page_title: M3 Lee
section_title: Burma
hierarchical_section_title: M3 Lee / Operational history / Burma
caption_attribution_description: English: The British Army in Burma 1945 Infantry of 19th Indian Division take cover behind a Lee tank during street fighting in Mandalay, 9-10 March 1945.
context_page_description: The M3 Lee, officially Medium Tank, M3, was an American medium tank used during World War II. In Britain, the tank was called by two names based on the turret configuration and crew size. Tanks employing US pattern turrets were called the "Lee", named after Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Variants using British pattern turrets were known as "Grant", named after Union general Ulysses S. Grant.
  Design commenced in July 1940, and the first M3s were operational in late 1941. The U.S. Army needed a medium tank armed with a 75mm gun and, coupled with the United Kingdom's immediate demand for 3,650 medium tanks, the Lee began production by late 1940. The design was a compromise meant to produce a tank as soon as possible. The M3 had considerable firepower and good armor, but had serious drawbacks in its general design and shape, including a high silhouette, an archaic sponson mounting of the main gun preventing the tank from taking a hull-down position, riveted construction, and poor off-road performance.
  Its overall performance was not satisfactory and the tank was withdrawn from combat in most theaters as soon as the M4 Sherman tank became available in larger numbers.
context_section_description: After British Commonwealth forces in Europe and the Mediterranean began receiving M4 Shermans, about 900 British-ordered M3 Lees/Grants were shipped to the Indian Army. Some of these saw action against Japanese troops and tanks in the Burma Campaign of WWII.
  They were used by the British Fourteenth Army until the fall of Rangoon, regarded as performing "admirably" in the original intended role of supporting infantry in Burma between 1944 and 1945.
  In the Burma Campaign, the M3 medium tank's main task was infantry support. It played a pivotal role during the Battle of Imphal, during which the Imperial Japanese Army's 14th Tank Regiment (primarily equipped with their own Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks, together with a handful of captured British M3 Stuart light tanks as well) encountered M3 medium tanks for the first time and found their light tanks outgunned and outmatched by the better British armour. Despite their worse-than-average off-road performance, the British M3 tanks performed well as they traversed the steep hillsides around Imphal and defeated the assaulting Japanese forces. Officially declared obsolete in April 1944, nevertheless, the Lee/Grant saw action until the end of the war in September 1945.
caption: A British M3 Grant in Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), during the Burma Campaign in March 1945. Spare tracks are welded onto the front glacis for extra protection.
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