Carro Armato P.43

The Carro Armato P.43, also written P43 or P 30/43, was a proposed Italian heavy tank designed in April 1943. The letter P stands for pesante, meaning heavy. It was meant to continue and replace the P26/40, developed by Fiat and Ansaldo at the same time as that tank, and was planned to weigh at least 30 tonnes with a heavier gun than the 75 mm weapon of the P26/40. Designers considered a 90 mm gun derived from an anti-aircraft cannon, or the 105/25 gun of the Semovente da 105/25. A variant called the P43 bis was also studied. Sources disagree on how far it got: one says a prototype was made at the end of the summer of 1943, while another says not even the prototype was finished before the Italian armistice of September 1943 ended the work.