Not every tank destroyer had an engine. American doctrine split its anti-tank battalions between self-propelled guns and towed pieces like this 3-inch M5 — the same gun the M10 carried, but on a wheeled carriage meant to be dug in and hidden to ambush enemy armor at long range. On the defensive it could be deadly, a concealed gun picking off tanks before they saw it. But towed guns were heavy, slow to shift once emplaced, and terribly exposed if the battle moved — a weakness laid bare in the fluid fighting of the Ardennes. By 1945 the Army had largely concluded that a tank destroyer really needed to move itself.

The fifteen-piece set builds the gun and its crew mid-action — the long-barreled M5 on its split-trail carriage with men laying, loading, and serving it, ammunition to hand. Set it as the dug-in anti-armor screen of a road-to-the-Rhine diorama, backed by the self-propelled guns it fought beside, the M10 GMC and M18 Hell-Cat, with the "Suppressing Fire" M1919 Team covering the position.

W. Britain model 25146. 1/30 scale, matte-painted metal. Fifteen-piece set — one 3-inch M5 anti-tank gun with multiple crew figures and ammunition, on sculpted groundwork bases. Boxed.