The M3 Lee and the M3 Grant are equally bizarre looking WW2 tanks.
The vehicles were huge, 11 foot tall behemoths that both mounted a 75mm gun in a side sponson
as well as a 37mm on the roof.
But the Lee and the Grant, while both being the “Medium Tank M3”, were different tanks
that were operated by different countries in different theatres of the war.
But why?
What was the difference and why bother making two vehicles if they were so similar?
The M3, as you might know already, was the stop gap solution to American’s medium tank problems.
The M2 was obsolete and the M4 wasn’t ready so they settled for the M3 design in the meantime,
in order to get something useable into frontline armoured units.
It used the same engine, suspension, transmission and main gun as the future M4 Sherman, so
its adoption allowed the factories and workers to gain experience before the transition to
the M4 was made.
The M3 wasn’t particularly fast, had a huge silhouette with not all that much armour,
and the armament arrangement was far from ideal.
The 75mm gun was mounted low down on the vehicle and could only traverse 15 degrees to the
left and right.
This meant in some cases the entire tank had to turn in order to lay the main armament
on a target.
Of course, if the target did not require the 75, the smaller, 37mm gun could be brought
to bear as this was located in a fully rotating turret on the roof.
The M3 wasn’t perfect but it was ok.
It was fine.
Especially for late 1941 when very few nations had a better option themselves.
By this point in time the British were fighting a losing war in Europe and had been forced
to abandon most of their tanks on the beaches and fields of Northern France.
Desperate for any sort of capable vehicle that could be mass produced, they phoned their
resourceful American pals across the Atlantic and ordered themselves 1200 of the new M3 Mediums
, which the British had dubbed the “General Lee”.
However this order came with a special request – that the Americans make these new vehicles
to British specifications, including mounting a completely redesigned turret.
The main reason for this request was that the British wanted the radio to be operated
by the commander up in the turret rather than a radio operator in the hull,
thus reducing the crew from 7 to 6.
The turret mounted radio was a feature in almost all British vehicles of the time, and
it makes a lot of sense, essentially meaning all communications in and out of the tank
would be done by the Commander himself and he would always be the first to know critical information.
But radios in the year 1941 were not small.
This meant the entire turret had to be redesigned with a new casting to incorporate the radio
into the back.
And if you’re casting a new turret anyway why not make some more changes?
First to go was the commanders machine gun turret on the roof.
In the new design it was replaced with a simple split hatch.
The addition of the radio to the commander’s position made his job hard enough without
having to worry about using a machine gun.
Instead, a 2 inch smoke bomb thrower was added to the turret along with a smoke bomb stowage rack.
The British Turret, referred to in American documents as the “Radio Turret”
would also mount a loader’s periscope.
The British wanted to add a loader’s hatch as well, but the Americans drew the line here,
already frustrated at the amount of time the modifications were taking as they wanted production
to start as soon as possible.
The new turret had thicker armour than the original M3, with the original having 51mm
of protection at the front and the British design having 76mm.
The sides and rear were kept the same, at 51mm, but the curved sides of the radio turret
gave it a slight advantage.
The top armour was increased too, from 22mm to 32mm.
The Brits would dub their version the General Grant, after Ulysses S Grant, former US president
and union civil war general.
Grant was a historical rival to the confederate General Robert E Lee, the name they had given
to the original.
The brand new Grant tanks would be sent into action as soon as May 1942, facing hitler’s
Africakorps in the Libyan desert.
And they performed pretty well.
Against German and Italian tanks of the period the 75mm packed a punch
and the armour was solid, especially at range.
They were a big change from the small “cruiser” tanks the Brits were used to, however.
One British tank commander tried his best to summarise
his combat experience in an M3 Grant during this period:
"The 75(mm gun) is firing.
The 37(mm gun) is firing, but it is traversed round the wrong way.
The Browning (machine gun) is jammed.
I am saying "Driver, advance" on the A set,
and the driver, who can’t hear me, is reversing.
And as I look over the top of the turret and see twelve enemy tanks fifty yards away
. . . . someone hands me a cheese sandwich."
The Brits would primarily use the M3 Grant in Africa,
but many units would end up mixing in M3 Lees when the Grant’s weren’t available in large enough numbers.
Grants would be shipped to the pacific theatre to protect Australia,
and would fight the Japanese in Southeast Asia.
But by the time the war reached mainland Europe all of these vehicles would be replaced with
newer tanks like the Cromwell, Churchill or Sherman.
So to answer my question from the start of the video, the Lee and the Grant were essentially
the same vehicle with a different turret that better suited each country’s needs.
In British service both the lee and the Grant would be fitted with larger mudguards and
side skirts, which the Americans didn’t bother with.
There are actually a whole host of little differences between the two vehicles that
I don’t have time to get into, but I’ll leave a link to this brilliant website in
the description if you want to know more.
Interestingly, the Americans may have seen that the British turret was somewhat superior,
because the production M4 Sherman turrets were of similar shape and also replaced the
commander’s cupola with a split hatch.
The loaders periscope was included from the beginning and the loaders hatch was added
soon after.
Maybe those Brits with their irritating modification requests might have known their stuff after all…
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