M3 Grant / Lee question

[Frank W.]

....how capable was the 75 mm gun in fighting armor ?

.... or wasn´t it therefore instead it fired HE rounds against soft
targets ??

[mogami]

Hi, The M3 was the first tank that carried a gun heavy enough to fight German armor. It was a beast of a tank. (I prefer them to M-4's) The problem was aiming the gun. Some had stabilizers to assit but you really had to know how to drive your tank.
Also the early versions were cast rather then welded.
The 75mm was quite good at killing armor. (If you hit)

[Sentry]

No way.....75mm gun on Grant is as good as its 37mm against armor.Check the statistics about Grant.Reason why i like M3 is that it fires twice,both shots may kill Pz IV in case they hit.75mm was for HE more i think.Atleast it suppresses infantry well.

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

The biggest headache with the Lee/Grant was obviously the sponson mount arrangement.

The 75 didn't enjoy turret traverse, and when you couple this with the commander being stuck with duty in a secondary arnament turret, it had a definite performance hindrance.

With regards to specific gun/ammo performance, that is out of my own specific expertise range though.

I think though, the gun to armour relationship depends on the specific gun and the specific armour and also the specific date.

The 2 pdr was a good enough gun, not great, but it was able to defeat the early war armour.
The 6 pdr was an obvious improvement, just as the appearance of the 75.

But if I am not mistaken, the Lee/Grant 75 was a weapon originally tasked with anti personel duty (am I mistaken on that?).

[Voriax]

Well well...the M3 originally had 75mm M2 gun as the main gun..this was derived from a french M1897 field gun. This was rather low pressure gun and nothing spectacular.

Also the ammo US provided initially was so bad it tended to shatter on impact. In fact, brits in Africa used AP ammo converted from captured German 75mm ammo.

The gyro stabilizers were introduced later '41 and every tank built from Jan '42 onwards had them. Hoever very few if any Grant used by Brits in N. Africa had a stabilizer.

And with the main gun low in hull it was nearly impossible to fight from a hull-down position. Unless you wanted to engage with just the 37mm gun.

A good article and photos here: http://www.kithobbyist.com/AFVInteriors ... rant1.html

Voriax

[mogami]

Hi, This gun was good at killing the German tanks of the period (pre 42) The problem was hitting them.

[Frank W.]

Originally posted by Voriax
Well well...the M3 originally had 75mm M2 gun as the main gun..this was derived from a french M1897 field gun. This was rather low pressure gun and nothing spectacular.

Also the ammo US provided initially was so bad it tended to shatter on impact. In fact, brits in Africa used AP ammo converted from captured German 75mm ammo.

The gyro stabilizers were introduced later '41 and every tank built from Jan '42 onwards had them. Hoever very few if any Grant used by Brits in N. Africa had a stabilizer.

And with the main gun low in hull it was nearly impossible to fight from a hull-down position. Unless you wanted to engage with just the 37mm gun.

A good article and photos here: http://www.kithobbyist.com/AFVInteriors ... rant1.html

Voriax

good site will read all the stuff later.

the reason for my asking was the following:

i installed TOA CW ( century of warfare ) and downloaded
a HUGE africa campaign ranging from 1940 w/ only italians
until 1943. so i took a look at the stats of some weapons.

some seem questionable, so the M3 !

M3 LEE in TOAW has: anti armor:3 anti personal: 15

M3 STUART has: a.armor: 3 a.personal: 3

M4 SHERMAN 75 has: a.armor: 8,ap: 12

mathilda 2 has: a.armor 5 (!), ap: 2

also all tanks w/ 2pdr. gun have a 5 rating like the crusader 1 !

i would say the M3 LEE should have then a 6 rating or not ?
or the 2 pdr. must be lower....

it seems the author of these stats didn´t know that the LEE had the 75mm gun or he asumes that it was ONLY dangerous to
soft ( inf. ) targets......

or let´s look at B17 early ( ap: 26 )

B24 early: 13

B25 early: 4 (!!!)



i

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

I sometimes fall into a trap of thinking of weapons in ASL terms heheh.

Ok a 2 pdr is a 40L weapon while a 37mm is a 37L weapon.

The 2pdr was also unable to fire HE I think, not positive about the 37 at this time.

The 2 pdr was a slightly better weapon in performance over all I think to the 37.

The M3 TOAW stats seem to be an aggragate summary though. The earlier 75 was poor in anti armour performance both usage and ballistically I would think. And most wargames take the entire equation as a whole.

[Voriax]

Well, both the M2 and M3 75mm guns were able to fire same ammo and did so. Pen. power from M3 was about 20% bigger.

