RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

I am trying to recreate a tank that a great uncle was in as a loader. He retold stories to his daughter who wrote it down. He said (several times) it was a M4A3 75mm and he had a drawing that I am trying to get ahold of to scan. It has a muzzle break on it. I thought only “Easy 8s” had breaks and they were 76mm. So my questions are;
75mm, is that true? I would think he’d know but things get miscommunicated sometimes.
If so, where can I get a muzzle break for Taigen 75mm?
Or could I get one for a 76mm and modify it?

Help is appreciated. I love history but tank stuff is so awesome!!!!!
Tank was named Francis btw.

Just discovered that this was retold later in life. Could be he added break for artistic reasons or two tanks were “merged”.

Sounds like 2 tanks merged.

75mm tanks never had a muzzle break. You might find very very early ones with a 'widget' on the end of the tube, but this is a counter weight fitted to allow an M2 75mm gun to be fitted in place of the (as of then) unavailable M3 weapon - very few, if any, saw active service.

Early 76mm tanks (which could have been either early M4A1's or M4A3's, and maybe early M4A3E8's?) did not have the muzzle break, but would have be supplied with the necessary screw thread and a protective cover so that they could be fitted once available.

I could bore you more, but I'd recommend spending an hour or 3 diving through this website instead http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/index.html

You are not boring me. I’m a history teacher. I love history especially World War II. Especially TANKS! I will definitely go visit that site. Everything I researched I think it was two tanks merged as well.

One thing that just occurred to me, with the Sherman guns being metric designations, 75mm,76mm etc, how did the crews relate to the guns in metric? Or did they call them 3 inch ?
I get that military thinking can take over, but it would have been & still be a bit odd to have metrics mixed into Imperial.
how come for example was a aStuart gun always referred to as s 37mm not a 1 1/2”

That's always struck me as odd, going back to the day the 75mm gun was first designed and used on American tanks, why did they pick that size and not three inch?

Son of a gun-ner wrote:That's always struck me as odd, going back to the day the 75mm gun was first designed and used on American tanks, why did they pick that size and not three inch?

The Americans had adopted the French quick firing 75mm gun. First produced in 1897, it rose to fame in the First World War as an outstanding field gun. I guess they continued with it when they required a tank gun, as tried and tested, efficient and reliable.

silversurfer1947 wrote:

Son of a gun-ner wrote:That's always struck me as odd, going back to the day the 75mm gun was first designed and used on American tanks, why did they pick that size and not three inch?

The Americans had adopted the French quick firing 75mm gun. First produced in 1897, it rose to fame in the First World War as an outstanding field gun. I guess they continued with it when they required a tank gun, as tried and tested, efficient and reliable.

Oh, that's interesting to find out, it makes perfect sense. Thank you

From what I can gather, the 76mm isn't 76 at all, but 76.2mm, which is 3 inch. Yet called 76.

They called it the 76mm to differentiate with the 3" anti-tank gun that was already in service (on the M10 as well as towed). While the projectile was the same, the '76mm' shell had a larger propellant charge than the 3" and so the ammuntion was incompatible.

BamaCoop wrote:You are not boring me. I’m a history teacher. I love history especially World War II. Especially TANKS! I will definitely go visit that site. Everything I researched I think it was two tanks merged as well.

From a technical point of view, Bama, it was a muzzle brake. A muzzle break ,in action, would be most unfortunate.