World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseThe Semovente 47/32 self-propelled guns were developed by marrying Austrian-built (Böhler) 47-millimeter dual purpose guns with a Fiat-built L6/40 vehicle chassis. Open-topped, the crews were vulnerable to small arms fire, although this was not unlike self-propelled gun designs of other nations. The guns fired an armor-piercing shell that weighed 1.5 kilograms at the muzzle velocity of 640 meters per second. Each vehicle carried 70 rounds of ammunition. In total, about 300 of them were built between 1941 and 1943. Many of them served on the Eastern Front and in North Africa under Italian banner, while some of them served under German banner after the Italian surrender, and a few of them were exported to Axis-aligned forces in Yugoslavia (Croatia) and Bulgaria.

ww2dbaseSome of the German-captured examples of Semovente 47/32 self-propelled guns were converted into command and communications vehicles where extra radio equipment was installed in the space saved after the removal of the 47-millimeter guns. To disguise them as normal self-propelled guns, dummy guns made of 8-millimeter machine guns were installed at the same location.

SPECIFICATIONS

Semovente 47/32

Machinery	One Fiat SPA 18D water-cooled 4-cylinder gasoline engine rated at 68hp
Armament	1x47mm Böhler L/32 M35 gun (70 rounds), 1x8mm Breda machine gun
Armor	30mm front, 16mm sides, 50mm turret front
Crew	3
Length	3.78 m
Width	1.92 m
Height	1.63 m
Weight	6.4 t
Speed	42 km/h
Range	50 km off-road; 200 km on-road

Photographs