An interesting bit of kit to be sure.
C-in-C (now LegionsIVHire?) makes a nice model in 1/285 (6mm) scale. I have a platoon to supplement my company of 75mm M3 TDs for my US Army Tunisia force.
… not sure if this made it as far as Italy.
the 37 on the dodge made it to NWE in the french army
The M6 was removed from the US Army TD units during the later phases of the Tunisia campaign. The 601st TD Battalion still had them during their epic battle at El Guettar. But after that they were largely pulled back out of service (if and when there was something to replace them with).
Even the M3 TD was taken out of service in the US TDs prior to Sicily. No TDs were engaged in the Sicilian campaign (some TD units sent forces to Sicily, but mostly their Recon units, or dismounted crews to serve as PoW guards). By the time of the Salerno landings all US TD forces deployed in theater had been re-equipped with M10s, while some that did not deploy to Italy at Salerno, but would eventually make it ashore in Italy, were re-equipping with towed 3-inch guns.
As replacements / re-equipping took place, the M6s were turned in to depots by the TD formations. Often the guns were dismounted by field workshops, and the "Fargo" trucks then re-used. This led to some quantity of 37mm AT guns in vehicle mountings being available in local MTO depots. Some of these were snatched up by combat engineering units, who mounted them on their own halftracks as some added combat fire support. Some whole M6s were also snatched up, and they appeared from time to time in various HQ units or other places where they were not on the TOE. Again, as far as I have seen, it appears that combat engineering units were the most likely to have snatched them up. (They also seem to have snatched up a number of 57mm M1 AT guns that US Armored Infantry units abandoned during the ETO campaign, so I have a general impression that US Army combat engineering formations were a bit acquisitive when it came to cannons.)
M3 75mm TDs were seconded to the Brits, who used them as fire-support for their armored car squadrons. I've never seen definitive information on whether this was done through normal lend-lease purchasing/shipment processes, or just seconding off in-theater. Tt appears only to be in Italy that British A/C squadrons were so-equipped, so I expect it was in fact M3s seconded off as the TDs re-equipped after Tunisia.
I would be interested to find out whether the French in ETO had officially provided LL M6s, or just picked up some seconded-off vehicles in Tunisia. After all most of the French formations in North Africa (a substantially sized force) were re-equipped and retrained in North Africa with US kit after the Tunisian campaign. Seems entirely plausible, if not likely, that they picked up various discards at depots as they were drawing new vehicles.
I'd be interested to see how various rules treat the M6. Rulesets that I have played treat it as a soft vehicle. Well, it is after all a truck. But that big old gunshield was there for a reason. In action the gun were probably at least as well protected as a towed AT gun crew, if not more, at least where small arms and MG fire are concerned (perhaps not so much from HE fragments, as being mounted high, rather than dug-in, would be a significant detriment to protection). So it's kind of a hybrid between a soft vehicle and an armored target.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
gets his hands on some fields and fences.
