"Fully restored M-3 Grant - new film" Topic

The Australians have turned a Grant tank around from a scrap heap into a working vehicle in just under a year:

YouTube link

Brilliant job!

Barry

Great museum. If you're in Cairns, it's a must-visit.
I always drop in when passing.

A truely outstanding Museum and Rebuild Crew.

Fantastic!

And if you are in Cairns, contact Gerry Webb at Castaway Arts castawayarts.com.au , a great wargaming figure supplier and a good friend of mine.

Jim

Now that is amazing! Good on 'ya, mates

Very cool! I could almost see Humphrey Bogart giving orders from the turret!

So cool!

Yes, I've been following this on Workshop Wednesday for--what? about a year now? Can't wait to see what they start next.

That is so cool. I am glad that someone is preserving and restoring vehicles like this.

Reading about Bogart reminded me of my conviction that the British only had Grants in the Western Desert. I was wrong. Mind you, what a US Army Lee was doing there beats me. Great film, curiously it anticipated Fury's closing episode by decades.

Deadhead if you think Sherman names and numbers are confusing try the Grant/Lee!

From what I have been able to "decode" the standard M3 with the redesigned turret for British use was called the Grant I by the Brits. In addition they also received a number of Grant IIs which was the British designation for what the US called the M3A5. These were received with the standard US small turret. In many cases these were then replaced by the British pattern redesigned turret. In other cases just the small mg cupola was removed and in other cases they were used as received.

Now we have what the Brits designated the Lee Mk I. These were M3s received with the US turret. In some cases the small mg cupola was removed and a split hatch similar to the one on the Grant with redesigned turret was installed.

Confused yet? I am sure someone much more knowledgeable then me will stop by and correct me and bring a sense to it all. Bottom line though is M3 tanks with the standard US M3 turret were indeed sent to British forces in North Africa and served along side M3s with the redesigned turret.

and I thought an M3 was a light tank, a Honey, a Stuart etc. Now I know why they gave them names over here. As for the Grease gun M3……….

@Marc33594:
I believe a number of Lees were supplied to the UK as an emergency measure following the loss of ships carrying original Grants.
Lee tanks also turn up in the Far East, India and Burma, in small numbers.

In one case a defending Japanese tank force were aware that they were up against Lee or Grant tanks. The Japanese commander decided to ambush them on a narrow track from the Lee/Grant tanks LEFT side so that they could not use their larger 75mm gun but instead had to use the 37mm gun in the turret. The plan did not quite work as all the Japanese tanks were eventually destroyed for the loss of just one Lee/Grant.

On the matter of the 75mm hull gun in the Western Desert. When initially supplied the 75mm was intended to only fire High Explosive and there was no AP (armour piercing) round. Some enterprising 8th Army ordnance experts realised that captured German AP rounds fitted the U.S. gun so German rounds were bodged into U.S. cartridges to give a useful AP round. AP rounds were eventually supplied from the States.
Barry