In the Osprey "Montgomery's Desert Army" (Men-at-Arms Series) there is a photo of Monty in "his" personal Grant tank.

It's supposed to be a command version with a wooden barrel (to make room for the map tables/radios).

That photo shows the straight barrel with no muzzle brake.

Recently, a photo was posted on the web of "Monty's Grant" at the Imperial War Museum, London. That tank's description also states that the barrel is a dummy, but this one looks mighty real, with the muzzle brake in place...

The first pic looks like a Grant Mk I. The IWM tank looks like a Mk. III.

Can anyone shed light on this? Did Monty have one shot out from under?

I thought this would go nicely, alongside the Resicast Monty Caravan....

Interesting question, the IWM Grant is definitely a diesel (which was a surprise to me when I walked around it). And it's been converted to a command tank as the turret has been gutted and a dummy 37mm gun fitted.

IWM Monty

IIRC it was used as a gate guard at Ludgershall Depot before being restored and given to the IWM

Checking through the IWM Collections database

Here turned up a couple of photos of 'Monty' (I searched for 'Grant'), none of which showed the rear of the tank.

There are a couple of possibilities, either 'Monty' was a diesel (though I think one of the H&C books disputed this) or Montgomery had more than one command tank (quite likely). Be interested to know more.

Thats not a muzzle brake, it's the counterweight found on the early short barreled 75's.

A longer trawl through the IWM found this picture of Monty, frustratingly, the muzzle is covered, but it does look like it has a counter weight (fitted to M2 barrels when the gyro-stabilizer was set up for the longer M3 barrel)

Yes, I have read that the early barrels were counter-weighted.

And it's likely that he used more than one machine, given the desert campaign.

I know he had two distinct Humber cars (diff serial numbers) one with "mickey-mouse" ears camo, the other I think with just dark colours. One had the roundel on top of the hood.

He used the first one in the desert and Sicily, the other in NW Europe.

So, despite the previous note - look at IWM photo E 18982.
Lt General Bernard Montgomery, GOC 8th Army, standing in front of his personal Grant tank, 5 November 1942.

This time a clear shot of the barrel. No break, no counter-weight.

Suppose it's the same one that's at IWM, or another one?

He had two, both diesels. The one in the IWM is the one that went to Italy with 8th Army and survived the war. Fortunately it was preserved at wars end due to its historical link with Monty.
There have been a few threads on this here and Missing Lynx which may go into a lot more detail
Cheers
Al

Monty's Grant
So the one @ IWM would be an M3A5: Riveted hull w/ GM 6046 Diesel engine. Correct?
Todd

Just to be clear, M3s (be they Grants or Lees) _never_ had a muzzle brake. It was always either with or without the counterweight on the M2 barrel or without a counterweight on the M3 barrel.

Paul