for the elitists in Italy mirrored that of their Japanese contemporaries.
To this day I do not and will not own any Japanese WWII era milsurp stuff. Too much up front and personal observations of US citizens who had been POW's of the Japanese during that conflict, and I'm not talking strictly physically, for me to want to own anything manufactured with that regime in power. Not dissing anyone else's interests, just YMMV. I can imagine what things may have occurred if Italy had a similar reverence of their elites who incubated low self worth of life among the non-elites. Both cultures used roughly less than fully modernized weaponry for land combat with quite different results for many reasons. The largest point of such difference was really in the quality, quantity, and tactical employment of the various SMG's manufactured by the Italians (and also issued to some other Axis troops), as well as some Italian pistols (Beretta 1934 vs Glisenti for example).
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