M3 Halftrack

The M3A1 Half Track was the primary American Mechanized troop transport utilized throughout World War II.

In Real Life

The US Army began using halftracks with the M2 artillery tractor, which was essentially a modified M3 scout car. An enlarged version was proposed as an infantry transport, and this was accepted as the M3. The M3 spawned dozens of subvariants with everything from mortars to Self-Propelled Artillery, but the two most iconic ones were the baseline M3 with a single .50 BMG or the Orkish M16, which had no less than 4 .50 cal BMG's strapped to it.

By 1942 it was clear that WMC was not going to be able to produce M2's and M3's in the quantities that the US Army needed, so International Harvester was brought into the project to add capacity. However this required a redesign of the frame to work with IH's factories; these modified variants were issued new model numbers for the prime mover (M9) and transport (M5) to differentiate them from the WMC versions, and they were both of the larger M3 size. So an M5 is an M3 with an IH frame, and an M9 is an M5 with the radio and shell storage of an M2.

In spite of the decent combat record of the halftrack, many US troops hated the vehicle, with complaints ranging from being too exposed to airburst artillery to being not armored enough against Machine Gun fire. General Omar Bradley seemed to disagree, and instead thought the bad reputation of the vehicle was earned through troops being inexperienced, incompetent, or a mixture of both.