Semovente da 75/18 vs M4 Sherman
Italy never built a tank that could fight a Sherman. It built an assault gun that could, and the reason is a shell rather than a gun.
The Semovente da 75/18 is an M13/40 hull with the turret removed and a short 75 mm howitzer set into a fixed casemate. On paper it is a support weapon: an L/18 barrel is not an anti-tank gun, and no amount of muzzle velocity is going to come out of it. What made it dangerous was the ammunition — the EP (Effetto Pronto) shaped charge, credited with about 70 mm of penetration at any range, because a hollow charge does not lose performance with distance the way a solid shot does.
Against an M4 Sherman that figure is precise enough to be interesting. It is not enough for the Sherman’s glacis, which presents around 91–94 mm of line-of-sight thickness. It is enough for the turret front, and more than enough for the 38 mm hull sides. The Semovente could kill a Sherman — from the flank, from a fold in the ground, from a range the Sherman’s gunner had not yet thought to check.
| Semovente da 75/18 | M4 Sherman | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Assault gun on a tank chassis | Medium tank |
| Main gun | 75 mm Obice da 75/18 L/18 | 75 mm M3 (later 76 mm) |
| Anti-tank round | EP hollow charge — ~70 mm at any range | M61 APC — ~60 mm at 914 m (1,000 yd), falling with range |
| Rounds carried | 44, in three racks | 90 dry stowage · 104 wet · 71 on the 76 mm tanks |
| Front armour | Two 25 mm plates bolted together — one 50 mm plate on the M42 | 64 mm @ 47° (≈94 mm eff.) on late hulls |
| Side armour | 25 mm | 38 mm hull · 50 mm turret |
| Gun traverse | Fixed casemate — the vehicle is the traverse | Full 360° powered turret |
| Height | 1.85 m | 2.74 m |
| Combat weight | ~15 t | ~30 t |
| Road speed | ~38 km/h | ~40 km/h |
| Units built | ~500+ | ~49,000 |
The anti-tank row rewards careful reading. A shaped charge ignores range but not thickness: ~70 mm of penetration against a Sherman glacis presenting ~94 mm of line-of-sight plate is a bounce, while against 76 mm of turret front it is marginal and against 38 mm of hull side it is a kill. That arithmetic is why the Semovente was used from ambush and from the flank — the geometry was not a tactical preference but a requirement.
Everything the Semovente could do to a tank came from the EP hollow-charge round and its ~70 mm at any range. The distinction matters more than the number: the Sherman’s M61 shot managed about 60 mm at 1,000 yd and less as the range grew, while the Italian charge was as effective at 1,200 m as at 200 m. For a vehicle that could not choose its engagement range by manoeuvring — a fixed casemate on a 125 hp chassis cannot reposition under fire — a shell whose performance did not decay was worth more than a higher muzzle velocity would have been.
The Semovente carried a casemate front of two 25 mm plates bolted together on the M41 — a single 50 mm plate on the later M42 — over a 30 mm transmission cover, with 25 mm on the sides and rear. The Sherman’s 64 mm at 47° gives roughly 94 mm of line-of-sight thickness, with 76 mm on the turret front and 38 mm on the hull sides. The Sherman’s 75 mm gun defeats the Semovente’s frontal plate at any range on the battlefield. Bolted construction made it worse than the numbers suggest: a non-penetrating hit could still shear rivets into the fighting compartment.
The Semovente stands 1.85 m to the roof against the Sherman’s 2.74 m — nearly a metre lower, on a hull only two-thirds as heavy. Behind a wall, in a sunken road or dug in at the edge of an olive grove, it presented very little to aim at, and the Italian and later German crews who used it in Sicily and Italy in 1943 fought it that way. The price is in the row above it: a fixed casemate means the whole vehicle turns to track a target, which is survivable from a prepared position and close to fatal in a meeting engagement.
Some 500 Semoventi da 75/18 were built. The Sherman ran to roughly 49,000 — near enough a hundred to one. No account of the two vehicles fighting each other can be scaled up into a campaign, because the campaign was never a contest of comparable numbers. What the Semovente demonstrates is narrower and more interesting: Italian industry, which never produced a competitive gun tank, produced a competent tank destroyer by mounting an existing howitzer in an existing hull and issuing it a shell that solved the velocity problem chemically instead of ballistically.
The Sherman wins the comparison on protection, ammunition capacity, traverse, and by a hundred to one on production. The Semovente wins two columns: an anti-tank round that does not weaken with distance, and a silhouette nearly a metre lower. In the war those two actually fought — an ambush in broken Sicilian or Italian country, at ranges chosen by whoever was already stopped and hidden — those are not small advantages.
The verdict that matters is about what each vehicle represents. The Sherman is the product of an industry that could build a good-enough tank fifty thousand times. The Semovente is the product of an industry that could not build a good tank at all, working out that a short howitzer and a shaped charge could do what its 47 mm gun tanks never managed. It is the most effective armoured vehicle Italy fielded in the war, and it is not a tank.
- Nicola Pignato, Storia dei mezzi corazzati and Italian Armoured Vehicles of World War Two (Squadron/Signal).
- Filippo Cappellano & Pier Paolo Battistelli, Italian Medium Tanks 1939–45 (Osprey, New Vanguard).
- R. P. Hunnicutt, Sherman: A History of the American Medium Tank (Presidio Press).
- Steven J. Zaloga, Sicily 1943 (Osprey, Campaign).