Always fun to see the 'unable to fire'. Afaik the unability was due to the fact that they didn't manufacture any HE ammo as it didn't fit into the thinking of those in charge

Voriax

[pbhawkin1]

Frank W,
Don't get too caught up by the individual units stats, after all it is an operational game (not really tactical) and units represent a collection of units (often different types) within the same counter.
There is a NEW patch being worked on at the moment by Norm Kroger (the creator of TOAW series) which will have revised/updated OOBs. Current version is 1.04 or 1.06 for XP platforms (no other difference petween them).

[Frank W.]

okay. thanx...sounds good the patch news. i rediscovered this game so to say, after 2 years or so, where i played TOAW 1 but there were some errors in this early version which seem now to be corrected partly in the CoW edition. but that is a bit too OT for the SPWAW forum i think.

and i think perhaps the 3 anti armor stat for the M3 Lee is okay, because in the desert fightings they used very early models from them that doesn´t had that good hitting power against armor. i have a long way to go in the desert. i´m in the beginning of 41 now and the scen modells the whole african campaign in half weekly turns

[dlazov]

Here is some data from one of my sources regarding the M3 Medium tank.

===============

M3 Medium Tank: By mid 1940 the Army had come to the conclusion that its newest medium tank (the M2A1, which carried a 37mm gun and a multitude of MG, and which had not yet even entered mass production) was outclassed by the PzKpfw IV with its 75mm gun. What the Army now desired was a tank armed with a weapon at least equivalent to the German piece. The problem was that no turret capable of carrying such a powerful weapon had ever been built in the U.S., and the development of one would necessarily take time. Meanwhile, the British were in desperate need of new tanks to replace those lost in France. The Army therefore decided to modify the M2A1 and install both a turret-mounted version of the Army's 37mm AT gun, and a limited-traverse 75mm gun (which was an adaptation of the unsuccessful AA gun) on the starboard side of its front hull. The resulting M3
Medium was viewed only as a stopgap solution until a proper 75mm tank could become available-but with the added benefit that the automotive bugs corrected on the M3 would expedite the Sherman's development since both would use essentially the same chassis. In all, 6,258 were built, but only about 1,400 were retained by the U.S.; the rest were Lend-Leased to various
allies. In U.S. service the M3 first saw combat in mid-June 1942 during the latter stages of the Gazala battle when three with U.S. crews (who had been sent to help familiarize the British with their new tanks) attached themselves to the British 1st Royal Tank
Regiment and for a few days fought the Germans between Knightsbridge and Acroma, southewest of Tobruk; during this time they claimed the destruction of nine enemy AFV. However, its first offical U.S. use came with the Torch landings and later in Tunisia with the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 1st Armored Divison's 13th Armored Regiment. These battalions were equipped solely with M3 types until Shermans from the 2nd Armored Division began arriving to replace combat losses. At the conclusion of the Tunisian campaign all M3 Mediums were relegated to training roles. In the PTO, their only U.S. use occured in Nov. 1943 when the 193rd Tank Battalion aided in the seizure of Makin Atoll.

===============
Regards~

[pbhawkin1]

Frank W,
I also am playing the CFNA 1941 as the germans (the second longest of the 4 scenarios) and am at the gates of Mesa Matruh (i think) on turn 40'ish.
It is very difficult as the allies get sooo many replacements and reinforcements per turn despite that I only surround and wipe out his units (large pockets at a time, 10-30 counters) when they are out of supply after a turn or two and therefore don't generate any replacements!! But still they keep coming! I expect that it will be about 10 turns after you lose a unit before it generates replacements and so I should see a drop off in his in another 5 turns or so.

regards

[Frank W.]

Originally posted by pbhawkins
Frank W,
I also am playing the CFNA 1941 as the germans (the second longest of the 4 scenarios) and am at the gates of Mesa Matruh (i think) on turn 40'ish.
It is very difficult as the allies get sooo many replacements and reinforcements per turn despite that I only surround and wipe out his units (large pockets at a time, 10-30 counters) when they are out of supply after a turn or two and therefore don't generate any replacements!! But still they keep coming! I expect that it will be about 10 turns after you lose a unit before it generates replacements and so I should see a drop off in his in another 5 turns or so.

regards

i´m playing scen no1. from the beginning.

in my game rommel have arrived before 3-4 turns. but
i have only the 21th pz. div as german unit at the front..

the front is somewhere between sidi barani and sollum.

i outflanked some australien units using the "escarpment"
as piece of the encirclement. but i see masses of more allied
units closing. hope the italians take a stand this time !

seems the game favores the attacker in battles btw.