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Captured M11/39 in Tobruk, Libya.
The Carro Armato M11/39 was an eleven tonne Italian medium tank produced by Fiat-Ansaldo in 1939. The vehicle saw use under the Royal Italian Army in the North African and Italian theatres of the Second World War. Armed with a casemate 37mm main gun and turret-housed dual machine guns, it was typically considered inadequately armed for most tank-on-tank warfare. With the added constraints of its thin armour and poor mobility, the M11/39 was quickly and thoroughly outclassed by the heavier British tanks that began to appear over the course of the North African campaign.
Battlefield 1942
The tank appears in the Battlefield 1942: The Road To Rome expansion as the Italian and German Armored Car. Together with the M3 Grant (which also appears in The Road to Rome expansion), the CA M11/39 marks a departure in layout and tactical style from other medium tanks in the game. It features two player positions: the driver, who drives the vehicle and utilizes its main gun; and the top gunner, who is armed with an autocannon mounted within a fully enclosed turret, hidden and therefore immune to direct damage. The low rate of fire of the autocannon allows it to conserve ammo much better than conventional machine guns, though it is also disadvantaged by this trait when attempting to engage multiple targets simultaneously.
Although the protected gunner position does greatly improve the efficiency of the tank's anti-infantry capacity, the CA M11/39 is also greatly let down by the lack of a fully-traversing main gun, meaning the 37mm can only target enemies within a limited firing arc. This makes the tank extremely vulnerable to ambushes and flanking attacks to the rear-- especially those carried out by shrewd anti-tank soldiers. The tanks's above-average mobility, however, does in part mitigate the vulnerability of its casemate layout by allowing it to relatively quickly turn and engage targets. Apart from this, the driver lacks a coaxial machine gun, same as the M3 Grant, making both unlike other light tanks in this respect.
Gallery
Trivia
- The M11/39 texture files are named M13/40.
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