M3 Halftrack

The M3A1 Half Track was the Primary American Mechanize troop transport utilized throughout World War II.

In Real Life

The M3A1 was first developed as the test of the Half-Track concept within the US military, along with observations that warfare was becoming more mbile, and thus vehicles would be needed to carry men faster and across more difficult terrain than simply trains or foot could manage. 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.

In spite of the decent combat record of the vehicle, 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.

The M3A1 served as the baseline for the later M5, which saw service in the war as well, albeit primarily with allied units and developed to fix some of the minor bugs that had plagued the M3.