L6/40

The Carro Armato L6/40 was an Italian tank that was used throughout WWII by the Italian Army. They evolved as improvements of previous interwar tank designs.

IRL

The L6/40 is largely an evolution of Prewar Italian designs. Prewar Italian tank design is a fascinating subject, but a quick summary is that Italians figured any war would be fought on their soil, and thus would be fought in the mountains. Since tanks suck at mountain warfare, they figured the best tanks in this environment would be light and low armored to more easily access different parts of the mountains of Italy. They even didn't have turrets to save on weight, and also flanking doesn't matter in the mountains.

This all changed in 1935 when Itally invaded Ethiopia, where the poor performance of the Italian tanks showed that turreted tanks had great utility. So the army put out a contract for a new light tank design. There were several specifications that overall fit this design, but the Italian Army didn't like them. So FIAT made a private investment to create a tank variant that would be accepted. The army liked this one, but changed the main armament to a 20mm autocannon under the reasoning that it could be used in a dual role of tank attack and air attack. It also had a coaxial Breda MG to suppress infantry.

Tank encyclopedia has already written an entire article on this, but here is an abriged list of issues that the vehicle had

• Easily penetrated by anything that sneezed .50 cal ammo
• Slow
• Cramped
• Overworked commander
• Too light for use on difficult terrain
• Too heavy to be efficiently transported by most Italian trucks
• Too slow to keep up with the motorized troops on the march
• Dumb beuracratic problems got in the way of it's development and production
• It was deemed inferior to the AB41 and thus had second priority on valuable parts like optics for the gun

There were two positives to it though: the cannon was fantastic, even if it was unlikely to ever shoot down an enemy fighter, and for all intents and purposes the coaxial Breda was a decent weapon. Better than the Breda M30 in any case.

An interesting factoid is that the L6 was the original designation for the vehicle (L meaning light and 6 being the tonnage) whereas later it gained the technical designation L40 (L meaning light and 40 being year of acceptance). L6/40 has become more common due to War Thunder and World of Tanks, and functionally it is an easy way to avoid confusion and give a common name to a vehicle. It certainly avoids the American M3 conundrum.

Italian Forces in Flames of War
Tanks:	Renault R-35 - P-26/40 - L6/40 - M14/41
Transports:
Infantry:	Italian Parachutist Platoon - Italian Assault Engineer Platoon - Bersaglieri Platoon - Parachutist MG Platoon - Bersaglieri MG Platoon
Artillery:	Parachutist Mortar Platoon - Bersaglieri Mortar Platoon - 47mm Anti-tank - 100mm Howitzer - 88mm Anti-tank
Tank Destroyers and Assault guns:	Semovente 90mm Assault Gun - Semovente 75mm Assault Gun - Semovente Assault Gun
Armored Cars:	AB41 Platoon
Aircraft:	CR.42
Anti-Aircraft:	Lancia 90mm