Semovente da 75/18

By 1941 the Italian armoured divisions in North Africa were learning a bitter lesson. Their M13/40 medium tanks were too slow, too thinly armoured and too lightly gunned to trade blows with British armour on equal terms, and the Regio Esercito had nothing that could deliver a real high-explosive punch in support of an attack. What Italy needed was a vehicle that could carry a heavier gun than any of its tanks — and it found the answer not in a new tank, but in a gun on tracks.

The concept is credited to the artillery colonel Sergio Berlese, who proposed mounting the army's excellent 75 mm Obice da 75/18 field howitzer in a fixed, fully-armoured superstructure on the proven M-tank hull. The idea closely paralleled the German Sturmgeschütz: dispense with the turret, keep the vehicle low and simple, and use the weight saved to carry a far bigger gun than the host tank could ever mount. The result, entering service in 1942, was the Semovente da 75/18 — the most successful armoured fighting vehicle Italy produced.

The Semovente was built on the chassis of the M13/40 and its successors the M14/41 and M15/42, replacing the tank's turret with a low, fixed casemate housing the 75/18 howitzer. The gun was a short, low-velocity weapon designed for lobbing high-explosive, and in the assault-gun role it was excellent — able to smash the anti-tank guns, strongpoints and soft targets that the M13/40's little 47 mm could barely scratch.

What made the Semovente genuinely dangerous to enemy armour was its ammunition. Issued with the EP (Effetto Pronto) hollow-charge round, the 75/18 could punch through some 70 mm of armour regardless of range — enough to knock out a Sherman or Grant from ambush, a feat utterly beyond Italy's gun tanks. Its low silhouette, barely a metre and a half to the roof, made it hard to spot and harder to hit, ideal for fighting hull-down or from cover.

Its flaws were those of the chassis it inherited. The armour was riveted and modest, the engine underpowered, and the fixed casemate meant the whole vehicle had to slew to aim the gun — a real handicap in a fast, close-range fight. And like everything Italian industry built, it was produced in numbers far too small: only a few hundred of all marks were ever completed, a trickle against the flood of Allied armour.

The 75/18 was built in successive batches as the underlying tank evolved — on the M40, M41 and M42 chassis — each gaining detail improvements and, on the M42, a more powerful petrol engine. A turretless Carro Comando command version, with the main gun removed and extra radios fitted, accompanied the gun vehicles to direct them in action.

The basic idea proved so sound that it was steadily up-gunned. The Semovente 75/32 and 75/34 mounted longer, higher-velocity 75 mm guns for a true anti-tank role, and the formidable Semovente 105/25 “Bassotto” (“Dachshund”) crammed a 105 mm gun onto a widened hull — the most powerful Italian armoured vehicle of the war, though it arrived only in small numbers before the armistice.

The Semovente first proved itself in the desert battles of 1942, supporting the armoured divisions Ariete, Littorio and Centauro. At El Alamein and in the long retreat into Tunisia, its crews used the low, well-handled assault guns to far better effect than their fragile gun tanks, knocking out British armour from concealment and earning a respect the M13/40 never commanded. Many German officers rated it the best Italian armoured vehicle they encountered.

Its effectiveness came from a clever piece of improvisation. Denied a good turreted tank, the Italians mounted a 75 mm howitzer in a low fixed casemate on the M-tank hull, and gave it a hollow-charge EP round that could punch through the armour of a British cruiser or Grant. Cheap, low and hard to spot, it was everything the M13/40 gun tank was not: a genuinely dangerous ambush weapon.

After the loss of North Africa the surviving Semoventi fought on in the defence of Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943. Following Italy's armistice in September 1943, the Germans seized large numbers of them and pressed them into their own service as the StuG M42 mit 75/18, using them for occupation, anti-partisan and defensive duties in Italy and the Balkans right to the end of the war.

Throughout, the story was the same: a sound, effective weapon handicapped above all by scarcity. There were never enough Semoventi to make a strategic difference, and they were worn down by attrition against an enemy who could replace losses many times over.

The Semovente da 75/18 is the redemption of Italian armour. Where the M13/40 symbolised the limits of Italy's tank industry, the Semovente showed what that same industry could achieve when it played to its strengths — a simple, low, well-armed assault gun built on a proven chassis, carrying a gun that could both support the infantry and kill enemy tanks from ambush.

It was not a war-winner — too few were built, on too weak a chassis, to turn the tide. But in the hands of brave and skilful crews it was, by common consent, the finest armoured fighting vehicle Italy fielded in the Second World War, and a genuinely dangerous opponent in the defensive battles where it belonged. Like the German StuG it so resembled, the Semovente proved that a cheap gun that could be hidden and fought from cover was often worth more than a turreted tank that could not.

• Nicola Pignato & Filippo Cappellano, Gli Autoveicoli da Combattimento dell’Esercito Italiano (Ufficio Storico SME).
• Filippo Cappellano & Pier Paolo Battistelli, Italian Medium Tanks 1939–45 (Osprey, New Vanguard 195).
• Nicola Pignato, Italian Armoured Vehicles of World War Two (Squadron/Signal).