Carro Armato P40 (Carro Pesante P40)

History

The Carro Armato P40 (officially the Carro Pesante P26/40 as "Heavy Tank P40") is one of the most impressive Italian tank designs of WWII. Despite its operating weight, the type was classified in Italian nomenclature as a "heavy tank" - usually different from the German and Allied tank classifications of the time.

It has decent armor protection (one of the best for Italian tanks) and a 75mm main gun. Although the P 26/40 was of reasonable quality by Italian tank standards, at this stage of the war the P 26/40 was on many levels surpassed by the German, Soviet, British and American tanks that took center stage.

More than 100 P 26/40 tanks were produced by the end of the war, many of which served with the German army after the surrender of Italy in 1943.

In 1940, the Italians began designing a new 25-ton "heavy" class infantry support tank for use with the "M" series medium tanks in service at the time. The recent fighting in the North African campaign demonstrated the severe limitations of the Italian tanks in service at the time and prompted the Italian army to consider other options. The main designation for this new tank was initially "P 75". The weapon of choice became the short-barreled 75mm 75/32 main gun mounted in the mobile turret position.

The turret is attached to the superstructure, and the design is more or less very traditional in nature, with long chain edges - although it is decidedly Italian in its general appearance. The original engine choice became a 330-horsepower diesel powerplant.

The short-barreled 75mm gun was subsequently upgraded to a more powerful 75/34 long-barreled 75mm gun.

After the diesel engine failed to impress, the Italian army opted for a gasoline-powered version, forcing Ansaldo engineers to rejoin the development committee, delaying the plan. This effort culminated in a gasoline engine with 420 horsepower.

The new tank, now known as the "P 40", survived in its final form until the armistice in Italy. Since then, the tank has been officially designated "P 26/40", with "26" indicating the weight of the vehicle (in tons) and "40" indicating the year it was commissioned.

The main production of the P 26/40 took place at the Ansaldo factory in northern Italy - even after the Italian Armistice. The vehicle retains a barrel length of 19 feet, a width of 9 feet 2 inches and a height of 8 feet 2 inches. She was piloted by a crew of four, including the driver, tank commander, ammunition operator and radio operator/machine gunner. The key to this arrangement was the commander, as he also served as the gunner, complicating operations on the battlefield. Comparable tank systems from other countries include a fifth crew member who is a dedicated gunner while the commander can focus on communicating with his crew and observing (and responding to) developments on the battlefield - for a few seconds maybe Means victory, or complete destruction may mean career.

Additionally, the P 26/40 was only designed with a two-man turret system, which also limited interior space - with new tank designs popping up everywhere, three-man turrets are now proving to be the norm. Not only did the Italian design double the commander's workload, but the creature also had very little comfort.

Combine the space required for each workstation with the available magazines, engine bays and gearbox "hump" running along the bottom of the hull and you can imagine the rather compact constraints of Italian design. A cupola without a commander provides the vehicle commander with an elevated position from which to observe the action from a distance, creating another tactical limitation in the field.

The armor protection design of the P 26/40 varies from 14mm at the thinnest to 60mm at the thickest fairing. While this was an improvement over previous Italian tank designs, it was rather unfortunate compared to the anti-tank weapons used by Italian enemies. At this stage of the war, any anti-tank gun larger than 40mm was said to be able to penetrate the base armor of the P 26/40 with relative ease.

To exacerbate the problems in the Italian design, the armor had a riveted construction rather than the welded construction more popular on tanks elsewhere. Not only are the riveted structures along the plate joints weaker (regardless of the actual plate thickness), the rivets themselves can also fly around the fighting compartment in response to a direct hit from enemy fire, injuring or completely killing the crew inside.

The main armament in the final P 26/40 form is a 75mm Ansaldo L/34 series main gun mounted on a movable turret. This was supported by an 8mm Breda machine gun mounted coaxially in a turret for infantry defense.

About 65 rounds of 75mm ammunition are stored on the tank, along with 600 rounds of 8mm ammunition.

The production-grade P 26/40 is powered by a V-12 SPA 342 series diesel engine rated at 420 hp. This gives the machine a top speed of 25 mph (16 mph off-road) and a range of about 170 miles.

The design was associated with a semi-elliptical leaf-spring bogie suspension that allowed such numbers, but this arrangement suffered significantly in terms of off-road speed compared to its foreign contemporaries.

Much has changed since design work on the P 26/40 began. Basically, the advent of the Soviet T-34 medium tank ushered in a new era in tank design when thick sloping armor became mainstream.

Its success on the German front prompted the Italians to somewhat rewrite their "wish list" for tanks, forcing them to redesign their P 26/40 to create sloping, thicker armor to provide basic ballistic protection. The design changes naturally affect the vehicle's intended weight and mission - the latter is now responsible for frontal attack on enemy armor, rather than supporting infantry or medium tank maneuvering.

The Italian Army ordered around 1,200 P 26/40 tanks for its inventory - quite optimistic for the Italian military industry, and by the end of the war this total will never be reached.

Following a review of the P 26/40 design, attention turned to further development of the existing design and chassis for other forms of battlefield use. The "P 43" was intended as a "highly armored" version of the base P 26/40, with armor thickness up to 80mm, to withstand the increasing use of anti-tank weapons on the battlefields of World War II.

For armament, consider the 90mm main gun or the long-barreled 75mm form. The P 43bis was supposed to compete with the more powerful 480 hp petrol engine. In any case, these design moves never made it past the model stage until Italy surrendered.

A more promising venture was the "Semovente 149/40", which was launched in 1942 as a dedicated self-propelled artillery platform for long-range mobile fire support. The type will feature an impressive 149mm gun barrel in place of the turret and superstructure, in line with the Italian wartime SPG design. However, like the other P 26/40 plans, the Semovente 149/40 failed - due to the deterioration of the war situation in Italy and the lacklustre trials of a single completed prototype.

The test vehicle was passed on to the Germans after the Italian surrender and was eventually captured by the Americans, ending their trials at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, USA.

Serial production of the P 26/40 was planned for 1943. However, the Italians surrendered in September of that year, ending Axis support, and fewer than a handful of pre-production tanks were delivered (some sources say as many as 20 production-quality vehicles were delivered to the Italian army). Still trying to maintain their cause in Italy, the Germans took over production through Ansaldo, which continued until 1944 and produced around 80 to 100 examples of this type (in German Army designation Panzerkampfwagen P40 737 ( i) below).

The lack of engines meant that many were set up as fixed defensive emplacements, and those fully completed had limited combat against the invading Allies - especially at the Anzio beachhead. All in all, however, the P 26/40 solved a number of problems - slow design and development time, lack of a suitable mature engine from the start, Italy's eventual surrender, and some out-of-spec and quality.

Despite this, the P 26/40 remains one of the most complete Italian tank designs of the war.

Specification

Basic

Roles

Dimensions

Performance

Performance

for everyone else in our database)

Armor

65 x 75mm bullet

600x8mm ammo

Changes