Semovente M 40 da 75/18 assault gun [Italy]

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Michele

Brandon,

very interesting, thanks. I had done some preliminary work on this for GURPS WWII: Grim Legions, but space was too tight.

Yeah, was a neat little vehicle; too bad it didn't appear in W:GL or W:MP.

Design
- What values do you use for the armor thickness? The figures I ended up with are consistently some 15% lower than yours.
- I used a small AFV superstructure, though I don't remember why. It doesn't seem I ended up with much wasted space.
- The vehicle had a fire extinguisher.
- Are you sure a gAccel of 2 is warranted? I had put a 1 there.
- While, as I said, there isn't much empty space inside the vehicle, one should remember that the crews used to fill it up with additional rounds. If they had them! It was not unusual to have 60-80 rounds in total.

- For the hull of the M 40, I used the same numbers as the M13/40 in W:GL. For the superstructure, I used the numbers from Eric Grove's _World War II Tanks_.

- I used a large enough superstructure to allow the 105mm Short Howitzer to fit, although it's possible this variant may have used a larger superstructure.

- Hmm, odd that the M13/40 didn't have a fire extinguisher but the assault gun based on it did ...

- Accel 2 is what the spreadsheet spat out at me ;)

- Both my print sources (above, plus Jonathan Sutherland's _World War II Tanks and AFVs_) listed 44 rounds for the howitzer.

Production data
As to the Semoventi based on M42 hulls, 205 were ordered and although not all of them were actually produced, at the end of April 1943, 87 were available. So your figure (20) seems too low (source: N. Pignato).

From my sources, 20 (which may have been more) were built before Italy surrendered. Grove said that 55 were built for the Germans (which in included in the 200 overall built for German use). Add both these numbers together and it's close to your total of 87, but the time line doesn't match.

Variants
You correctly list the variants that feature only a new gun and minor changes. However, two rather different vehicles were the Semovente da 90/53, with an AA gun converted for AT use, and the Carro Comando, a command/FO vehicle for the armored artillery without a main gun. Both are interesting vehicles.

I was considering doing the Semovente da 90/53 some time in the future ;)