![]() Ultimately, the production configuration, named Carro Armato L6/40, was put into production in 1939, with 283 finally produced. The first was armed with a sponson-mounted 37 mm main gun and a machine-gun armed turret. A further development of the Fiat 元 light tank, the L6 went through a number of prototypes during the late 1930s. The riveted armor was six to 30 mm in thickness, which was roughly equivalent to existing Allied light tanks. The driver sat in the front right of the hull. 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 L6/40 light tank was developed prior to World War II and used by the Italian army from 1940 and on and was adopted by the Italian Army when officials learned of the design and expressed interest. This vehicle was introduced as the Fiat-Ansaldo CV-33 light tank and was only armed with two machine guns and was in wide use at the beginning of the war in Africa. In 1933, a new design was built jointly by the Fiat Company of Turin and the Ansaldo Company of Genoa. The first vehicle developed by the Italians from the Carden Lloyd tankette was designated CV-29 "CV" being an abbreviation of Carro Veloce (Italian: "fast tank") and "29" as the year of adoption. The 元/35 was developed from the Carden Loyd Mark VI tankette, four of which were imported from Britain in 1929. A limited number of Model 21 vehicles were exported to Albania, Latvia and Abyssinia ( Ethiopia) prior to 1930. Some Model 30s were also produced with two 6.5 mm machine guns as main armament, as on the Model 21, in lieu of the 37 mm gun. The Model 30, in addition to its improved armament, also differed from the Model 21 in that it had a more powerful engine, improved suspension, different engine compartment silhouette, and the external stores were stowed differently. The up-gunned version of the Fiat 3000, armed with a 37/40 gun, was tested in 1929 and was officially adopted in 1930 with the designation of carro d'assalto Fiat 3000, Mod. Tests of the Model 21 revealed that the armament, consisting of two 6.5 mm machine guns, was inadequate, and adoption of a 37 mm gun as main armament was urged. The first Fiat 3000s entered service in 1921 and were officially designated as the carro d'assalto Fiat 3000, Mod. The design was accepted with deliveries to begin in May 1919, but the end of the war caused the original order to be cancelled and only 100 were delivered. The 3000 was based on the French Renault FT. It was to be the standard tank of the emerging Italian armored units after World War I. The Fiat 3000 was the first tank to be produced in series in Italy. the L6/40 weighs 6 tonnes and was adopted in the year 1940). The numbers would follow the pattern of X/Y where X would be the weight in tonnes and Y the year of adoption (i.e. The official Italian military tank classification differed from contemporary classifications in other countries. The letter would be either L, M or P meaning light, medium, and heavy tank respectively. This would be followed by a letter and a series of numbers. The Carro Armato (armored vehicle) was the Italian Army's designation for tanks from 1938 onwards. ![]() A medium tank, based on the Vickers Six-Tonner, was the M11-M13 series which had a very good 47 mm gun, but very thin armor. Italy produced a large number of CV-33 and CV-35 tankettes based on this Vickers-Carden-Lloyd concept.Ī native Italian design was the L6/40, a very small light tank with a 20 mm Breda cannon and rivetted construction. Italy bought a number of Carden Loyd Mark VIs, built a few licence copies designated CV-29, and then developed this design further. Soon after, the official designations incorporated "Carro Armato or "CA" meaning "armed carriage". Both formed the bulk of the Italian army corps until new models arrived in 1935. Another model developed in 1930, was the gun-armed (Vickers-Termi 37mm) serie II or FIAT 3000B. ![]() They were ready by 1922, and served well to forge Italian interwar armoured tactics and was in use until 1943. The first model produced for the Royal Army (Regio Esercito), was the FIAT 3000 (by 1935 renamed L5/21). By 1918, FIAT and Ansaldo, were the only industrial complex large enough to deal with tank production. While the Fiat 3000 was being developed, France sent 100 of these FT tanks to Italy in 1918 so that Italian troops could get acquainted with tracked combat vehicles. It then imported the French Renault FT and produced a slightly improved version, the Fiat 3000, before beginning its own designs. Italy first built a heavy tank called the Fiat 2000 during World War I with a powerful gun, a 65/17 howitzer (of 65mm caliber with a barrel 17 calibers long), with the first prototype being partially finished in 1917, but just two were built.
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