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Description
What to say about this tank...
Developed indipendently during the 30s by the Ansaldo firm, probably for the foreign market, it was finally adopted by the Regio Esercito during 1940. As a light tank, it was undoubtedly a huge leap from the L3 : a good 20 mm automatic Breda gun in a rotating turret, somewhat fast for an Italian tank, with radio. Therefore it's easy to understand why it was assigned to cavalry formations, to act as a recon vehicle, and in such a capacity it was ok. Problem : against enemy tanks it proved again and again it didn't have the firepower, the armor, and not even particular speed to surivive the encounter; too bad they had to be used as such against the 8th Army. Some were sent to the Russian front, where they didn't leave a mark either. Variants developed from the original model were a flamethrower tank and the Semovente da 47/32, which I'll discuss in a dedicated page. Overall, not a total failure, but it wasn't what was needed; instead of building it, they should've built more Semoventi da 75, and pushed harder for the P40 tank.

Description
What to say about this tank...
Developed indipendently during the 30s by the Ansaldo firm, probably for the foreign market, it was finally adopted by the Regio Esercito during 1940. As a light tank, it was undoubtedly a huge leap from the L3 : a good 20 mm automatic Breda gun in a rotating turret, somewhat fast for an Italian tank, with radio. Therefore it's easy to understand why it was assigned to cavalry formations, to act as a recon vehicle, and in such a capacity it was ok. Problem : against enemy tanks it proved again and again it didn't have the firepower, the armor, and not even particular speed to surivive the encounter; too bad they had to be used as such against the 8th Army. Some were sent to the Russian front, where they didn't leave a mark either. Variants developed from the original model were a flamethrower tank and the Semovente da 47/32, which I'll discuss in a dedicated page. Overall, not a total failure, but it wasn't what was needed; instead of building it, they should've built more Semoventi da 75, and pushed harder for the P40 tank.