| Breda Modello 30 | |
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| General Historical Information | |
| Place of origin | Italy |
| Produced In | 1931-1940 |
| Type | Light machine gun |
| Rate of Fire | 500 |
| Magazine | 20 Rounds |
| Ammunition | 6.5x52mm Carcano |
| General Ingame Information | |
| Used by | Italy Netherlands |
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The Breda 30 was the standard Italian light machine gun from 1930 to the end of WWII. It is only available in the custom maps Battle of Abyssinia and Nikolayevka. The Italians use the 7.92 mm MG 34 and their heavy machine gun Breda 37 on other maps.
The Breda 30 was introduced in the Road to Rome expansion, as a Italian counterpart to the BAR 1918 used by the Allied forces. The model was quite inaccurate, which has been rectified in FHSW. The magazine and charging handle has been moved from the left side to the right. The animations have not been remade for the gun but the placeholder animations are slightly better since the magazine is no longer taken from the gun and replaced with a new one since on the real weapon the magazine is secured with a hinge and latch. It is instead turned open and loaded with a stripper clip and put back in place. The bipod has been folded out and the gun functions more like machine gun than the original rendition which mirrored the performance of the BAR 1918 or was worse.
The Breda 30 had a number of problems. The rate of fire was limited by the fixed 20 round magazine that was loaded with clips and if the magazine was broken the whole gun was rendered useless. Open parts like on the magazine which made it easy to see how many rounds were left also let dust and debris into the weapon, a major issue during the fighting Africa and exaggerated by oiler that lubricated the cartridges so that they would extract reliably. Like the Carcano Mod.91/38 used by most of the infantry the cartridge it fired was also criticised for being too weak compared to those used by other nations, the Italians also used slightly larger bullets in the Breda 37 machine gun.
The Breda 30 was used by the Italian armed forces and those it fought, including soldiers of Ethiopia, Greece and the Soviet Union. The Breda 30 was the most important for Italian army squads, and each soldier was trained to atleast load the clips as quickly as possible. The machine gun was also mounted on motorcycles and could be seen on the handlebars. Some ended up on the other side of the world in the South Pacific. The Dutch East Indies Government were scrambling for any military equipment they could get. So, the British sent some Breda 30 and Carcano rifles they had captured from the Italians and some Dutch naval infantry have been seen operating this machine gun. The Germans would also use this machine gun after they disarmed what remained of the Italian army in axis-controlled territory following the 1943 September armistice between Italian high command and the Allied powers.
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