Talk:M3 Lee

message: The M-3 Lee was also shipped to the Russians. The Russians were not particularly impressed and nicknamed it 'coffin for 7 brothers'.
:True. Quantity was 1676.
MWAK--84.27.81.59 11:49, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I have a question regarding, what I consider to be, conflicting statements regarding the muzzle velocity of the 75 mm gun.  At one point the text states "...main weapon, a large caliber, low-velocity 75 mm gun ..." and later it states "The M3 differed slightly from this pattern by using a 75mm gun with a relatively high muzzle velocity ...".  Which is it "low-velocity" or "high-velocity"?  ThreeBlindMice 22:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it depends what gun you compare it to :). According to http://gva.freeweb.hu/weapons/usa_guns5.html , M2 (L/31) has muzzle velocity of 588 m/s and M3 (L/40) of 619 m/s with AP shell. Which makes it relatively high-velocity when compared to mostly-anti-personnel guns like the French SA 35 (75 mm L/17, 470 m/s with AP) of Char B1 and relatively low velocity when compared to more anti-tank-oriented guns like the German KwK 40 (75 mm L/43, 740 with APCBC) of Pz IV F2/G. I guess that in the first statement you cite, the gun was called low-velocity to underline the difference with the secondary 37 mm gun which was pure AT weapon; and in the second it was called high-velocity to underline that it was not pure anti-personnel weapon like the typical "larger gun" of a typical multigun tank of the era such as the aforementioned Char B1. Well... I'll try to change the wording a bit to make it more clear. Bukvoed 09:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the great explanation (I'm always happy to learn something new) and for rewording that area of the article. ThreeBlindMice 19:15, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

text: IMO the whole section about the M-3´s history needs to be worked on. The the Pz. III –armed with a tiny 37mm doorknocker was the main German battle tanks in 1940, the Pz.IV´s mission was to fire HE at bunkers and AT-guns. Therefore it was armed with a “very low velocity” gun (388 m/s) that was hardly an effective weapon against armour. The performance of the HEAT shell itself was fine, but the curved trajectory of the shell made hitting a moving target very difficult. The US Army did not know this. They thought the Pz.IV had a 75mm gun with a performance like the French M1897, so they insisted on getting something equally powerful- immediately!! So when the M3 entered production in August 41 the US had a tank with a vastly more powerful gun than the Germans. Even a year later German AFV with high velocity 75mm guns were rare, especially the PZ.IV. Markus Becker02 17:12, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Right you are, but in the meantime the Pzkw-III was beginning to be armed with short and long 50mm guns. By 1942 the longer 50mm was becoming the more common gun. So I would hesitate to say the US 75mm M2 gun was "vastly more powerful". DMorpheus 14:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

text:  The 50mm/L60 gun was most effective with a high velocity APCR(US:HVAP) round, but the round was light and quickly lost velocity, so it was not very useful at distances over 500 meters. I just looked at some after action reports of the Africa Corps that deal with the Grant:
-all 50mm gun are useless at 700 meters 
-the side armour is penetrated by both guns at 500m, if the shell hits at a 90 degree angle
-frontal armour is penetrated at 200 to 300m, but only by the L60 gun
and now to the 75mm gun M2:
-it penetrated standard PzIII and IV at distances of up to 1.400 meters, even when the angle of impact was poor.
-up-armoured Pz.III(70mm glacis plate) were penetrated at 500 to 600 meters Markus Becker02 21:14, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Isn't this a casemate mount rather than a sponson (a projection from the hull).96.54.53.165 (talk) 21:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Armament

message: This tank had many defects:weak in mobilty, protection and firepower.Even so, it was progress, because a bad tank is better than any tank at all.Agre22 (talk) 15:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  At the time it was fielded it had pretty good protection and firepower. Better than what else was available. Mobility wasn't great but it was very reliable, which is more than you can say for the tanks it was generally replacing.  DMorpheus (talk) 16:44, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Anything is better than nothing

message: shouldn't the title be called M-3 Lee/Grant instead of M3 lee  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.3.38.33 (talk) 06:35, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title 

message: While the article talks about how the Lee & Grant models were different, there's not a true explanation of the differences between the two. The Grant had a different turret...ok, so how was it different?
This needs to be cleared up.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.21.200.87 (talk) 20:39, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lee & Grant 

message: Please, people, all these WWII U.S. type-numbers were connected with a -, thus: Model-1, or M-3 etc. etc. The modern lazy usage M1 is a computer-age mistake!VNCCC (talk) 22:12, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That does not appear to be the case. For one example "Technical Manual 9-750 Medium Tanks M3, M3A1, And M3A2" dated 9th of May 1942. See here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/71904493/Tm9-750MediumTanksM3M3a1AndM3a2 Ways (talk) 13:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nomenclature 

message: I found some interesting information that I added into the article that I found from Nicholas Moran's series, "Inside the Chieftain's Hatch," where he explores the ins and outs of tanks, explaining their history as well as their features. However, the references I cited were youtube videos (oops!).
I know that the videos are reliable since they are made by Nicholas Moran, a credited tank historian. But I just read that youtube videos can't be used as references.
Can someone help me on what I should do? Thanks!
These are the videos I used:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p7eJr0grTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu8NwLls7PY
Lil'Latios (talk) 18:59, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inside the Chieftain's Hatch 

message: https://www.flickr.com/photos/135708547@N03/46873647562/in/dateposted/ 
A 1952 photo of a M3 Lee recovery tank during the French Indochina war.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Man74 (talk • contribs) 23:54, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: M3 Lee in French Indochina

message: i notice in the photo of the Commonwealth Lee with the track links "welded to the glacis plate"(how do we know they are welded BTW?) the tank has a Lee turret but what looks like a hatch from an M4 instead of the cupola. I don't see any mention of this variant in the text, only that they removed the cupola when they designed the Grant turret.  Idumea47b (talk) 21:46, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lee with no cupola