Guardia alla Frontiera
The Guardia alla Frontiera, was an Regio Esercito border guard created in 1937 who defended the 1,851 km of northern Italian frontiers with the "Vallo Alpino Occidentale", "Vallo Alpino Settentrionale" and "Vallo Alpino Orientale".
In 1940, the GaF had 21,000 military personnel, deployed in eight commands, 27 sectors, and seven regiments of artillery. It manned 1,000 fortifications, 6,000 machine guns, 1,000 mortars, 100 Cannone da 47/32 M35, and another thousand other medium and small-caliber cannons.
By 10 June 1940 the GaF contained 23 sectors, 50,000 men, 28 battalions "Vallo Alpino", and 22 battalions of fascist militia.
Organization
Each command of the army of GaF could be divided into "sectors", which could be broken down into subsectors and so on for ever smaller units. Each command in the field had two or more subsectors which controlled the fortifications. These works were manned by infantry, artillery, engineers, etc. Despite the GaF being predominantly static it also received five light tank companies, equipped with Fiat 3000 tanks that over time, due to their age and lack of spare parts, ended largely abandoned in Sector armories or buried to use the turrets as a fort.The Guardia alla Frontiera disappeared after 1943, but nominally was active until 1953.
In Italy
Vallo alpino occidentale
Three artillery regiments supported the sectors of the Vallo alpino occidentale:- 7th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Cuneo
- 8th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Venaria Reale
- 11th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Savona
Vallo alpino settentrionale
One artillery regiment and one autonomous artillery group supported the sectors of the Vallo alpino settentrionale:- 6th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Bolzano
- Guardia alla Frontiera Autonomous Artillery Group, in Sondrio
Vallo alpino orientale
Three artillery regiments supported the sectors of the Vallo alpino orientale:- 9th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Gorizia
- 10th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Trieste
- 12th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Osoppo
In Albania
One artillery regiment supported the 26th Command in Albania:
In LibyaLibyan-Tunisian border
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