30 Tons with 2 Guns: The M3 | Did it matter? 

Look up remake with James Belushi

One of my favorite tank movies, by all means!

@@markidjanivulle3680 You sure you're not thinking of '1941' with John Belushi?

One of my father's favorites; we watched it together many times.

It also is featured in the opening scenes of "Five Graves to Cairo" with Franchot Tone as the sole survivor of a Grant tank stuck behind German lines.

The Japanese had actually some anti tank weapons, at least for their infantry in the form of shaped anti tank charges/rockets and anti tank guns, like the Type 5 45 mm Recoilless Gun, the Type 4 70 mm AT rocket launcher in 1944 or their various Typ-1-37-mm- und -47-mm-Anti-Tank guns and even some field guns in 10 and 12cm. Their own tanks have been always quite inferiour compared to the enemies they faced. At least the US and Soviets.

Well worth a look!

Yeah, Australia has a treasure trove of (mostly) abandoned M3s in various states of disrepair. I think this is because the M3s sent to Australia didn't see combat - for the most part - and the Americans weren't interested in shipping them back home.

I believe it's a "Grant" but yes. Love the channel. The use of screens to block shaped and satchel charges that was only used by the Australians is also very interesting

Given the wildlife of Australia, I can see why the farmers want a tank.

They did not face the amount of anti tank gunfire and Japanese tanks were poor early 1930's designed models. So jungle island terrain was fine for the M3.

The British using M3 in Burma did ok with them too.. but off they were using them against Japanese static defences and not tanks, at least mostly.. in North Africa they were up against panzer IV .. idk if any faced Tigers in Tunisia.

Like the famous Dutch soccer player Johan Cruijff once said: "Every disadvantage has it's advantage" (and vice versa...)

They were only as good as their crews. 2 cannons 37mm and 75mm ---2 30 cal. machine . Lots of firepower.

Actually most Panzer III Js in North Africa had the shorter (L42) 50mm gun, only a few J models and the L and later models had the long (L60) 50mm gun from spring 1942 onward.

Except the 75 was also equipped with an AP shell

@gotanon9659 true but you dont need an AP round to kill a large flack gun sitting out in the open with its crew exposed.

@@gotanon9659 The whole AP debacle was also a thing, the first 75mm AP shell that came to Africa didn't work as intended and the British informed USA about it but the still needed a AP shell fast. One of the thing the did was to marry captured German 75mm AP shell from Tobruk with captured France 75mm casings that the captured from Vichy France in Syria, which worked wonders until the could be supplied with working AP shells.

@Lunkwow this is not quite what happened and you seem to combining 2 different issues. Some background. The 75mm gun M2 was directly derived from the M1897 its self was just an americanized French cannon de 75 1897. The Lend Lease laws required drawing down old stocks before new material could be transfered so the early ammo provided was Great War era ammo which was intended to be fired from a field gun operating as a howitzer ie the round would fall from a high angle. Becuase of that the ammo supplied had no grazing fuse which meant that if it hit at a low angle becuase it was fired from a might bounce without detonating. The solution was to pull fuses from french ammo which was produced according to their early great war doctrine of using the 75mm as a direct fire weapon so they had grazing fuses. You could (and they did) just fire old stocks of french 75mm from the american tanks. The second issue wasent that the 75mm AP didnt work, it worked exactly as intended. The problem was that the production line for 75mm APC was still being built so we sent the 75mm AP we had in stock. 75mm AP was perfectly capable of fulling perforating the early PzIIIs and PzIV but when the germans started replacing losses with up armord tanks specficlly the Pz IIIj the old AP round had issues with deflection and shattering. That said below 500 yards even if the round shattered it would still likely kill the target through massive spall and above 500 yard it would still wound and kill crew.

@@kennethreese2193 Regarding the HE shell I didn't about the fuse problem. Most of what I heard was the British where happy having a good HE shell on there new tanks. I might be wrong, but I'm quite sure of the marriage between German shell and French casing, even if it was a really short story. But finding where I read or heard about is a daunting task. Spalling is quite deadly but would it still be hot enough to ignite penetrated shell casings? You don't want to leave a tank to recovered during the night.

I second!

it could fire canister shot also

And the 75 was designed to kill armor from the beginning, it was never a pure infantry support gun

Plus it had cannister to fire. Very useful.

​@@JENKEM1000 That's just not true... The 75mm was developed from the Canon de 75 modèle 1897, which was a French artillery piece made in 1897. The US took the basic design and adapted it to tank use; it even used the same ammunition as the M 1897 artillery piece. It was in fact not designed for use against armor, but by virtue of being in a tank, had ammunition designed for it afterwards to combat enemy armor.

I was going to question what they used it for if they used the 75 for tanks

Actually the first M3 tanks used the shorter M2 gun (31 calibers long), which needed the counter weight) while later models used the same M3 gun as the M4 Sherman tank (40 calibers).

The Russians had the T-34 which was superior to the lee and really did not need it very much. The British, on the other hand, who were struggling hard with getting an effective native meedium tank until the development of the Cromwell, loved the thing.

The Sherman's greatest attribute was that it RAN. A reliable tank that actually shows up someplace is infinitely more useful than a supertank that doesn't.

Should have paid attention when he spoke about the engine.

Yes, our Grant and M3A4 are nice and cozy, but I didn't want to leave our Aussie Lee left out! (It was indeed very cold.)

American interwar tanks had features that marked them as distinctly American and one of them was machine guns everywhere you could conceivably fit one. On the M2 medium the sponson gun was, you guessed it, another machine gun.

Tigers ate them for breakfast at Tebourba, Maknassy, Sidi-bou-Zid etc.

Hey! Hank here: Funny enough the crew and I had a little "side bet" going on someone mentioning this- I had found the definition of spalling to be "Spalling and spallation both describe the process of surface failure in which spall is shed." And spall being "Spall are fragments of a material that are broken off a larger solid body." It was my personal opinion that since rivet shrapnel had broken off from the rivet's body it counted as a spall... hence the term. I will say we did try to find a more precise definition, but in the end decided not to change the line. Anyway, I think I owe someone a soda now. Thanks for the comment!

@@BasicRH All I can say is, Riveting.

@@BasicRH”grenading” like the WW2 pineapple grenade would be the descriptive term.

The Grants got completely routed in their debut at Gazala though.