Fiat L6/40 - Design and Development

Design and Development

The L6/40 was a conventional light tank design of riveted construction. A one-man turret in the center mounted a single Breda Modello 35 20 mm main gun and a Breda Modello 38 8 mm coaxial machine gun. The driver sat in the front right of the hull. Armor was 6 to 30 mm in thickness, which was roughly equivalent to existing Allied light tanks.

A further development of the Fiat L3 light tank, the L6 went through a number of prototypes during the late 1930s. The first was armed with a sponson-mounted 37 mm main gun and a machine-gun armed turret. A later version featured a turret mounted 37 mm gun and yet another version had only twin 8 mm machine guns. Ultimately, the production configuration, named Carro Armato L6/40, was put into production in 1939, with 283 finally produced.

The L6 Lf flame tank variant was developed in which the main gun was replaced by a flamethrower with 200 litres of fuel. A command-tank variant carried extra radio gear and had an open-topped turret. Most successful of the variants was the Semovente 47/32, which eliminated the turret and substituted a 47 mm antitank gun in the open-topped hull. A final version late in the war was an ammunition carrier armed only with a single 8 mm Breda machine gun. It was used alongside the Semovente 90/53, carrying extra 90 mm ammunition, as the Semovente 90/53 itself could only carry 6 rounds.