Medium Tank M7 - American Experimental Medium Tank

note to anyone who cares; I will be setting up shop on Cults3d asap

In 1941, the US Army initiated the T7 program for a new light tank which would replace the M3A1 Stuart. It was a fourteen-ton light tank armed with the turret of an M3 Lee - the 37 mm gun, that is, not the 75 mm casemate - and a welded, somewhat sloped hull. This project would start and be altered to the extreme, being reclassified as a medium tank in 1942 and eventually being cancelled after only thirteen production vehicles produced in 1943.

The development process of Light Tank T7 was a very convoluted one. The original T7 was soon replaced with the T7E1, which had a much larger turret and a riveted hull; this new turret still mounted a 37 mm gun but gave the crew more space and allowed for the possibility of a larger gun being mounted. T7E2 came soon after, mounting a larger Wright R-975 engine and a 57 mm gun, the same 6 pounder mounted on the Churchill III and Crusader. T7E3 and T7E4 mounted two different engines for trial with no other changes, leading to the final T7E5 which would become the final accepted M7. By this point, the Light Tank M7 reached a total weight of twenty-eight tons, one ton over the cutoff for light tanks. As such, M7 was classified as a medium tank despite being a full ten tons lighter than the thirty-eight ton M4 Sherman.

The final T7E5, redesignated Medium Tank M7, was a twenty-eight ton vehicle armed with the same 75 mm gun as the Sherman. It had 64 mm thick cast armor sloped at 50 degrees, VVS suspension, and a Continental R-975 nine-cylinder radial engine granting a speed of 30 miles per hour. It combined the running gear of an M3 Stuart with the armament of an M4 Sherman while being slightly less armored, slightly faster, and ten tons lighter. International Harvester Company, the manufacturer, produced seven production M7s with six T7E2s being upgraded to production standard for a grand total of thirteen.

Unfortunately for the M7, the final design was only accepted in 1943; by that time in the war, the Sherman was deeply rooted in the US Army’s armored divisions and the Stuart - now onto the improved M5 variant - had proven that it could last a few more years. Furthermore, the M7 was put through trials and received a resounding ‘meh,’ not being a bad design per se but not being a standout over the M4 or M5 either. The M7, being more lightly armored for not much of an increase in speed, was not adopted by the US Army, as the Army preferred to stick with the good ol’ M4. All but one of the M7s were scrapped, the sole survivor being held at Aberdeen Proving Ground until it was recently moved to a storage facility in Anniston, Alabama, where it is (as far as I could find) sadly not available for public viewing. The M7’s story ended with its cancellation in 1943, as no derivatives were produced. Later on in the war, however, a much more successful light tank was produced from similar design requirements as the later T7 variants - what would become the M24 Chaffee.

Simple file. Take care with the supports on the suspension blocks and around the headlights. Given the fenders which extend down the sides of the tracks, the usual pegs would not work so the tracks simply slide in. 0.1mm FDM layers. When it comes to use, I guess you could proxy this with the rules for the M24 Chaffee as they were quite similar. While it was not adopted, its most likely user would be either the US Army as a replacement for the M5 Stuart. I myself think that it would have been well-suited to the US Marines, who might have taken interest in the project as a lighter medium tank could be useful for the island-hopping characteristic of the Pacific - but that is just my own speculation and it has no real value. Anyways, happy printing!